What, is that a light at the end of the catch up tunnel or just a new CPD23 thing at the other end? ;)
Google Docs:
I use Google Docs a lot and I am constantly sharing documents. Things I use Google Docs for, a short list off the top of my head: sharing the spreadsheet that my flatmate and I use to track our bill payments, my saving tracker spreadsheet, any cover letters or personal statements that I have written in the last year (I get my flatmate to edit – which was hilarious when we were both applying for the same job! – and I edit hers). I have also used Google Docs to store/write/edit most of the fanfic I wrote between 2005 and 2009, along with the spreadsheet that kept track of my wordcount (one year, I managed to write over 31k!).
I also use it for committee work – for example, the CILIP in London’s CPD23 event. All the attendees went in a Google docs spreadsheet that I could then share with my fellow organisers. Next time, I will probably try using the form function to save me copying and pasting between emails!
I find it extremely useful and when I’m at home, I rarely open Word, preferring to open Google Docs if I need to write anything down.
Dropbox
Another tool that I use so often that I forget I once never had it! I can’t remember the last time I used a USB stick (I still carry one) because Dropbox has replaced it. Of course, like Google Docs and everything else cloud based, I do back it up frequently but it is such a useful tool. I’ve used it to share all sorts of files and it has been a life-saver so many times, when I’ve been somewhere and had to get something – as long as I have internet access, I can just log in online and snag what I need. I kept back up copies of my thesis in it while I was writing that and my partner and I frequently use a shared folder in it for passing photos etc. back and forth.
Top tip for Dropbox: If you log in online and click on the ‘Getting Started’ tab, there’s a few “quests” to do, which will a) show you how to get a lot out of Dropbox but b) will net you another 250mb of space. Hooray!
Wikis
Now, Wikis are probably my least used tool. Oh, I contribute to a few – Library routes for example – and I use them as backend tools (the enquiry database I worked on at The King’s Fund has a wiki backend) but they’re not my go-to thing. I’ve worked in places that sort of used a wiki to store information but without buy-in from the whole team, it became less useful.
It probably also doesn’t help that where I currently work, we try to move away from people storing information in wikis as we want them to use our own internal communities of practice.
