Shoot and Share, Simply.

Want an easy method for Colloborating, Documenting and communicating in your large company offices- Give them all a Digital camera (with a rechargeable battery). Sounds expensive but some cameras just do not allow the average Jo to take good photos easily, they are either slow to focus, grainy as hell (not enough light) or washed out with too much flash. Why? The subject matter. This can be a simple means of recording how you did something to allow you to follow a process to make it repeatable next time you do it. or for someone else to repeat the process, without been shown. You might want to show a colleague a progress update every week and they are on the other side of the world. Photos are easier than writing down a description of what you are taking a photo of. The image provides a memory jog as well. The justification can come from a better outcome, an improved product or service, less downtime, less training and retraining. Of course if you do not have a grasp of just how much you spend on these aspects, there is not a lot to compare to. Next. send some Key staff on a course to take better photos, they need to be taught how to keep the camera steady, when to use the flash or not and basic composure. Those people should be advocates for the Camera idea and that will embrace it. Get them to retrain the other staff. Once your team can do this adequatly, write down a simple step by step process, that allows them to upload the photos to your server. This could be giving everyone a USB cable (that came with the camera) or a docking station (Kodak were big on that). Or better yet an Eye-Fi card that allows the upload of images as the camera shoots, straight to your server via wirelss network. (Avoid the 4in1 multi-card readers and USB SD card readers, these are notoriusly flaky whatever OS you have). Once people have uploaded photos onto the server, make sure they get into the habit of completing some appropriate tags, descriptions and titles to allow others to find them. Set a policy about whether they can or cannot upload images to the internet and social media websites. If you are a funky creative design house and want to build your brand and show off your relaxed workspaces or new projects then you maybe fairly open. If you are constanatly developing projects in a competive market you might be more restrictive with your policy. To be truly collaborative, make it easy for people to see what's new in your business, or what others are working on. Index your servers photos using something like Picassa. Although designed for home, it is powerful enough to support a small enterprise and has some useful features such as face-recognition. Shoot and Share.