Hey everyone,

I’m still working on the second edition of Organizing Creativity.

It takes longer than expected (it is a spare time project), so, I’m putting the current draft version online.

It contains the content of the wiki I had here, so I have removed it.

Like I said, it’s a rough draft — some parts are (almost) finished, others are missing in part or completely — but to make the best of the longer work process, posting it online gives me the opportunity to ask for feedback. This is your chance to influence the final version. What do you think of the content and/or the layout? Any suggestions for improvement? I’d like to hear them. Drop me a line at danwessel@organizingcreativity.com or write a comment.

All the best

Daniel

“Sure, I had tried out the Hipster PDA (verdict: too hipster), read up on the Moleskines (verdict: too much pressure to be the next Hemingway and Picasso), and even thought about Getting Things Done, but I just wasn’t up to the task.”
Bill Westerman on http://www.utilware.com/gsd3.html

I’ve already written a short entry on OmniFocus when I started to try it out end of November last year. After almost two months of experience with the program, I really like it — and what’s important, I think it helps me do my work more effectively.

Here’s a short overview of my workflow, somewhat inspired by the excellent series at asianefficiency.com:

Short work description and programs/apps used

I am a scientist. Most of my work is in the office behind a computer, so I can use the desktop version of OmniFocus. However, I also love to walk — for good reasons like health, time for ideas, fresh air to clear the head — and I spend about 60 to 90 minutes each day walking (30 to 40 minutes for each way to and from the office, some walking during the lunch break). And I love to use that time – including for task management and actually doing the task. Given that I can type while walking without walking into lampposts, I use the time to go through my day, plan the next actions, and do as many as I can (you can do a lot with mobile eMail). So I use the OmniFocus App as well — and far more frequently.

Adapting and Using the OmniFocus App

You can and should configure the App in many ways, and given that the desktop version mirrors this structure I focus on the mobile version here.

	The overview of the App is reordered to have the most frequently used actions on top (easier to reach when holding the device in the right hand and typing with the right thumb). Inbox — if I quickly need to capture a task without having the time to sort it into the correct project. Projects — all projects (see below) Flagged — you can flag action selectively. I use this feature extensively to decide which actions I want to do on that day (and only those actions I want to do on that day!). See below. Forecast — beautiful view of the tasks that are due today (according to due dates, not according to flag status). Contexts — Tasks have a context, usually used to describe the places or circumstances you need for the task, e.g., some tasks can only be done at home (e.g., repair the roof), others require specific people, etc. See below. Map — If you have set locations to your tasks. I do not use the map frequently enough for it to be of use to me. Search — like the name says.
	Rituals (idea from asianefficiency.com) is the first project I open each day on my way to work. It has six repeating tasks that reappear each day. Going through these rituals helps me to prepare for the day. As you can see, I review my annual goals (because otherwise I forget them), my monthly goals (work and private — monthly because this is the largest time horizon I can sustain), review my calendar for tasks that absolutely have to be done today (usually meetings or other time critical stuff), review the waiting for context (all tasks with the context currently set to “waiting” are listed there, useful to remind others of their tasks ), process the Inbox (e.g., assign projects and contexts to these tasks) and finally — and most importantly — pick the most important task for the day.
	I flag any actions that I want to do on the given day — and only those actions I think I can actually do. Reason being I think if you have all your tasks visible you have to do, it overwhelms you and you are prone to do nothing. Thus I plan each morning after reviewing the information in “Rituals” (see above) what I can actually do on that day. If I finish early, great, if not, I plan more carefully the next day. Of course, there are other pressing tasks that I would love to do that day but really cannot. So I have a second layer of tasks that are critical. I use a context (see blow) called “Do (soon)”. Each task that I should do soon gets this context, in comparison to the normally used context “Do” (for a task that is not so time critical). Point being, I can quickly see which tasks are also pressing, yet I only see the tasks I have to do today. Note: I rarely use “Due” dates, because for fixed appointments I use the calendar (which fulfills a different purpose than a task manager) and which data OmniFocus also shows (see “Forecast” below). Other tasks are often time criticalbut not that critical to do on a specific day, so due dates do not make that much sense for me. OmniFocus shows you the Task and the Project (smaller in gray) below the task. This is usually all you need. You can put in more information, including longer text notes, images and sound recordings in the task entry.
	Projects gives an overview of all the tasks, sorted and grouped into projects or project folders. They can be sequential (first task in project has to be carried out before second task, etc.), parallel, or single actions.I use two folders — private and work (see below), a sequential project called “Rituals” (based on asianefficiency.com), and three single actions projects (annual goals, private monthly goals, work monthly goals). OmniFocus is great in giving you exactly the information you need, e.g., the amount of projects, how many are overdue or due soon, and it allows you a quick view on all remaining actions. Note that “Annual Goals”, “Monthly Goals (work)”, and “Monthly Goals (private)” are not tasks per se that are integrated into “Work” or “Private”. They are high-level reminders. Whereas they get checked when they are completed, it is the tasks in “Private” and “Work” that I refer to in doing them. The reason for having them as single “tasks” in an extra project folder is that I have a lot of private and work projects, but not all are goals for the given month or year. That is a conscious decision where a simple review of the “Private” and “Work” folder would overwhelm me each day.
	I have split the projects in two general categories — private is the first one (I’ve covered some text because — well, it is private). There is “Single Actions” for all the miscellaneous stuff that does not warrant an own project, some projects that are important to me, and a “Private Someday/Maybe” section for all the future stuff I would like to do. I strongly recommend keeping such a list — it keeps the ‘more distant wishes’ away from the current todo’s …
	The equivalent for the work projects. As with the private projects, one “Single Actions” project for miscellaneous stuff that does not warrant an own project, some projects (including teaching and publications, sorry for the German-English mix here), and of course a someday maybe folder (not visible).
	I use only a few contexts, as most of the work I do couldbe done anywhere. Do (soon) — For tasks that are time critical yet not fixed to a given date. Do — All other tasks I simply have to do, no matter where. Errands — The only location specific task, or rather, the context that specifies that it is neither the office (sorted under work projects) or (most likely) home (sorted under private projects). Waiting — Important context, each task where I have to rely on/have delegated the task to someone else gets this context. It’s no longer a “Do” or “Do (soon)” context because I cannot do anything but remember the person to do this task. I check this context each day during the “Rituals” (see above). Annual Goals, Monthly Goals, and Rituals have these contexts to prevent interfering with “Do” or “Do (soon)” tasks. I do not use “office“, “home“, or “people” contexts, because most of my work tasks I can do anyway, I look at my private projects usually at home (or on my way home), and I love eMail communication so there is no need for a people context because I can reach them anytime and anywhere.
	Forecast is a very interesting function that brilliantly displays a lot of information. On top it shows you the overdue tasks (here: 4 in the Past, it doesn’t matter really when they were due, I missed them, that’s what counts), the tasks due today (here: none), and the tasks that are due in the next four days and in the future (here: 6 on Monday — my rituals, 1 on Wednesday, 1 on Thursday, 5 in the Future). Due Today would show tasks that are due today if there were any. Calendar Events access your calendar and shows the appointments of your calendar. Very useful and very interesting view — if it were a time-frame it would show small bars, giving you a good overview of the day in minimum space.

Working with it

I think what makes this solution work for me is that I have integrated it into my daily life. I walk to my office and have time to review and plan the day (and do those things that can be done via a quick eMail). I can use my iPhone with only one hand (using the other for the coffee I drink while walking or the umbrella if it’s raining).

What matters to me is that I have a view (flagged tasks) where I see only the tasks I have planed to do that day, preventing me to be overwhelmed (I have configured OmniFocus to show me only the flagged items as badge count, which makes sense regarding the way I use it). At the same time, I can easily see my goals for the year, or month, or all my work and private projects (and their specific sub-tasks), allowing me to see the big picture easily (at least regarding the tasks — the why is something different).

It also matters that I can add new tasks quickly, even when I am on the move. All data I enter, e.g., while walking to another office at work or while going through the city, is immediately synced with the Desktop version of OmniFocus. I do not think about backups here, OmniFocus does this for me.

Likewise I adhere to David Allen’s golden rule to do any task immediately that takes less than two minutes, and I have tweaked this rule a bit (i.e., improved my infrastructure to make more possible within two minutes).

And finally the often mentioned but rarely adhered rule: Tasks should be easily implementable. Make them concrete and think what the next step is you have to do, instead of just writing down what you want to achieve (exception: high-level goals that serve purely as reminders).

Final comments

This way of using OmniFocus is a little different than the ways proposed on asianefficiency.com. And I think that’s an important aspect: A task management system must work for you and you have to try out a few things to find a solution that works for you. Luckily, you notice the amount of work you do and whether you are happy with the solution or not. OmniFocus is — unfortunately — quite expensive, but it offers you a lot of choice how to configure it and the way the information is presented and the ease of use is … just remarkable. I can highly recommend it — try out the trial version. If it works for you, great, if not, look around until you find something that works for you — and I also recommend the link in the quote at the beginning of this posting for a completely different but for some probably more effective way to deal with tasks.

“But I thought YOU did the backups …”
Unknown

Many people work collaboratively while never trained to do so. Collaborative task management — who does what, who does how much, what are the next steps, etc. usually becomes a nightmare. Working in an interdisciplinary, multinational EU project I can only say that a good tool would have helped. We tried using a Wiki (at least internally), but that didn’t cut it.

I talked to a colleague of mine about it and, having the same problem, she searched around to at least coordinate the work tasks within her workgroup. She recommended Asana. Looking at the video:

it really looks like the kind of tool we could have used — and should have used. Seems to do exactly what is needed and on multiple devices …

If you work in a team, perhaps Asana is something for you …

Kurz gesagt: Ihr seid hochqualifizierte Leute, die man nicht auf der falschen Stelle verschwenden sollte. Ihr seid ehrgeizig, im Sinne von ihr wollt etwas erreichen, gefördert werden, weiter kommen. Sucht euch das passende Umfeld genau aus wenn ihr könnt. Promotionsstellen sind Qualifikationsstellen — es reicht nicht, dass ihr die Arbeit für die Stelle gut macht, die Arbeit auf der Stelle muss euch weiterbringen und euch selbst weiter qualifizieren.
Vortragsnotiz aus “Die Zukunft deiner Forschung — Wie organisiert man eine wissenschaftliche Arbeit?”

Note: The following presentation (PDF with Notes, which contains the script) is about ways to organize a scientific work. I did this presentation at the MinD-Akademie 2011 in Hannover and thus it is in German. It was my best presentation ever. Loved the audience . Regarding an English version, I’ll be doing a translation soon. [Update: Translation is online in this posting.]

Auf das Bild klicken um die PDF angezeigt zu bekommen (ca. 5 MB). Ein Teil der Bilder in der Präsentation sind ausgegraut, weil ich leider nicht das Copyright für diese Bilder besitze. Das mindert die Qualität der Präsentation, auch wenn sie nur zur Illustration eingesetzt wurden. Auf der anderen Seite sind alle wichtigen Informationen in den Notizen vorhanden. Das Design der Folien beruht zum einen auf ein Template von Apple’s Keynote (Cover), wobei die Seiten von den Aperture/iPhoto Photobüchern inspiriert sind. Die Angaben zur empfohlenen Literatur ist hier als eigener Eintrag verfügbar.

English Note: This posting is about a poster I did submit to the MinD-Akademie 2011, showing on one (very large) page how one can organize one’s creativity. It was accepted and well received. The poster is in German, but I will do a translation soon. [Update: Translation is finished and available in this posting here.]

Das Poster zeigt die verschiedenen Punkte die wichtig sind, um Kreativität zu organisieren. Während der Prozess von oben nach unten läuft, ist jeder Punkt auch eine Beschäftigung mit dem Thema (gelbe Pfeile nach oben) und führt entsprechend zu weiteren Ideen (mittige Pfeile nach unten). Auf das Poster oder hier klicken, um das Poster als PDF in DIN-A0 zu sehen (die Bilder selbst sind runterskaliert, so dass die Datei “nur” ca. 7 MB groß ist). Die Datei ist in der Dateigröße reduziert, die Bilder sollten aber trotzdem in druckbarer Qualität sein. Das Poster, das ich ausgestellt hatte, habe ich in Hannover gelassen (vielleicht hat es ja ein nettes Heim gefunden, sonst wurde es halt entsorgt). Ich musste los, habe mein Poster nicht gesehen (oder ich war grad blind) und ich habe mich auch von einigen Leuten nicht (bzw. nicht richtig) verabschieden können (war auch was k.o., auch wenn’s/weil’s riesigen Spaß gemacht hat). Ich hoffe, ich sehe ein paar Personen bald wieder, auch gerne mal zu Besuch in Tübingen, auch wenn ich die Namen grad nicht verfügbar habe (ich denke, ich habe den Networking-Workshop wirklich gebraucht — war gut und eine gute Erinnerung).  Ich wünschte halt, ich hätte mir die Namen notiert, von den Personen, mit denen ich interessante Unterhaltungen geführt hatte (hmm, in der Badewanne eben gab’s eine nette Idee für eine App bzw. die Fortführung einer älteren Idee dazu  … ).

“I took a speed reading course and 
read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes.
It involves Russia.”
Woody Allen

Last weekend, I did a presentation for the MinD-Akademie in Germany with the topic: “The Future of Your Research — How to organize a scientific work?”. It was a lot of fun creating the presentation and even more fun holding it (great audience ). Over the next few days I’m going to put the material online here. As this takes a while, here the cited literature:

Science in General and Advisers/Colleagues

• Cham’s “PhD Comics”: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
  I could have done the whole presentation with PhD Comics, but no one would have believed that they actually describe “real” situations (“real” because it’s a little over the top, but always with a nugget of gold). Great to get a humorous view on academia.
• Sternberg’s “Psychology 101½”: Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Psychology 101 1/2 The Unspoken Rules for Success in Academia. Washington, DC: APA.
  A very good book by a distinguished professor about life in academia. While written with psychology in mind (he is psychologist), some aspects can probably be applied to other domains.
• Pausch’s “Last Lecture”
(Video & Book): Pausch, R. (2008). Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. New York: Hyperion. [Video here on YouTube]
  A brilliant presentation about a person’s life in academia (and in general) — it shows what you can accomplish and what is needed. For all who think that a job in academia is more than just making money to life by (badly in many cases).
• Schwartz’s “The importance of stupidity in scientific research”: Schwartz, M. A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science, 121, 1771. Available at http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/121/11/1771
  A one page article about the necessity of feeling stupid while doing research. Should be required reading by every PhD student just to get the “but I did study it, why don’t I know the answer in advance” out of one’s mind.
• Patterson’s “Your Students Are Your Legacy”: Patterson, D. A. (2009). Your Students Are Your Legacy. Communications of the ACM, 32(3), 30-33. doi:10.1145/1467247.1467259
  A brilliant argument for good advisory — and what makes good advisory. Should be required reading for everyone who advises students.
• Schmidt & Richter’s Artikel von 2008 und 2009: Schmidt, B., & Richter, A. (2008). Unterstützender Mentor oder abwesender Aufgabenverteiler? – Eine qualitative Interviewstudie zum Führungshandeln von Professorinnen und Professoren aus der Sicht von Promovierenden. Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung, 30(4), 34-58. und Schmidt, B., & Richter, A. (2009). Zwischen Laissez-Faire, Autokratie und Kooperation: Führungsstile von Professorinnen und Professoren. Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung, 31(4), 8-35.
  Both articles are in German but they are very interesting — more information on them in a posting about them.

Finding a Topic and Planning the Research

• Perry’s Criteria for a good dissertation topic: Perry, C. (1998). A structured approach to presenting theses. Available online at http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/art/cperry.html
  An excellent text about doing a thesis with some very good points on selecting the right topic.
• Booth, Colomb, & Williams’ “The Craft of Research”: Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., & Williams, J. M. (2003). The Craft of Research. (Second Edition). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  More on the basics of what research is and how to do it — applicable for many domains.
• Ullman’s “Advising Students for Success”: Ullman, J. D. (2009). Advising Students for Success. Communications of the ACM, 52(3), 34-37.
  Another great text about advisory — with more focus on choosing a relevant topic.

Managing Literature

• Reference Manger Overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software
• citavi: http://www.citavi.com
  A very interesting reference manager, because it offers more than a database for storing reference information. It offers a way to organize knowledge taken from the articles, which is something few reference manager do. Very interesting!
• Sente: http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com
  A reference manger that offers intelligent note taking capabilities. More in this posting.
• Zotero: http://www.zotero.org
  An interesting reference manager because it works in the browser. But there is still the problem of storing more than just the articles.
• Mendely: http://www.mendeley.com
  Interesting because it is also a social network. You can get information what people who read similar articles have read. Very interesting and the way of the future.

Capturing and Managing Ideas and Data

• Organizing Creativity: http://www.organizingcreativity.com
  I hesitate to recommend my own book (still working on the second version and it is just — wrong). But it was written to cover this topic. Get the PDF here.
• Circus Ponies Notebook: http://www.circusponies.com
  Beautiful digital notebook with a great outliner. Get more information on working with it in these postings: 
  • Circus Ponies Notebook: The Best Tool for Structuring Creative Writing Projects (esp. Research Projects)
  • Circus Ponies Notebook for Academic Writing (e.g., Thesis Writing)
  • Circus Ponies Notebook and Scrivener for Writing
• Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software
  Wikipedia has a very good overview of the different Wiki (engines) available.
• DokuWiki: http://dokuwiki.org
  A very good and easy to manage wiki engine.
• DEVONthink: http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/
  A very interesting note management system. Read more in this posting.
• Scrivener: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
  Personally the best writing application I know of — way, way better than word and well worth a look. Read more in this posting.

Preparing Studies and Analyzing the Data

• Field’s “Discovering Statistics Using SPSS”: Field, A. (2005). Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (2nd Edition). London: Sage.
  My statistics book was the Bortz (German book) — which was … not that suited to learn what statistics is about and why it is interesting and useful. Field manages to do both en passant — a very well written book and highly recommended.
• Pallant’s “SPSS Survival Manual”: Pallant, J. (2007). SPSS Survival Manual. McGraw-Hill, Open University Press.
  Everything you need to know to do the standard tests in statistics for psychologists. Looks cheap but is the best practical handbook I know. Very, very useful.
• Goodwin’s “Research in Psychology”: Goodwin, C. J. (2009). Research in Psychology. Methods and Design. New York: Wiley.
  Good basic text about research.
• Wright’s “Making friends with your data”: Wright, D. B. (2003). Making friends with your data: Improving how statistics are conducted and reported. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 73, 123-136.
  Something every researcher should know — very interesting text.
• example for a “strange” but very valuable source: Froman, R. D. (2001). Elements to Consider in Planning the Use of Factor Analysis. Southern Online Journal of Nursing Research, 2(5). Retrieved January 9, 2009, from http://www.snrs.org/ publications/SOJNR_articles/iss05vol02.pdf.

Writing

• Silvia’s “How to Write a Lot”: Silvia, P. J. (2007). How to Write a Lot. Washington D.C.: APA.
  Read this to avoid delaying your writing. A brilliant text that smashes the typical excuses of why not to write and gives very useful hints to write.
• Alley’s “The Craft of Scientific Writing”: Alley, M. (1996). The Craft of Scientific Writing (3rd Edition). New York: Springer.
  The best text I know of regarding the criteria for scientific writing and a very convincing text that technical writing (e.g., all research papers) is craft, not art, i.e., you need to get your facts straight, not divine inspiration.
• Bem’s “Writing the Empirical Journal Article”: Bem, D. J. (1987). Writing the empirical journal article. In M. P. Zanna & J. M. Darley (Eds.), The compleat academic: A practical guide for the beginning social scientist (pp. 171-201). New York: Random House.
  Can be found online in a different version (which I did read). The standard text for psychologists working in research.
• Yaffe’s “How to Generate Reader Interest in What You Write”: Yaffe, P. (2009). How to Generate Reader Interest in What You Write. ACM Ubiquity, 10(7).
  An interesting text to capture the reader.
• Lamott’s “bird by bird”: Lamott, A. (1994). bird by bird. New York: Anchor Books.
  A very good book about (fictional) writing, but with helpful hints for academic/technical writing as well — esp. to write a “shitty first draft”, you can always improve it later.
• Academic Phrasebank: http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk
  If reading articles does not give you the necessary vocabulary or you struggle with the right phrases, this site will help.

Reviews

• Trafimow & Rice: Trafimow, D., & Rice, S. (2009). What If Social Scientists Had Reviewed Great Scientific Works of the Past? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(1), 65-78. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01107.x
  A brilliant article about how tough and irrational the peer review process is in the social sciences. More in this posting or look directly in the article — very humorous and highly recommended.

Presentations

• Reynolds’ “Presentation Zen” & “The naked presenter”: Reynolds, G. (2008). Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. and Reynolds, G. (2011). The naked presenter. Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
  Brilliant books to avoid death by Powerpoint.
• TED talks: http://www.ted.com
  Great for inspiration — many of the speakers can convey not only their message/the facts but also why they love this topic.

“It’s like deja vu all over again.”
Unknown

Something that can happen very easily regarding the references you store in your idea collection are duplicate entries: the same image, document, etc. is inserted twice (or multiple times). And easy way to prevent this in DEVONthink is by using a smart group looking for duplicates in the Inbox only (Note the “Search in: References Inbox”).

I use a database named references and limit the scope of the smart group to its inbox. Whenever I put something in the inbox (new images, files, etc.) DEVONthink compares it to the content of the database and if it finds a file with the same content, it makes the filename bold and blue — and it appears in the smart group.

This way I can simply select and delete the duplicate entries in the smart group and remove the newly copied files, without touching the files that are sorted in my collection.

Trust that little voice in your head that says “Wouldn’t it be interesting if …”
And then do it.
“More Joy of Photography” by Duane Michals

Some time ago, I wrote a posting about Apps that use effects to make even a random photo look like “art”. Yesterday I tried out some effects of Camera+ with a few of my photos. Some of the photos were okay, others were so-so — you wouldn’t look twice. But using the Clarity scene mode (boosts contrast and saturation to insane levels) together with effects like Nostalgia, Ansel, Hipster, Lomographic, etc. and a nice frame produced … interesting results.

As the images are probably at least somewhat NSFW, the image containing a few results is only liked here (sorry about the quality, it’s scaled down to fit into a blog posting and the photos look better by themselves on an iPhone).

It’s strange — you use a semi-professional DSLR and Aperture, and at the end a “simple” app on a mobile phone produces the most interesting results …

It isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out,
it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.

Sometimes it’s just a small detail that can make you crazy, and with Scrivener’s fullscreen (or now: composition mode) it was the typewriter scrolling. When activated, the line you work with is automatically the vertical center of the screen.

If you are writing the text from scratch, this feature is very useful — you can fixate the same line with your eyes and do not need to go down-down-down until the text is the the very last line of the virtual page (like in Word). But it can drive you crazy if you are editing the text and whenever you type somewhere it is automatically recentered vertically, thus forcing you to visually jump to the vertical center each and every time you change something.

Luckily there is the Format – Options – Typewriter Scrolling Setting in the menu bar, if you disable it, Scrivener does not show this behavior — in the selected view mode. What drove me mad and took me a while to understand is that there are independent settings for the normal window and for the composing/fullscreen mode. Thus, you have to disable Format – Options – Typewriter Scrolling in the composing mode independently from the normal mode, either by going with your cursor to the top of the screen, or by pressing ctrl + cmd + t when in the composing mode.

As you usually do not see the menu bar in the composing/fullscreen mode, it’s easy to miss it.

Some time ago (shame on me) someone at GroupZap send me an eMail about their product: A website where you can collaboratively work on the same shared whiteboard. You can write Post-Its, easily move and scale them, draw lines, etc. If you ever had a quick phone conversation where you wanted to develop something together you see the value of this immediately.

As I usually work either alone or with colleagues in the same building, I had no opportunity to really try it out, but working with two computers at the same time worked as well. And it’s a really good tool. There are some issues regarding usability and the need to give an eMail-address, but besides this it is easy to share information this way. You change something and a second or two later the people sharing the whiteboard see the changed version.

Two really great features of GroupZap are an edit list, showing you not only who did what but also letting you replay the whole development, so you can replay the development of the ideas, and an quick and easy PDF export.

In short, GroupZap is a quick to use tool for collaborative work. Still in its early stages, but already very usable.