I recently saw how a virtual team of a few hundred people chose to share information.

1. setup a “community” to manage membership and let participants choose to subscribe and un-subscribe. GOOD
2. setup a Wiki to establish a calendar of meeting topics. OK
3. setup a “quick” file sharing site for posting presentations. GOOD
4. email out the links to the above three sites. BAD, BAD, BAD

The email is not ideal but it is one way to get out the work to likely participants. The really bad part is the the three different spaces were not integrated. There should have been a single place that all of the content appeared – even if it were in three different tools.

The community makes self-registration easy. The Wiki supports simple group editing of the calendar topics. The file sharing means there is no need to email or forward slides and demo files around.

A mashup of all three capabilities would have given all users a single URL to bookmark. Ideally, there would be a small number of RSS/ATOM feeds for new content – one for everything, one for everything but community changes, one for meetings and files, etc.Users choose how much information they get. The “team space” appears as a single solution and functions as a single solution – not as separate pieces left to the user to manage.

Editorial: I don’t think this is too much to ask. If you want people to use your soluitons, you need to make then user friendly.