At BarCamp, the T. and I attended the fantastically named session 'Your Shiny New Tech a.k.a. Keeping up with the Jones'.  In the session, we all revealed our new on-line gadgetry.

One participant (would like to link but I'm bad with names) was one of the BarCampEarth Toronto organizers.  He showed us Google spreadsheets.  Google spreadsheets was largely panned by the blogorati when it was first revealed.  It got the usual big deal another me-too Office app.

About a year before BarCampEarth Toronto, my co-worker, the Iron Chef Email (Product Manager) pointed out to me how Google Spreadsheets was now appearing in his Gmail interface.  His point was 'Well its nice but I don't get why this has to be online.'

In BarCampEarth Toronto, the answer was nicely revealed.  The BarCampEarth Toronto team had used Google Spreadsheets collaboratively.  They were a group of 4 or 5 people co-organizing an event.  They conferenced using Skype and naturally they tracked items using a spreadsheet.  The easiest way to do this with a group is to have everyone update at once and while you are talking.  We played around with this at BarCampEarth Toronto and it works well. 

Person A starts the spreadsheet, sends a link via email to Person B.  Person A & B can now update the sheet and both see the changes at the same time.  The spreadsheet app has almost all of the functions that you would expect from Excel (at least what I would expect and I have done some number crunching). 

If you have ever had the sad task of trying to 'share' an excel spreadsheet with an email like, 'Enter your updates and send it back to me' you will know how useful a collaborative version can be.  In the past, I have seen people try to use a central copy on a network server that everyone updates.  But more and more I find that I want to update things as I am holding a meeting and let everyone see the update.  Collectively agreeing on work items and listing them off is a powerful way to conduct a meeting and allowing everyone in the meeting to enter information is even better.  This is the ideal way to conduct team work.

Most interesting for me is when I described this tool to my sister, who works in international development managing projects around the globe, she immediately saw that it could be useful to her.  She already uses Skype regularly to meet with overseas colleagues now she can work on a collective tool.  When something makes sense to someone who is just trying to do their job and is not interested in technology for its own sake then its time to take notice.

Tools or applications that start to meet our slowly changing work processes and flows are the ones that stick.  And this is where I see Google having the most impact.  Its not about taking on Microsoft.  Its about building for the changing way we work and live.