From: Andrea
I was lucky enough to receive a Google Wave invite and am using it to collaborate the meal planning with the husband, the mother and the mother-in-law. We can all make edits to the original list as we change our minds or buy the necessary ingredients! So far, this is the most well-planned Thanksgiving we have ever had.
From: Some subset of the Parenthacker crowd:
WHAT'S GOOGLE WAVE?
From: Asha
Google Wave is a nifty new collaboration tool that blurs the line between conversations and documents. (But that's just the beginning: here's the rub straight from Google). It's in limited beta right now, but you can request an invitation to be a tester.
Potentially relevant aside, also from Asha:
You could do something similar with Google Documents. (You'll need a free Google account to be able to use any of these apps.) Create new documents with menu plans, shopping lists, and whatever else the group needs to know. Then share the documents with your family. People can make changes at will. If you want to see how the documents have changed over time (such as when you added Brussels sprouts to the shopping list and they later mysteriously disappeared), in Google Docs, choose File >> See revision history. It'll all be there in black and white.
Congratulations, you have the most “with it” family in the world.
I was asked to elaborate a bit about how we’re using wave to coordinate Thanksgiving. Basically, I just started a new wave including all the people who’d be helping buy/cook/eat Thanksgiving dinner at our house and started a list of dishes and the ingredients needed to make them. As others had ideas for what they’d like to bring, they added them, and as ingredients are purchased we’ve been striking through those items. We’ve also used the highlighter in different colors for different people to signify who is responsible for bringing what. It’s a lot easier than a million phone calls, anyway! That’s about it, not too much to it!
Any chance you’d be willing to send me an invite? I’ve been trying to get one for weeks –