So it has been about a week since I posted to the New Media Release discussion list on Google Groups about “How we Collaborate“, specifically requesting everyone’s feedback on which tools we use. Since Constantin Basturea and myself were the only respondents as of this morning, we decided to get on Skype to talk through the issues and together have made a few decisions on behalf of the group.

The short list of key decisions is:

• The tag we are using is hRelease
• We are sticking with Google Groups
• We are moving to a SocialText Wiki - thank you Ross Mayfield
• We will focus on sharing resources through The NewPR Crispy News service
• While I would like to continue to use the Haystack for our members directory, this could work better within the Social Text Wiki so we don’t have so many different tools to use.
• There will be a weekly Skypecast for the Discussion Leaders, Monthly Skypecast for general updates and questions
• This is an open community project that I will be promoting as part of the standards efforts of Social Media Club, which is where all of my future posts on this subject will be published.

Ok, that is the concise list for those of you without time to get into the details. If you are interested in knowing why though, here is some background about the what’s and why’s of these decisions. We had hoped to consider more voices in this process, but hearing none, needed to make these decisions to move forward. I am very glad to have the input and advice from Constantin on this process - after reading through some of his writing and talking to him personally, I am very impressed with his perspective on these matters.

So earlier today, we decided that we would use hRelease as the tag for all our posts, shared bookmarks and relevant media that is related to this discussion. It is simply the shortest and most descriptive tag we could choose for identifying this project - it also has the benefit of longevity, since it is also gfing to be the final name of the Microformat standard that we produce as an outcome of this discussion. That said, this discussion among professionals will not require specific technical work on that standard for some time, so do not worry about things getting too technical - your professional expertise is extremely valuable here and all we require at this point is your participation.

We also discussed that Yahoo! Groups may have been a better choice because of simpler URL’s to share with others, but that Google Groups was really just fine for meeting our requirements. Besides, it is already well promoted into the community so we do not want to make it more difficult for people to join. The important thing is that we have an email based discussion list for conversations that will be archived and available on the Web for the foreseeable future.

The other important decision was to use SocialText as our Wiki since it has automated account management and many other pluses that would not be easily implemented in the New PR Wiki, nor anything we could get running ourselves quickly. This is also a good choice because Ross Mayfield, SocialText’s CEO had already offered a free account to Tom Foremski. This is actually the toughest decision for me, because I like Jot a lot, Wetpaint has a lot of promise, i use PBWiki for other projects and GoingOn has some other neat features that would be beneficial. In the end though, SocialText is seemingly the best fit for our audience of communications professionals and we don’t want to waste a lot of time on splitting hairs with regards to collaboration tool choices. It is amazing though that none of them actually has all the features we really need - not even SocialText.

Last but not least, to keep things moving forward and stay connected with the global community of practicioners who are passionate about this effort, we will hold weekly Skypecasts including discussion leaders which will be released as a Podcast through the Social Media Club site. We will also hold open Skypecasts once per month for the entire group to join. Call times are still to be decided, but I would prefer it to be the latter part of the week typically, alternating between times that are good for the Western United States and Central Europe (where key people are located).

There is more that we discussed, but those are the highlights as they relate to decisions on collaboration tools. Should anyone have any questions or wish to discuss further, please do comment and make suggestions here, but do realize we are proceeding forward down this path because no one bothered to object or respond to prior requests of the group. The good news is that there are 44 members of the New Media Release Google Group, including some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary Communications and Public Relations.

Not a bad place to start…

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