Anyone can edit a spreadsheet… but why?
I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around what it means to combine a spreadsheet with a wiki. Yesterday, Google announced a new feature on Google Spreadsheets called “anyone can edit”. Create a model, pop it up on the web, and let people start editing… even anonymously.
Crowd-sourcing complex formulae? Fact checking numbers?
What am I missing? What are the user scenarios for mass collaboration on a spreadsheet?
May 15th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Accounting anarchy. Imagine that.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Collaborative business planning, as long as there is a changelog with some basic version control.
wiki-leaks style collaborative analysis of records.
Anything that you would collaborate on but you need to do some math. How about collaborative analysis of government budgets?
There isn’t a mess as long as there is some version control, at least no more than Wikipedia is.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:36 am
I can totally get it.
Especially if you are collaborating with people and you don’t have a centralized data location. Emailing spreadsheets is just mean. I’ve had 3 project managers working on tracking capital spend, and the flurry of emailed spreadsheets can even make outlook shudder in fear.
;-)
June 7th, 2008 at 8:25 am
I totally get it too. It allows you to collaborate with others without them having to have a Google account. You don’t post the URL on a website unless you want total chaos. You email or IM it only to the people you want to collaborate with.