This week several of us are off to ALA Annual which means committee work, programs and lots of walking between hotels. Oh and hopefully some summery drinks, too!

Committee work usually involves collaboration and one of the committees I’m on is using Writeboard to store information and for for a group writing project.

Writeboard might seem familiar because it comes from 37signals, the same folks who brought us Basecamp and Backpack, both of which I hope to look at soon.

So far I have found Writeboard easy to use. I like how one person can input content and others can easily add their content. Editing has a wiki feel to it because you use codes to make text bold or italicized. If more than one person edits simultaneously you will get notified.

Another way to add content is by adding comments. Of course this can be used to discuss the content as well.

Once your document is complete you can export it as a text or an html file.

So how does this compare to Google Docs? It’s similar in concept, but significantly pared down in features. Fancy formatting is limited to the basics noted above. To share the writeboard each participant is emailed the same url and password, nice for folks who don’t want another personal account to track.

For those looking for a quick and easy way to collaborate, give this a try!