Google Doc vs Whiteboard

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

“We need to be in the same room with a whiteboard to brainstorm!”

Have you heard that before? Let’s see if there is a better way:

On a physical whiteboard you can:

• Easily draw shapes and diagrams
• Group text with circles
• Add sticky notes
• Everyone needs to be in the same room.
• The most senior person usually holds the marker.
• The text on the board cannot easily be shared except by taking a photo.

With a Google Doc you don’t have to be in the same room you can all be on camera and:

• Have everyone write, not just the person with the marker
• Multiple people can write at the same time, versus waiting their turn
• See what people are looking at in real-time via cursor indicators
• Make comments that are time-stamped
• Change hierarchy with indentation
• Copy and paste
• Doesn’t run out of space
• Doesn’t need to be deleted after the meeting
• Be iterated on before and after the meeting
• Font is more readable than handwriting
• Use URLs to link to external resources
• Add screenshots and embeds from other tools
• Doc becomes an artifact that can be linked to or embedded in other tools and platforms
• Doc can be shared with a link for feedback from the entire company

Beat that!

The above is from the GitLab Handbook on the topic Google docs as a remote whiteboard