Collaborating Online
Nothing beats the experience of playing with other musicians. No matter if it’s performing with a band, jamming with a friend or writing a song with someone. The act of sharing is a big part of music for a lot of people. However today’s busy lifestyles make it hard to spend as much time as we’d like working on musical projects with other people. Sometimes the people we are collaborating with are quite distant to us and we may not have the opportunity to physically get together as often as we’d like. this is another area where we can use modern communications technology to our advantage.
Basecamp is an online collaboration tool that has:
- Messageboards
- To Do lists
- Collaborative writing
- File sharing and more
I originally started using Basecamp as a way of keeping in touch with my beta testers in my software business but quickly realised how useful it would be to a band. I play in one particular band where we gig and rehearse infrequently and we don’t all live in the same area. That meant we had to come up with a way of working together while being physically separated.
We use the message board to discuss issues from song suggestions to rehearsal times and it’s all kept nice and neat in one central place. Much neater than trying to keep track of a conversation by email. We can upload simple mp3 recordings of rehearsals so each band member can download them and get some practice in.
Basecamp is ideal for a teams of people, whether it be a band or a songwriting team, to work together on a common project. A tool that the songwriters will love in particular is Writeboards. Writeboards are like a simple word processor that teams of people can work on. The nice thing is that you can see what changes have been made to each document and by whom.You can compare old & new versions very easily & keep a list of every change.
The best way to find out what it does is to try it for yourself. The basic version is free.
December 13th, 2007 at 12:57 am
No thanks! I’ve already tried it
It ruined a couple of my projects. I had to switch over to something else and I’m glad I found Wrike http://www.wrike.com/
December 13th, 2007 at 10:43 am
I’m sorry that you didn’t like Basecamp but I’m not really sure how it could “ruin” a project. As I said in the post above, I use Basecamp on a few different projects and have always been happy. There is a free version so potential users can always try it out under real conditions before they decide to part with any money. In fact, some folks will be more than happy with the free version & may never actually have to pay at all.
Your second comment won’t be published as it linked to a site which was nothing more than a rant by someone who obviously thinks that software companies should build custom software for them to suit their own purposes, then give it away free. I myself write software and it is always a balancing act as to what suggestions should be implemented & which ones you need to say no to.
The purpose of my article was not a comprehensive rundown of every piece of project management software available. It is simply my opinion of a piece of software that I’ve been using for quite some time, I am very happy with and I happily pay for.
I’ll say it again, Basecamp can be used for free to see if it suits your purposes. If it doesn’t then there is no compulsion to buy it.
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:42 am
Mark,
I totally agree with your response to Osvals’ comment. I don’t believe project management applications can actually be detrimental nor malicious to any projects. All the collaboration software out in the market helps monitor and organize daily tasks small or big and whether you have a strong or developing business structure. Personally I currently use and have implemented CommuniClique’s web-based collaboration platform for several months now and have always been happy with the results I am getting. Well, if project management software does not benefit you, Osvals then I would highly suggest that you switch back to traditional ways or hire a professional project manager.
Best Regards,
Benny T.