Saguaro Learning Technologies is our new project name. I don’t say my but our because it’s a team project. We are only two people for now, but still… a team. We need to share ideas, discuss them, decide, plan, prioritize and make things happen. And we don’t work together in the same place most of the time.
Starting from the scratch we could make it right, so we have chosen carefully our working tools. These were the requirements:
- 21st century tools used in a 21st century way. It’s common for companies to use inefficient tools (or good tools in an inefficient way: think about email, for example). We want to use everything in the way that better fits our needs.
- Cross platform tools. We use a Macbook and a Chromebook, and both of us own Android smartphones. What we chose has to work everywhere.
- Cloud-based tools. Everything has to allow synchronous and asynchronous collaborative work.
- Easy-to-use tools (and, if possible, stuff we already knew).
These are the choices we have made:
- Todoist: I have been using it for a long time (I already told you how I work with lists) and it’s always open in my laptop. It allows sharing projects with other people, which makes it perfect to manage all the action.
- Twist: it’s still in beta, but this is our internal communication platform right from the beginning. Being a Doist initiative, I’m sure they will add a ton of features (it’s very good, already, by the way) and the integration with Todoist will be perfect. Oh, and using Twist means we are not sending any email for internal communication. Zero. Really.
- Google Calendar: both of us can see and edit the other one’s schedule. As simple and powerful as that. And yes: we trust each other
- Google Drive: a shared folder contains all the folders and documents. Docs, Sheets, Slides… we use it even for mind maps. I am an old xMind user, but it doesn’t fit our requirements (too bad!), so the choice is the Gdrive integration for Mindmup.
- Gmail: I said no email for internal communication, but… we still have to talk to the rest of the world! We’d like to try Twist to work with clients on ongoing projects, but still don’t know how this will work out.
So, this is how we are doing it. Does it sound right to you? We came up with a system that I’m sure will work for us, but anyway… we are always open for new ideas and suggestions. So: which tools do you use to organize your project(s)?
