Message Board vs Real Time Chat

I wanted to get some thoughts from you guys about the pros/cons of message boars vs real time chat, and if you've ever used this kind of software in a business setting.

I'm creating a new digital group, and I'm looking at communication software that we can use. Everyone is very tech savvy.

I need to pick one or two platforms that we will use for almost ALL communication. I can't decide if it's better to use a message board application (like the wonderful vBulletin we have here) or something more "real time" like Campfire for HipChat.

I've been looking at the following:

• vBulletin
• phpBB
• IP.Board
• Vanilla Forums
• Campfire
• HipChat
• IRC

I'm actually leaning towards Vanilla Forums, which is a lightweight open source form built in PHP designed around simplicity. I keep thinking that we need something like Campfire to do real time communication, but I'm not sure we actually do. Cost isn't an issue, but I would like to "own" all our communication. If all goes well, we might fork a small FOSS project.

I was thinking about maybe using Vanilla and something like Mumble (an FOSS VoIP client) or IRC, so that when we need to do "real time" we can.

I wanted to get your thoughts about how valuable you think it is to have a real time collaboration environment, of if it's better to have a comms platform with structure like a message board.

If you've ever used a platform like this to get some serious work done, I'd love to hear your thoughts about what you liked and what you didn't.

I think it really depends on the needs of the group. I HATE chat. My company added it to our web site for sales and support. Nuttin worse then being knee deep in something and DING DING DING...there's someone wanting/needing to chat.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Steve R Jones

I think it really depends on the needs of the group. I HATE chat. My company added it to our web site for sales and support. Nuttin worse then being knee deep in something and DING DING DING...there's someone wanting/needing to chat.

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That's what I was thinking too. This is also a VERY distributed group, and everyone will be working in different time zones and on different projects. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Odds are that a majority of comms will only apply to a few individuals at a time.

Perhaps I just like the idea of Campfire, but can't really find a way to use it.

Messageboard for sure. Not only can you organize your discussions, you also allow individuals time to form well reasoned responses which can be awkward in a chatroom environment. However, there needs to be a way to get a hold of someone quickly which is what IM is good for. You could make PMs alert a cellphone or something.

The choice for a message board is vBulletin unless the number of users is small.

I recall going through a seemingly endless string of conversions when messaging board software couldn't keep up with the volume. The end result was vBulletin. It isn't free but it is very inexpensive.

I know you're more of an Open Source guy and probably won't do anything I'm about to talk about, but if I had a client come to me with those needs I would first recommend Microsoft BPOS. Hosted Exchange w/25gb mailboxes, Communicator, Sharepoint, Live Meeting, all integrated together and into one package. Nothing can touch that, especially the integration between all of them.

That would solve all of your needs plus some, all for $10 a month per user. If you have a 100 people, that's only a $1,000 a month and you have no servers to manage, backup, etc. And all that functionality. Couple it with Outlook 2010 and it's very powerful.

If you really wanted it in-house, I'd go for an ESXi deployment and Exchange 2010, OCS 2007 R2, and SharePoint. You could also drop a MediaWiki if you really needed a better wiki than what SP provides.