Helping you discover high-quality content which has been created using online document collaboration tools.
TL;DR:
https://heystacks.org/?sort=Best
Overview
It’s clear that there is a lot of very good content created using online collaboration suites (Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, Zoho, +many others). This format has the advantages of being quick to create, edit and share. At the same time, the majority of this content is hidden from view, because the search engines don’t effectively index any of those documents — public or not.
heystacks is a discovery that there is a pressing need among internet users to find and interact with content created using online collaboration tools.
The main objectives of the platform are to:
- Enable searches of the high-quality content in online document format
- Create a space for the rating and discussion of this content
- Facilitate collaboration on this content
The communities
In recent times, people have become a lot more comfortable with the idea of storing documents in the cloud. No longer is Google suite considered “unprofessional” and not suitable for the workplace. This is reducing the barrier between content created by companies, and the public.
One of the selling points of tools like Google Suite or Office 365 is their ease of collaboration. This has facilitated new types of communities being created: London based Newspeak House has created very successful, open to edit “tech handbooks” the General Election in the UK and Coronavirus response. Climate change pressure group Extinction Rebellion has put all of their operational data into Google Sheets. Minecraft or Animal Crossings players are sharing spreadsheets with in game item lists and trades.
The content and the engagement created in this way would be very difficult to replicate using any other online tools. However, even these tools, have areas where their capabilities are stretched. Two areas which are under pressure are: distribution and decentralized collaboration. heystacks can help with both of those.
The platform
heystacks is a search engine where the user can find high-quality content about topics they are interested in, which has been produced using online collaboration suites. The documents are crowdsourced and added to the platform along with a description and a selection of tags. Users can search by a keyword or tag.
The document feed is sorted in a similar way to Reddit, where upvotes and “freshness” determine what is displayed at the top of the page.
Users can upvote documents which they find useful, and anyone can edit descriptions or tags — relying on the wisdom of the crowd to keep this information relevant.
Open-source document mass collaboration
In terms of sheer numbers, Google suite has onboarded over 1bn users. Not all of those will create blockbuster public documents, but a very big proportion will get familiar and comfortable with Google Docs and Google Sheets. The next time they see a document in this format, they will instinctively know how to use it.
In Google documents, users have an ability to either leave a comment, suggest an edit or in some cases, edit the document. These are quick and effective ways to make changes.
heystacks allows users to comment on the document, which will allow high-level, strategic discussions about potential updates to the document. The owner of the document will then get a notification about the comments and decide how best to incorporate these in their work.
Join the party 🎉
Even though it’s only the beginning of the journey for heystacks, you can already go to https://heystacks.org and discover some amazing documents about online theatre screenings, mutual aid groups, remote seminar schedules, freelance tools and many other topics.
If you know of, have written, or are thinking about writing a collaborative online document — think of heystacks as your distribution channel, and add your document here: https://heystacks.org/?page-type=add-document
If you are still unsure — I recommend going to the platform, sorting the feed by rating and having a look at some of the top-rated documents, which might have otherwise been left undiscovered. I am confident that the value of heystacks will become apparent to you very quick.
Matt
heystacks
info@heystacks.org
