Welcome to Projects at FreshBrain!!

This is a simple Getting Started Guide. The intent of this is to help you get off on the right foot with your project. To explain what is available to help you. And to give you some tips on how to best do a project on a community site.

First things first. How to get started.

• You have completed the first step. You started a project.
• You took the second step and are reading the Getting Started Guide. Awesome!!
• You need to decide if you are going to do the project alone or with others.
  • You can invite others at any time. Just click the "Invite Friend to Project."
  • You may also get requests from others to join your project. You will need to accept or deny these requests.
  • It is completely up to you as to whether you work with others or not.
• Connect with your Advisor if you asked for one (it may take a couple of days before one is assigned).
  • Advisors are not members of your project but are there to support you, point out things you might miss, make sure that you don't get stuck.
  • If you didn't ask for one but changed your mind, contact us and ask for one to be assigned.

You are now ready to get going. The steps that you take to complete your project will be different depending on the project itself. In any case, the best thing to do is to try to lay out the steps that you will take (some of this should be in the description of a project if you picked one that was predefined). And think about who will do what. Get everyone on the "same page" as early as possible. Create a simple schedule with some milestones.

At this time it is also best to decide how you will work together if there are other members of your project. How often will you meet and at what times? Do you like chat, IM, phone calls and/or email? What kinds of things will you upload to the File Manager (on the project page)? What topics will you post on the Forums (also on the project page). Make sure your Advisor is a part of this so that they know how to work with you as well.

Given that this is a social networking site, others will be interested in what you are doing on your project. Think about how often you will provide a Progress Update (on the project page). This is visible to others and really fun to look at, so think about posting pictures or videos and other interesting bits of information.

There are typically Projects Tools associated with predefined projects. These are usually pretty good and should be very helpful! They are free to use. Some require a download and others are a web based. In either case, there is lots here to help you. If you don't see the right tools near the bottom of the project page, to to the tools link. Everything is listed there.

Now to do the project itself, there are a number of Collaboration Tools that show up at the bottom of every project. Here is a quick list of these and what they are for. These are all free to use!!

• Zoho, Google Docs, OpenOffice - all provide personal productivity tools like word processors, spreadsheets and presentation tools. They are all different but very useful. Take a look and decide which make the most sense for your project.
• Skype - for Voice Over IP (VOIP) computer to computer calls. This is a great way to talk to your friends while connected. It is free computer to computer and can be used to create a conference call.
• Firefox - a very standard and open source web browser similar to Internet Explorer. This is most useful of you are a developer, but is a good choice for anyone.
• Pidgin, Adium - instant messaging applications that talk to lots of instant messaging services. These will help you connect to members of your team even if everyone chats on a different instant messaging system.
• Vyew - powerful web conferencing application. You should take a look at this. It is a great way to share what you are working on across the web. And it makes it easy to go stop and then go back and continue where you left off. Works great together with Skype.

Last couple of things in terms of getting started ...

• Use search, you can find almost anything there.
• You can always find help on the FAQ.
• If you get stuck, contact us!

Good luck and have some fun!