How to manage condo meeting notes in the Web 2.0 age?

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I'm secretary of my condo association again.  Last time, I set up a blog on blogspot, but the last secretary didn't keep it up.  Besides, there were a number of requirements and concerns from the residents including:

  • Privacy - the whole world doesn't need to know about our pigeon problem and how we're dealing with it
  • Persistence - our meeting notes are scattered through several e-mail accounts.  We need a permanent place for them, organized in a single spot.
  • Transferable - when I leave the job, there shouldn't be questions about where the meeting notes are and how to maintain them
  • Distributed responsibility - people should be able to add to and to update the information as needed
  • Simplicity - we needed a tool that wasn't much harder to use than MS Word.  Everyone has e-mail and Internet access, but overall this isn't a very technical group.
  • Price - free is good.  No one wanted to buy a permanent domain for the association and host it.
I chose Google Docs as a solution.  It meets most of our requirements, but I do have a few concerns:

  • Access - not everyone has a gmail account, so I'm not 100% that everyone can get into it.  So far so good, but I still have a little doubt.
  • Persistence - Google hasn't made any promise that this service will be available for the long term.  We may need to move the information at some future date.
  • Expansion - members already want to expand beyond meeting notes to include contractor information, contact lists, etc.  A wiki would be a better tool for this, but I'm worried about the technical capability of my neighbors.
I'm curious how other groups manage common documentation for condo associations.   Anyone have thoughts?

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This page contains a single entry by Tammy published on February 10, 2008 9:00 PM.

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