Back in early April I participated in a training as part of the  Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders. Not only was the group spectacular, but I came away with a fantastic team and a very interesting project! We are going to develop the international standards for harvesting bat guano. In many countries there are no standards or best practices that protect both the bats and the cave ecosystem and so it goes from a renewable resource to a devastating event. We’re hoping that through our research and collaboration we can work together and help Bat Conservation International develop these important standards.

As for the training session, we learned so much! I’m happy to share with anyone who is interested. Here is just a broad overview of what the training covered:

•    Professional mission statements and goal setting
•    Leadership skills and work-life balance
•    Successful campaigning skills
•    Communications and messaging strategies
•    Planning tools for advocacy campaigns
•    Adaptive management techniques
•    International biodiversity funding opportunities
•    Coordinated organizational response models
•    On-camera media training
•    Tools for dealing with conflict in the workplace
•    Fundraising Advice

While I think the environmental movement keeps getting stronger, it’s important we stick together and help one another. We can do that online, in person, and through special events and trainings. We must do this, I think it is imperative to our future.

On the tech side of this whole project, I’ve been playing more with Google Sites and figuring out how to make it a friendly, collaborative place to share documents and information.  It was very simple to select a template and then manipulate it to make it functional and relevant (bat photo).

Great collaboration tools so far:
1) Google Docs (both spreadsheet & docs)
2) Google Calendar
3) Skype
4) Google Sites

What tools have you used for group collaboration? I need recommendations!