Inc. magazine looks at how an organic produce farm in Indiana uses Basecamp

"How to Choose the Right Collaboration Software" [Inc.] discusses the emerging breed of low-cost tools, including Basecamp, that are making project collaboration much easier.

"Companies have been looking for ways to make up for the overreliance on e-mail as a collaborative tool," says Jeffrey Mann, an analyst with Gartner. "Now we're seeing the evolution of tools that tackle everything e-mail is bad at -- like allowing users to follow a discussion, share files, monitor workflow, and get the latest status on tasks and projects."

The article discusses Stranger's Hill Organics (see above photo), an 81-acre farm in Bloomington, Indiana, that uses Basecamp to help its business of growing organic produce and selling it to Whole Foods Market, food co-ops, and farmers' markets.

Almost two years ago, the farm's founders, Dale and Lee Jones, brought on four new partners to help fund an expansion. That created some problems. The founders continued to work at the farm, but the new partners held jobs elsewhere and could make it out there only a few hours a week. That made it difficult for the owners to discuss topics such as tax planning, marketing budgets, and which crops were ready for harvest. "It was almost impossible to get everyone together on a regular basis," says Rick Dietz, one of the new partners.

Things changed last summer, when the owners began using Web-based collaboration software that allows them to create a central repository for information. The farmers now post updates using a laptop in the farmhouse. Each day, the farm's manager, Vanessa Caruso, logs in to see which tasks, such as fixing a barn's leaky roof, the partners have assigned. "We now have a way for everyone to communicate regardless of where we are," says Dietz...

Dietz, who is the IT director for the city of Bloomington, thought it would be less of a hassle to set up and maintain. "I didn't have the time to be the farm's system administrator as well," he says. He also wanted a tool that was inexpensive and easy to use. His choice: Basecamp, a Web-based collaboration program he had used before. For $24 a month, it offers to-do lists, a wiki, a chatroom, 3GB of file storage, and a function that lets users set milestones and track due dates. Dietz was able to set everything up in a few hours...

Now the partners use Basecamp to discuss strategic decisions and keep up to date on marketing efforts, crop conditions, and chores. Through Basecamp, the partners also check a daily log from Caruso, the farm's manager, who documents what happens in the fields. Among her recent posts: "Fixed a little wind damage on the field. Not too bad, though. Much warmer and windy. Mice seem to be eating squash seeds, so I moved all trays up to the cloche." Entries like that help all the partners sleep a little easier.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

Inchoo on Basecamp: "It's simple for us and it's simple for clients"

How Inchoo uses Basecamp. (Warning: Shaky camera ahead!) Inchoo specializes in developing eCommerce solutions using Magento as a platform.

WiseClicker reviews "easy to use" Basecamp

WiseClicker, a resource for small businesses and entrepreneurs, offers up this review of Basecamp.

As a reflection of 37Signals’ philosophy for product development, Basecamp offers functionality that is easy to use, avoids bells and whistles and focuses on communication and collaboration. It is more for users that prefer getting things done practically and don’t really care about the formal charting and reporting side of project management.

Read the full review.

Top 100 Graphic Design Blogs gives shoutout to Basecamp

Graphic Design Degrees offers up a list of the Top 100 Graphic Design Blogs.

Got a creative mind, love of technology, and tons of ideas? Then graphic design might be for you. Learn more about this profession, along with thousands of insider tips, by taking a look at these top 100 graphic design blogs. Also useful for professional graphic designers, they are written by sites, professionals, freelancers, and contain information on everything from jobs to resources.

Not really "blogs" per se, but on the list are Basecamp ("Stop here for a leading web-based project collaboration tool. They have various plans and options, a free 30 day trial, and sign up takes as little as 60 seconds.") and the 37signals Job Board ("This job board stands out for its notable listings from top companies. Currently, there are openings with Sony Music, Barnes & Noble.com, and Yahoo.")

List of recommended free tools for running a small business (including Basecamp and Highrise)

"Running a Small Business – Free Tools" offers advice on tools that help with scheduling, project planning, invoicing, and everything else that goes into any other small business. (The author runs a recording studio.) Two of the tools recommended are Basecamp and Highrise:

Project Planning – Basecamp

Basecamp from 37Signals is an excellent project planning tool. I’ve tried pretty much all of them and like the way Basecamp works the best. Their web interface is fantastic, and it’s almost fully functional on the iPhone too. We use the Milestone feature to set date-specific deadlines (finish mixing by x date) and To-Dos to set unbounded goals (get new mic cables). We try to finish the To-Dos on a weekly basis. We use the Writeboard feature to brainstorm and to lay out our weekly meeting agenda, and occasionally use the Messages feature to share files or links that we don’t want to lose in emails.

Contact Management – Highrise

Highrise is 37Signals’ contact management tool, and it’s ideal for us. It’s really quick and easy to add contacts, and we have people tagged as ‘band’ and sometimes more specifically as ‘bassist’, ‘violinist’, etc. so we can quickly find someone if we need a session player. We also tag bands as ‘prospects’ so we know who to follow up with. The great thing about Highrise is that it’s free for 2 users and up to 250 contacts (you have to look carefully for this plan on the signup page, it’s in small text). We’re close to 250, but when we hit the limit we have to clean contacts out, which is a great way to keep our lists up to date. Another neat feature of Highrise is their ‘Dropbox’. When you’re emailing with someone who’s a contact, you can copy your personal dropbox email address on the message, and it’s automatically added to the contact as a note.

See the full list.

Home Grown E-business: Basecamp is a simple and elegant way to keep everyone on the same page

Home Grown E-business calls Basecamp "a good choice to manage projects for the web savvy."

I’m drawn in by the way [37signals] market themselves. They have a crisp site and part of the beauty of Basecamp is the design and keep-it-simple philosophy that they have. I like that tons of people recommend it and use it and I appreciate the tribe’s knowledge and decisions.

The dashboard overview lets me create a new message, a new task, or a new milestone in one click.  They make it easy for many people to collaborate. In my video project experience, files were shared, discussions were captured in one place, and you had a history book of your project essentially. That appeals to me...

If your business is a Web-savvy firm that regularly works on large projects, such as a Web design business, then Basecamp is an app you’ll be comfortable with and find helpful for business.  If you need one place to keep your documents and your team, literally on the same page, and keep projects on track, then Basecamp offers a simple and elegant way to do that.

Screenshot of the author's Basecamp account.

Third Wave Lawyer: "Basecamp Is The Best Marketing Tool!"

Chuck Newton works at a "Third Wave Law Firm" and considers Basecamp "the best marketing tool."

The critical information in your office needs to be available online so you do not have to haul files all over kingdom come, like we use to do. Instead of a complicated and expensive VPN, we tried Basecamp instead. It obviously will not do everything for us that a VPN might, but it will do 70%-80% of what we want and it is considerably cheaper (only a small fraction of a dedicated server, collocation rent and the purchasing of software and bandwidth)...

Basecamp allows you to set up companies or organizations that will receive key notes, documents and messages other than your core team. (You can restrict these organizations from particular information and messages if you need to). From our perspective, these are the bankruptcy attorneys, their staff and law firms. We added each bankruptcy law firm, and the attorneys and staff of each firm, to each case they referred. We were not thinking marketing. We were thinking of how to more easily communicate with our referral source as to the cases they referred. In the past they would not necessarily be privy to our emails in which as a group we discussed the case, or the questions we had. As for each document, it had to be separately emailed to each bankruptcy attorney with a note. Basecamp managed to bring the referring attorney, staff and firm into the loop as an integral part of each referred case.

But, then a funny thing happened, or at least something we had not planned or anticipated. By bringing the bankruptcy attorney, staff and firm into the loop on one case in such a dynamic fashion, it resulted in more frequent referrals from these bankruptcy law firms. We actually got received more case referrals from those attorneys participating with us on each case through Basecamp...

If yours is a referral practice, and that is the type of practice you should have, Basecamp should be one of your primary marketing tools. Try it.

Read the full piece for more details.

Seattle mayoral candidate uses Basecamp for campaign

Seattle mayoral candidate Mike McGinn recently held an open forum on creating "Government 2.0" -- a formation of policies and actions to "utilize technology to manage and deliver information to the city."

Turns out McGinn uses Basecamp for his campaign:

Mcginn, who uses web 2.0 Company 37Signals' project management web application Basecamp for his campaign as well as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, has experience in the emerging tech world, but admitted to the attending crowd of geeks that he was definitely not an expert.

Read the full piece.

An indie game developer explains why Basecamp beats emails and plain notes

An indie game developer explains some of the advantages of using Basecamp over emails and plain notes.

Keep track

A common workflow for us looks like this: I assign a to-do to Martin to compose a music loop for our next game. We discuss some ideas (style and atmosphere of the music, length of the tracks, what file format to use) on the message thread of the actual to-do. Once Martin has composed something, he uploads an mp3 on the same thread. In this way the complete discussion happens in one place and does not get mixed up with other discussions...

History of communication

When you do your team discussions on Basecamp, it’s really easy to go back and see what you actually agreed on. Can’t remember if it was BF-SUCC.mp3 or BF-SUCC2.mp3 that sounded better? You won’t need to browse through all your emails. Just look into the according message thread.

Work asynchronous

We don’t have an office and we work from different cities in different countries. We have other jobs and freelancer gigs on the side, so we seldom work at the same time. Having all important information about our projects on Basecamp frees us from the necessaries of asking each other in real-time how something was supposed to be done.

For small indie teams Basecamp can feel a bit costly (paid plans start at $24/month) but from our experience the improved team communication makes this investment worth it.

Read the full piece.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

Basecamp is "a must have practice tool" for lawyers

Home Office Lawyer, a blog devoted to you guessed it, posts about 10 Must-Have Apps for the Mac Using Solo Practitioner. On the list: Basecamp.

Finally, Basecamp is a must have practice tool. In my own practice, Basecamp is used to manage cases and clients. Each client has access to their own case. By using Basecamp, each has access too all the documents in their case and also know when important court dates are. They can leave comments or questions about their case and they can keep up on the progress of their case. It keeps clients more involved in the process.

Check out the complete list.