Recommendation: Organsing distant members and groups

Well its official. Trish Strachan and I plus Darren Richter finally got ourselves organised and are in the process of creating an atlasser and birder friendly online resource for the local North Coast, Zululand and Maputaland region.

Whilst working on a formal project with allot of international colleaguesin my company capcity we ended up our using a web-based project management system which has been incredibly user friendly called Base Camp HQ.

Simultaneously, we are searching endlessy trying to find something that would help Trish as our provincial coordinator, myself commuting between Durban and Hlulhuwe as well as Darren in Durban North and other new atlassing members.

Well after much investigation we found out via YouTube actually that National Geographic and the World wildlife Fund (WWF) use Basecamp to run their conservation and documentary projects. We did a months pilot and needless to say it has all turned out really well. It is not as detailed or overly focused as MS Project and similar project management suites and of course relies on very basic internet literacy and the ability to use a schedule. Of course for bird and conservation clubs it is a perfect resource. As we gain ground with the establishment of the atlassing project we expect it to really benefit us significantly. I really recommend that you have a look at it for birding and conservation oriented projects and perhaps even more.