Google Data

Posted by: Regina Dinneen, Google Docs User Operations (aka Google Docs Guide 2)

In mid-July I'm headed off to volunteer with a non-profit, stationed in the South Pacific. As a result, I'm currently scrambling to tie up loose ends and organize the logistics of this rather big change. One of these loose ends involves helping my current roommate find someone to fill my room in the house.

In the Bay Area, the best way to find a room or replace a roommate is through Craigslist.org.
(Craigslist is how I found the room in the first place.) What I remember about my room search 2+ years ago was that everywhere I "applied" had at least 30-50 other applicants. This is stressful not only for the applicants, but for the poor person taxed with choosing the best of the bunch. So, to ease the burden on my roommate and myself, I decided to use Google Docs when placing our ad. This allowed us to update and expand the information linked in the ad on a moment's notice, without having to take down, edit, and resubmit through Craigslist. In addition, we added a form to our ad which collects information from interested parties, and aggregates it on a convenient spreadsheet. No more stuffed inbox, ambiguous information or shady spam.

Here's the ad:
And here's how to create a Doc that helps streamline and simplfy this process:

1. Create a new document and list all the specifics of the room, along with pictures.

2. Set up a form that can be used to take down names of interested parties, eliminating obligation of receiving tons of email. Once the spreadsheet is populated, it can be used to keep track of who's been contacted, and the dates and times for each person's visit.
After implementing this process, I'm happy to report that after the post was put up, we had 4 people interested in the first 10 minutes. It's now been 2 days and we have 44 names on our spreadsheet. Although there is still a lot more to do, I've saved a whole lot of time using Google Docs to shared and organize information.