I do think that more people need to be aware of two collaboration tools that Google has made available for free that can help with community or campaign organizing.  Many people have probably heard of Google Docs, but Google Spreadsheets also has a front end form input so that anyone can develop a webform to collect information from a community & have it organized in a nice, sortable spreadsheet. 

So I'm going to flesh out here an example that took me about 15 minutes to put together and doesn't require any technical experience to make.  It's an approach that can be used for all kinds of group situations. I first ran into the use of Google's spreadsheets as a means to collect information like this two years ago at a non-profit discussion in Washington, DC.

Simple Online Forms

Let's say I wanted to offer a session for people who want to learn more about the use of technology to campaign. For this I need to collect standard information (name, organization, email, phone).  Now you with every initiative, you might want to collect a slightly different set of information like say a preference of times for people to choose from.

By creating a spreadsheet & then making the corresponding form (which is a pretty automated process) you can provide a customized web page that you can send people to. 

After your community fill in this web form and hit the 'Submit' button your data will be sent to a private spreadsheet tied to my gmail account. I can then sort the data, export, alphabetize, print or send emails out to the list as I choose.  If I sort them by preferred date I can easily see what day of the week most people are able to attend an event.

There is a great deal of information available from Google to help people use their tools.

Collaborative Editing

Now, let's say I want to have this be a collaborative session so I put up a draft agenda & list of resources for others to add to.  This is a document on line that everyone can  edit (sort of like Wikipedia).

I can start with a very basic page and encourage people to fill in items that they want to have discused. Never send people to a blank page as nobody wants to start the conversation. Most people also aren't used to collaborating on writing text and may need some encouragement.

Now, I might well want to limit who has access to edit this document when it gets closer to the date, but at first I want it to be open & I'd like there to be a simple link that allows anyone to put in their ideas & organize this. But I can do that later.

There are also plenty of examples of how to use Google Docs to work collaboratively in real time:

These are free tools that are easy to use but are stable & well developed.  It is easy to experiment with these tools for your needs and share them with others who might be interested. It is possible to innovate and learn from both successes & failures.