Basecamp

Technology is all the rage, but so is this idea of online projects. Schools are allowing online courses, companies work on projects with people across the country, and most virtual projects fail due to lack of communication. DePaul offers a Leadership and Team Building class in the Communications department, where a whole week of classes are geared toward online communication and virtual relationships in the workplace. It has been shown that people tend to distrust or don't communicate as well when they do not know the person that they are working with. Going off of this, it if often hard to hold people accountable for their responsibilities and projects when all interaction is online, a lot of traveling occurs, it is a big project and therefore hard to organize, etc. 

Basecamp is an online project management tool that has been in business for fifteen years and uses primarily word-of-mouth to advertise itself. “Last year alone, Basecamp helped over 285,000 companies finished more than 2,000,000 projects” (https://basecamp.com/). They have become the world’s number one project management tool and are gaining business because it’s famous for its reliability, easy-to-use nature, and it “Just works”. Basecamp is privately owned, debt-free, and profitable. What they are here for are to help you do your job better, and obviously working if over 6,119 joined just last week.

Basecamp does charge a small price, but offers a 60-day unlimited-use free trial including no-obligations and no credit card information. As far as packages are concerned, there are monthly and annual packages, all of which cost different prices and come with different numbers of projects you can work on and space to save those projects. If you decide that you like Basecamp, you pay on a month-to-month basis and if you are a teacher, then you can use Basecamp for free.

Overall, Basecamp is a great way to create projects and stay organized. It offers areas to create discussion boards, to-do lists, upload files, text documents, and create events. Once you invite people to work on the project with you, they will receive notifications that their to-do lists have been updated, and 48-hour email notifications saying when a project is due. In today’s society, organization, follow-up, and continuous advancement are all things that are going to make a company not only successful, but have repeat customers. Basecamp allows everyone to be working on the same project, be in the know, and have clear expectations/goals to accomplish on an individual level as well as a group level. If everyone is on the same page, then they can spend more time listening to their customers instead of spending all of their time figuring out ways to communicate to such customers. After all, according to Kerpen, 50% is listening, never stop listening, and it's not about you brand--it's about your customers. 

Find examples of companies who have used Basecamp and more information at https://basecamp.com/.