Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Another portal for nothing?

I started attending the Data Center University (by APC!) more than two years ago. Since than, I usually follow the activities of the APC/Schneider group, courtesy of their active email marketing.
I even attended some courses on the Energy University site, which is a nice project to make the world a better place. No harm in that.

Some time ago, Schneider started the Collaborative Project Portal http://collaborate.schneider-electric.com. Great name, maybe I can make the world a better place too, so let's sign up.

After the usual registration procedure, you are greeted by a screen of absolutely nothing, with a nice green "Create a new Project" button. With some digging around the site, you find the usual stuff: you can blog, upload documents, create a wiki, etc.

The first hard thing to achieve is to actually find another human being, and talk to her/him. Of course you can invite anyone, create groups and all, but what to do if you signed up by your lonely self? Should you request a random facilities expert from India to be colleagues?
After looking through the group chats, there's a new post every month. Can't say it's too fast to follow...

All in all, I think it's a great idea, but the Schneider guys made a great tool with no purpose. Let's see if someone can change that.

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