NORFOLK GOVERNORS' NETWORK

A case study in getting rid of the need to print out minutes, polices, etc. by the NGN Communications Officer, Neil Collins.

I don't like laptops in meetings.  They seem to just get in the way of talking to people as the screen sticks up as a barrier in front of people.  Also anything but a perfectly quiet keyboard is really quite distracting in my view.

So, for me, this was a bit of a problem when I set myself the challenge of going paperless for my governance work.  Partly for green reasons but also as I was spending a small fortune on paper and ink cartridges.  I tried quite a few things that didn't work but think I've now settled on something that does and thought you might find this interesting.

The key thing for me was getting an iPad.  These won't be for everyone but I think they're a boon to governors as, unlike, laptops they're completely quiet and they can also be put down in meetings during discussions rather feeling like a barrier to discussion.

What I do is download all my documents onto the iPad ahead of meetings using a service called Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) and an iPad app called "GoodReader".  If you've not come across Dropbox before then I'd strongly recommend looking at it (or similar service) for governor documents.  The way it works is that you install the application from Dropbox on your PC and then pick a folder to share.  All documents "dropped" into this folder are automatically copied to any other PCs or iPads which are sharing it.  You can also access the documents via the Web if you happen not to be at one of those PCs.

For me, this means that when documents are emailed to me from our clerk, I copy them into this folder on my PC and then they auto-magically appear on my iPad.  I can also share them with any other governors who also use Dropbox - again with them getting automatic updates.

I then use GoodReader to read the documents in meetings.  It's easy to navigate with the iPad's touchscreen and has a nice "sync" feature which  automatically downloads copies of all updated documents in my Dropbox account on to the iPad which also means I don't need to be connected to the Internet (a rare thing to have in Governor meetings in my experience).

The other thing we've started doing at NGN is having a shared calendar using Google Apps (see www.gmail.com).  It's early days with this but again, it connects well to the iPad's calendar facility and helps keep everyone in sync.  Well worth a look if you use any form of electronic calendar.

I wouldn't suggest an iPad is for everyone, not least because of their £500 starting price but I've certainly cut down on my printing costs (probably by about 90 percent) so I'd recommend it as something to try.