One of the great things about developing applications for yourself, instead of another company, is that you get to make all the decisions about how to do it. GroupLoop gave us the chance to explore a lot of new territory, and we've been very happy with the results so far.
We built GroupLoop to meet our own need -- or more specifically, Alan's. Alan is very involved in the Rochester, MN community and sits on a number of boards and committees. Because these groups are usually not in the same office, collaboration becomes difficult. You send an email to six people, and you suddenly have six copies of that information floating around. Two people in the group reply, and now there are 18 messages on one subject.
If that email had an attachment, like a meeting agenda, you'd also have 18 copies of a Word document. If group members aren't on the same network, shared drives aren't an option, and email becomes the file-sharing method of choice -- a task for which it is poorly suited.
Most solutions to this problem are either focused on organizing one person's information (not a group), or they're project-oriented, or they're just plain overkill. We've tried to create a simple application that gets out of the way and lets people centralize information when they need to. It's not going to solve everyone's problems, but there are any number of groups that can benefit from centralization. Alan has even used it to keep family and friends updated about the status of his premature baby.
We chose to develop GroupLoop using Rails, an MVC application framework for the Ruby programming language. Although it required a bit of a learning curve, in the end it's saved us an enormous amount of time in development and testing. Clean XHTML in the interface combines with a webserver running Apache 2 and FastCGI for a smooth, responsive experience. We think you'll notice the difference. There's also some AJAX sprinkled here and there, but only where it improves usability -- we don't jump on technology bandwagons just for the flash.
Finally, Rails makes it easy for us to respond and implement changes quickly as we hear feedback from our users. So give it a test drive and let us know what you'd like to see improved. We'll be rolling out updates on a regular basis. Remember, it's totally free for groups under 25, and there's no expiration or limit to the functionality.
Filed in: web2.0, collaboration, grouploop, non-profit, ajax, nptech