Other rules created boundaries so that the contributor's work would overlap in time and occur in a shared environment:
All writing and editing were to occur within a 24-hour period, but writers were free to decide when to work within that timeframe. Given this rule, the pace of writing relative to the time frame pretty much guarantees that writers will not segregate themselves into separate time slots.
All writing and editing were to occur within a single shared document that was created using Google Docs. This created a shared environment in which participants would be aware of each others presence and could examine each other's work product as it took shape.
All writing and editing were to occur within a single shared document that was created using Google Docs. This created a shared environment in which participants would be aware of each others presence and could examine each other's work product as it took shape.
Working together in a shared environment reinforced the collaborative supposition. Not only did participants know that others had agreed to work towards a shared goal, they could see them doing it. Keep in mind that such positive reinforcement is not guaranteed. If participants perceive that others are not working hard, not working well, or not working towards a shared goal, the collaborative supposition will be undermined. In the positive case, however, awareness of others working with us increases our commitment to the collaboration and creates a sense of solidarity that most people enjoy.
The physical copresence made possible by shared space and time also allows collaborators to coordinate their activities using mutual knowledge. This form of coordination often plays a key role in face-to-face collaboration. When collaboration occurs in a virtual space, however, the dimensions of copresence are reduced. Imagine a situation in which people are working at the same time and in the same environment, but each person is invisible and incapable of making any sound. Collaborators can see the results of other's work, but they cannot see or hear each other. They can go into another environment nearby where they can hear and/or see each other, but they are not able to do any work in that environment. Collaboration in virtual space sometimes resembles this.
In the 24 Hour Novel project, some of the collaborators did share environments other than Google Docs. Some, who lived in the same area, did part of their work while together in the same coffee house. Being together in the same physical environment allowed those collaborators to talk, to see each other working, and to have mutual knowledge of external events in that physical environment (e.g. a loud truck passing by, someone spilling coffee, etc.).
Physical proximity can provide a number of advantages. However, for certain kinds of work, it does not allow easy examination of work-in-progress without interrupting that work. For activities such as the 24 Hour Novel project, a virtual environment such as that provided by Google Docs is better for examining the work of another, e.g. to make sure one's own work will fit together with it, and for monitoring the overall progress of the group. In designing or in selecting an environment for collaborative work, what's most important is how well that environment fits the work and the workers who perform it.
The environment for a collaborative work project will include both rules and tools. Sometimes these do not work exactly as intended. In the 24 Hour Novel project, it might seem that assigning one chapter to each writer would distribute the workload evenly, and also protect the writers equally from getting in each other's way. As it turned out, though, Google Docs created an unequal experience for writers of chapters towards the beginning of the book, towards the end of the book, and in the middle of the book: As the various writers added material, Google Docs would update. If you are writing the first chapter in a long book, this is not a problem; what you see in your display window will change only when you make changes. If you are writing the second chapter, what you see in your window will move down as the writer of the first chapter adds text, but probably not enough to cause your own writing to suddenly scroll out of your window. If you are writing the last chapter, however, the cumulative actions of all the other writers may cause the section you are working on to scroll entirely out of your view with unnerving frequency.
We can easily imagine a customized version of Google Docs that would improve upon this situation, e.g. by allowing each writer to mark an insertion point and then open a separate composition window. The document as a whole would update as entries were made in each writer's composition window, and could be seen doing this in the original document window, but the view in the composition window would be effected only by the actions of the individual writer.
Customizing tools is not always possible, so we must choose what we can from the best available, keeping in mind that tools and rules will interact. A judicious selection of tools can reduce the need for rules. If features of a tool produce undesired consequences, that can sometimes be mitigated through the introduction of new rules. In a short-term project, changing the rules for such purpose may be unnecessary. In the longer run, however, a collaboration tool that creates an unequal burden for some participants may be rejected, even if its use improves the performance of the group as a whole.
