Groove on - baby

Went to a session on real world groove examples.
However, I was a bit fed up of my laptop and also had low battery, so I'll just summarise the Q&A that might be asked of me.

Q. What is groove anyway?
A. It's an online or hosted environment for collaboration which can be used by anyone.

Q. But we've got sharepoint so we can just use that...
A. No we can't becuase we would have to issue everyone with IDs and also it's not as good for colaborating on things in the same way that groove is (authors opinion disclaimer)

Q. So give us an example of how we could use it at Lancaster...
A. An academic rings the helpdesk and says he wants to collaborate with lots of people inside and out and he can't find a way of doing it. We suggest groove, which is part of office. He goes away and does it and it's all good.

Q. Ah ha, but we might want to enforce our own ways of working and do clever things, and stop students using it for MP3 and video, and link it to the rest of our world, oh and I've got another 20 ideas and it's all getting complicated.
A. Ok, you twisted my arm... lets get some locally hosted servers and start rocking out with it in a more structured way.

So there you have it. Why don't you start using it now. Go on....... Then when it gets a following we can put some more investment in it.

(disclaimer... my own opinion again) It's better than sharepoint....