Week 5 : Thing #11

I selected Campfirenow.com as the site to explore. I listened to the site's tutorial that outlines the capabilities of this web based group chat program for businesses. Campfirenow.com would certainly be useful for SJPL staff. Let's say you are on a committee working on a team task. Usually the team members work at different library branches and often have different work schedules. How do these people work on a project on an ongoing basis ? Usually members have to check their schedules to see when they are free to meet at some designated location. Then there is travel involved . The team members meet together for a set amount of time and then leave. Oftentimes this one meeting is not long enough or ends up being unproductive. So follow up meetings or emails or phone calls are needed to conclude work on the task. Campfirenow.com allows team members to set up an online meeting room that can be visited at any time. You set up a chat room for members on Campfirenow.com and you can either leave messages or chat together online anywhere or anytime about your particular project. It is similar to online conferencing and is very flexible. A nice feature is that all your online communication is stored in files that can be accessed at any time. This eliminates the "Meeting Minutes" task. The whole concept makes a lot of sense. The only drawbacks for me would be learning how to move around the site and learning how to access all of its features. I think I would need a lot of orientation before I would feel confident using this tool.