There is an interesting PPT download from the archives of the 231st ACS national meeting concerning the use of the weblog format in project management. The presentation was by Randy Reichardt, an engineering librarian at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. The university offers what they call uSpace as an in-house blogging venue for its students. uSpace is a university service under Elgg, an open source blogging platform.
The slide show summarizes a project executed by an engineering class. Communication between participants centered on the use of a blog. The blog was a kind of nexus used to centralize information related to the project as well as provide an archive to capture events and progress in the project.
Slide #8 has some useful advice issued by the professor-
3. Check your personal issues at the door. This means personal problems, prejudices, wierd/offensive senses of humor, tears (in general, men find this very threatening and difficult to deal with), and aggression (in general, women find this very threatening and difficult to deal with). It is never a good idea to (cry, lose your temper, or backstab) at work. DO bring a sense of fun, a sense of humor, enthusiasm for the project, and commitment to your team members as human beings. Great teams remember to play together as well as working hard together.
4. Figure out what you’re good at – and do it.
Use of a blog as a central repository of information and connectivity is a brilliant idea. The only snag I can think of is access. For college coursework a medium level of security is satisfactory, but for the exchange of IP and confidential information, storing sensitive information on an off-site data storage system may not be the best option. Access must be secure from unauthorized outside parties. Perhaps Elgg offers this capability? [Editors note: a commentor below suggests this is not an issue]
Reichardt mentions other topics of great importance in the PPT show. Namely, access to database features and the transfer of information via RSS feeds. I’m not fluent in this technology, so I will have to be silent on this matter.
The beauty of this approach to project management is that meetings can be held on a continuous or ad-hoc basis without having to schedule interruptive and unproductive meetings where much time and energy is spent presenting updates. People tend to be more precise in their comments if they write them down. Writing in a blog format could have the benefit of more cogent and precise input by team members as well as increased accountability to the group.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Hi Gaussling:
Interesting post – lots of good ideas here.
I am a little curious – this is an older acs meeting – does the acs routinely post ppt files if the author so requests? How can I browse/find these?
Certainly good for upper level courses, I’m less sure about my lower level courses with 100 students…
Good question, Bill. Until I blundered into this link looking for something else, I was completely unaware of such access.
I agree with you on the lower level classes. It could be a real mob scene like the Daily Kos.
To confirm, one of Elgg’s strongest features is access control. There’s also no need to store the data off-site, as Elgg installs on the infrastructure of your choice. At a university, you don’t even need to expose it to the Internet if you don’t want to.
That’s good news Ben. Thanks. You can tell that this is quite new to me.
A friend at a large company informs me that the use of blogs in project management has been going on for several years. I’m also told that this approach will still flounder if it is administered by a poor project manager. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Still, as a clearinghouse for information, the format has a lot of positive attributes.
It is appropriate that this blog is called “Lamentations in Chemistry”, and not “The Latest and Greatest”.
hey.. why this page loading so slow?