How to Brainstorm and Plan Events With Friends and Family

Have you ever tried planning a big event with friends or family — like a vacation, a home renovation or a reunion — and wished you could get everyone on the metaphorical same page?

Thanks to apps that support collaboration, you can get all parties together in the same online whiteboard, calendar, document or other file. And you can get started with free software that may already be on your phone, tablet and computer. Here’s an overview.

Getting Started

Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android systems include free apps that support group participation. These typically work best if you and your cohorts are all on the most recent version of the same platform, using a free Apple ID or Google Account. But beyond apps, you can collaborate on projects in a web browser with the files stored and synchronized on Apple’s iCloud servers or Google Drive.

Starting a collaboration is easy. Just pick your app, create a file and choose the people to share it with.

Whiteboards

Some projects benefit from having one place to stash everything, everywhere, all at once — like photos, sticky notes, web links, documents and doodles contributed by multiple people. In this case, consider an interactive digital whiteboard app. Like whiteboards in an office, these digital ones allow people to add, erase and edit content, but participants using them can contribute and see real-time updates to the board on just about any device.

Apple’s Freeform app provides a canvas for big ideas, and the company’s site has detailed instructions for using it on an iPhone, an iPad and a Mac. After someone starts a Freeform board and shares it with others by Apple Mail, Messages or AirDrop, the group work begins; boards can also be exported as PDF files for those without the app. Apple’s FaceTime service is integrated for real-time video calls during a collaboration session.

Google’s Jamboard is another online whiteboard app. It works on Android and iOS devices, as well as in Google Chrome and other web browsers (not to mention on Google’s expensive cloud-powered whiteboard hardware). The person who starts the “jam” file must have a Google Account, but it isn’t required of other collaborators. Files are…