Over the past years working in teams has become one of the moste important aspects in the modern workplace. Because of the use of internet, which is widespread available, members from all over the world can join the team. This makes it hard for everybody to keep track of the work process. So for teamwork to be effective, it is important for companies to think of a modern way of working which involves a simple and efficient way of working. This is where online collaboration tools come in.

• It’s easy to keep track of projects
• Team members van be anywhere
• Ease of reporting
• Actions are done quickly
• Documents are all stored in a single place.

Read more about the benefits of online collaboration tools | About.com –Mobile Office Technology @ http://sqr.io/JONHQh

Just spotted in today’s TU Delft’s weekly newspaper @TUDelta. #TUDelft

Go to the website and sign up for our PILOT.

Sign up for #TUDelft pilot. Go to the website and sign up for our PILOT by using your TU Delft email-address (for example: J.Doe@student.tudelft.nl). You will get an invite within a week!

We will only use your information to notify you of important announcements and/or to invite you for testing a new version.

You can also follow us on twitter or like us on facebook.

Productive Web Apps (PWA) is a website where they promote productive and collaboration tools which make life and work easier. They have seen the demo and reviewed Share Square. PWA thinks Share Square can help you organize your information and work. For them it can me a very productive collaboration tool.

If you want your life to be more productive you can already sign up at www.sharesquare.com.

Last week Share Square was featured on @betalist. A website were you can discover and get access to the latest internet startups. You can already sign up for an invite right here or check out our betali.st page.

Last week Share Square visited CeBIT in Hannover, Germany.  CeBIT is considered by many one of the largest events globally where all major IT manufacturers unveil their latest products and exhibit their services and portfolio to key members of the media, businesses and end users. An ideal place for Share Square to show our product to potential users.

  

By approaching several different companies that were exhibiting their services and products at CeBIT  we tried to show them what we are building by pitching and showing our latest video. The reactions we got were overwhelming. Every single company we have spoken to was very interested in Share Square.

In conclusion, we can say that being at CeBIT 2012 has been very inspiring for us and we are more determined than before to deliver the best online collaboration tool for your project work, visually. Our goal for CeBIT 2013 will be to be one of the leading companies in online collaboration, using the best digital pinboard ever, named Share Square.

Today we started our BETA-list for people like you, who want to be part of the first users of Share Square. the best digital pinboard ever. 
We will send you an invite soon.

Want to see what Share Square is about? Check our DEMO video

We will only use your information to notify you of important announcements and/or to invite you for testing a new version.

You can also follow us on twitter or like us on facebook.

The illustration was made by Tommy Toll, strategic visualizer.

The way organizations work is changing. We can observe a shift in industrial design from creating physical products towards developing services. The way companies and individuals organize themselves to reach their goals is evolving equally.

In order to provide new service oriented value propositions companies need to collaborate intensively with external partners on a per project basis. Effectively companies change more into network organizations. Consider, for example the NS business card: It not only allows you to travel by train but also use OV-fiets, greenwheels, Taxi’s and hotels.

In the film and game industries this transformation has already happened, and it is completely normal to have over 20 companies specialized in things like camera, animation and production work together to deliver one movie or game (the service).

As businesses are transforming to service oriented network organizations they are also getting more and more specialized. With todays web it is easy enough to find partners because even tiny and highly specialized companies can have global reach.

Of course industrial designers are long familiar with outsourcing parts of our manufacturing and even product development but with services our partners are now ‘peers’ and these peers are interdependent upon what the others know and deliver. They really need to collaborate.

In the past technologies such as phone, email and FTP have helped us solve issues with little interdependence. We could email the specifications and upload the drawings. In fact: these tools have enabled global manufacturing as we know it.

It is the next generation of collaboration tools that is enabling us to work with remote partners with strong interdependence. This kind of collaboration is not about manufacturing in China, but rather about intimate collaboration with companies both nearby and around the world. It also affects people within an organization. It increases worker flexibility and introduces the possibility to work from home.

So what tools enable us to collaborate on projects with strong independence?

I believe they essentially (should) create shared understanding. After all: What is a message worth if the receiver does not understand?

In the literature research of my graduation thesis ‘A Tool To Facilitate Creating Shared Understanding In Virtual Design Teams’ I have found three main requirements for creating shared understanding: Sharing information, awareness of who knows what and powerful (multi-channel) communication. Today we see companies use a large collection of tools such as file shares, IM and video conferencing to satisfy these needs. With sufficient team commitment this works, but there are many risks and pitfalls.

Ever since I started to think about collaboration tools years ago the idea stuck that there should be better tools. Now I have founded a company, Share Square in the firm belief that our world is changing and we can create better collaboration tools.

Share Square is a shared online digital pinboard that enables project groups to collaboratively share and organize information. It makes documents such as word, pdf and ppt visual and lets people organize them visually, add post-its and sketch like with a real pinboard. It creates awareness by showing which documents were edited by whom and allows powerful communication by allowing people to point to shared information in real-time. 

This article is written by Thatcher Peskens and published in Turn The Page - Studievereniging I.D.

Today I found this great infographic by ColinDubrin with a decision tree, to decide whether or not it is a good idea to have people work from home.

Check the full infographic.