Workplace Collaboration: Our Review of Minigroup
Creative Distillery is a business connected by family, but separated by geography. My wife Melia and I live and work in Jackson, Mississippi, while our third partner Gillian is living in Naples, Italy near the Naval base. With a 6-hour time difference between us, shared work on projects, and lots of overlapping to-dos, it’s important to stay coordinated on what we’re doing. That’s where Minigroup comes in. Minigroup has performed spectacularly for us in helping to keep us coordinated.
Our Needs
As creative types, we’re all pretty rebellious against too much structure, and generally have our own way of doing things. We weren’t looking for a full-on project management software, like Basecamp, but something more lightweight to keep us all updated on what everybody’s working on. We use Google Docs a lot, but those get clunky as more information is added. I sure don’t need even more emails blowing me up. With these needs in mind, I saw Minigroup as an ad on Kottke.org, and gave it a click.
Getting Started with Minigroup
Right away, sign-up is super easy. Minigroup bills itself as a closed, secure social network. It’s closed in the sense that no one externally, even through Google searches, can see the network or any posts inside. I invited Melia and Gill and we all joined a Creative Distillery network. Our approach was to try it out and see how it fit to see if we’d want to continue using the service. The interface is attractive and clean, and complete with our added logo and photos, feels native to our brand.
How We Use Minigroup
A couple months in, Minigroup is firmly ensconced in Creative Distillery’s workflow. Here’s how we use it:
- Each week, we make one post that is our to do list. This lets everyone see what everybody’s working on, which is a huge help in keeping us all connected.
- We do a once-a-week Skype meeting. Melia recaps each meeting along with action items in a post.
- Any links, long-term ideas, etc. that we find are added to Minigroup. This cuts down on the amount of emails that clog our inbox and helps keep things at the top of our minds.
- I’ll occasionally post images of the designs I’m working on so everyone can see or give feedback.
The only feature that’s missing that I’d love to see is tags. Because of the variety of posts we have, to-dos, development, ideas, etc., it’d be great to tag those posts so it’d be easier to find them when we do our internal development meeting. Update: The Minigroup developers have alerted me that they’ve actually incorporated tags. We just did a quick test-run, and they’re super smooth, incorporated as hashtags. We’ll develop a few standard ones, like #development, #money, etc. before people start ironically hashtagging everything.
Minigroup and Your Remote Workplace
I’d especially recommend Minigroup for any business that has a remote work team. It’s been an excellent way for us to keep up with each other and what we’re doing. It’s a lightweight interface that doesn’t restrict us with a rigid system, but allows us to dip in and out in the ways that are most useful to us.
