Basics

Decisions

There are always situations where decisions need to be made by several people. In order to give each participant in the decision a free decision, latershare offers: an initiator creates a latershare request, in which the decision to be made is presented (e.g. the decision between alternative actions, goals, variations of design) and also, when pertinent, attaches documents or links to the relevant information. The participants post their decisions, and as soon as all the replies are there, the results of decision will be visible to the whole group.

Real-time Decisions

Even when decisions need to be made, gathered, and presented within 10-30 seconds, latershare can be used. Quick votes – as known from e.g. ice skating, voting on performances on TV casting shows, etcetera - would be possible for all kinds of events: All that is needed is a PC, tablet, or mobile phone per jury member and a projector hooked up to a computer with internet for the presentation of the results. For companies and special events, custom stages with individual designs could be developed.

Simple Polls

latershare requests can be set up in open or closed reply mode (choice between options). Such online polls can be set up quickly and cheaply. Mutual influence is gone. The participants, who are sometimes geographically spread out, decide when they answer. Through the opening of the envelopes the results are presented in a more exciting way than in other online tools. The use is recommended only for a controllable number of people (up to two or three dozen).

(Examples: Business: Which agency was the best? Private: Where should we go on vacation? What should we do on the weekend?)

Time-delayed Publication

latershare also functions with only one person who makes information available at a later time. For example, someone wants information (e.g. an announcement, a list of winners, decision results) to be available at a certain time without having to be personally active at that time. Nothing more. But also nothing less. He or she shares the URL of the latershare stage with the countdown clock on it with the people of his or her choice.

[Your Use Case]

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Business

Fair Pitches

Customers can let agents and/or service providers pitch for a project. For that, the customer puts the briefing and all pictures and documents for download out as a latershare request and answers all the questions that come up using the comment function so they are visible to all the participants. The participating companies can edit their offers/ideas as long as the countdown is still going. The results will be visible for the customer and the other companies at a pre-determined time.

Cost Estimates

Teams of developers can use latershare to estimate the cost of a development project. The project manager or key accountant creates one or more latershare requests with the description of the task and any relevant links to further information. The developer estimates the cost without being influenced by the other developers. Any possible questions can be answered using the commenting function and the estimates in some cases will be edited and presented. The result will be aggregated into a statistic.

Gathering Bids and Estimates of Worth

When it has to do with placing a value on items that are difficult to estimate (e.g. company shares, real estate, or antiques), the seller or the interested party, or even a group of interested parties amongst themselves, can initiate a discussion over worth. By creating a latershare request, it forces the situation where all estimates of worth are on the table at the same time without influence from each other. How the offers will be dealt with can be decided beforehand.

Gathering Input in Preparation for Meetings, a Kind of Pre- Brainstorming

When colleagues meet in a meeting (or, for example, when students are preparing for a presentation), the meeting is most efficient when all the participants come prepared. If everyone agrees to post his or her input as a latershare reply, it is much more certain that the participants are actually prepared.

Eliciting Clear Opinions

There are groups that find it difficult to reach decisions and groups in which several people don’t want to offer an opinion. The first person who, for example, proposes a plan, has to take over the responsibility for the whole group for that plan. By creating a latershare, everyone can offer a clear statement. Inequality through the classic situation of leaders and followers is evened out.

Social

Continuation of the Story

How does the story continue? An author can invite fellow authors and friends to help find out how the story continues. Couples who are dating can, individually, post and ask how their real life story continues. Or, continuation brainstorming as a game or in business use (in the sense of storytelling).

Guessing Games

Participants can guess and post the answer to a question proposed as a latershare request. No need to hand out pens and paper, gather them, or misread sloppy handwriting. Using latershare as a kind of browser game, the feature that keeps all the answers hidden can be enabled, building the anticipation. The correct answer and who won is posted by the initiator as a comment.

Speed Games

latershare logs the time at which replies are posted and can therefore be used for games that have to do with speed. In this case, the option to see the posting time visibly is enabled and the ability to edit posts deactivated. The participants have to post the right answer, a good research result, or a photo they took as quickly as possible. By viewing the latershare log, it is possible to see the order that people posted (a virtual ‘crossing the finish line’) quickly and obviously. By recalculating time to local time, it is also possible to play this kind of game when participants are in different time zones.

Checking For Consensus

What do several people think about a certain thing? Do they remember events in the past in the same way? Who and what fit together? You know, the kind of games that are played at weddings. There are also several other situations in which uninfluenced answers can be collected and compared by latershare.

Gathering Congratulations

For a birthday party, a wedding, or similar events, the guests can gather congratulations with original photo uploads as posted replies to a latershare request. The results are revealed by projector in front of everybody on the evening in question.

Fair Division & Reaching Compromises

When there is something to be divided (e.g. inheritance, profit, room division), arguments are possible. latershare can be used to ask different parties what their idea of a fair division is, which will lead to a compromise. Answering in parallel, revealing all results at the same time, as well as the written format provide psychological effects. No one wants to be the one with unfair proposals.