Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

I decided to go with the forms feature of Google Spreadsheets for our Have Your Say in the Web Directions South 2008 Program survey. Only 24 hours in I’m largely happy with the choice, apart from

• I’d love to be able to limit which cells of the spreadsheet I share (so as to not have to share the email addresses of those who submit them)
• It’d be great to have a bit of branding on the form – even just our logo
• There are some incredibly bad interaction design choices in the whole application
• It never works properly at all in Safari for me, so I have to use it in clunky old slow old Firefox.

But apart from that, for something which is free, and took me 10 minutes to set up, it’s a very good option and I would recommend it.

It was especially great watching all the names appear on the “Discuss” tab of the survey results spreadsheet in the hour or so after I sent the email out and blogged about it. It made me feel quite chuffed to think that I had helped you in some way to while away the long afternoon hours by looking at my spreadsheet. But yes, take heed other conference organisers who swing by for a bit of a look see: I am watching you while you are watching me :)

One thing I’m not going to be able to work with is the online chat facility though. As mentioned, on April 11 we’re going to be discussing the results with anyone who’d like to join in, but I’m afraid the “Chat about this spreadsheet” feature just isn’t ready for this kind of prime time.

I don’t think it would be that big a deal to have the discussion in another window than where the spreadsheet is, especially if in doing so

• We could have a transcript
• “It just worked”

But: what to use? Campfire with Guest Access turned on is the first thing that comes to my mind. I’m just wondering if anyone out there has any experience with using Campfire in this way, or indeed, has any other suggestions?