While I was writing that last post, I thought of a few things that might be helpful.
- Elect a secretary for the group (AKA “the boss”). It might be easiest if only one person is responsible for the final document. Other group members can email their own work and the secretary can then copy-and-paste into the PowerPoint document.
- Decide on a division of labor and make sure the secretary knows who’s responsible for what. That way, the secretary can get on your case if you haven’t shared your work when you’re supposed to!
- Settle on internal deadlines. Once you know who’s responsible for what, decide when each task will be done. Everything always takes longer than you think it will, so set these deadlines earlier than you think you need to.
- If you don’t have just one secretary, and you’re all planning to update the same PowerPoint document, then you might like to try a free online file-sharing program. It can sometimes be difficult when you’re collaborating to make sure you’re all working on the current version of a document. You might like to try Hightail (full disclosure: my boyfriend works for this company!), or Dropbox, or Google Drive or a host of others. It also sometimes works if you just email everyone on your team the current version whenever you make an update.
