Joan Orr, Vice President, TAGteach International

SuperNova Award Category

Future of Work

Your Company

TAGteach International provides teaching and training solutions based on the use of positive reinforcement and operant conditioning. We offer seminars and private consulting for clients who wish to instill positive habits, improve morale and increase efficiency.

The Problem

We wished to publish a book in a short time frame at low cost. The people working on the project; designer, ebook coder, editor, author, project manager and others from TAGteach work from offices across North America in three time zones. We needed to be able to discuss ideas and share various types of documents. We also needed to have different discussion areas for different aspects of the project.

The Solution

We needed to do all our work in one place to avoid email overload, people forgetting to "reply all", people losing track of attachments and having multiple drafts going around with no-one sure if they have the most recent version. Gabitat gave us a way to have a discussion area for each part of the project, integration with file storage of our choice and the ability to attach many types of content. Everything is all in one place for all to see, and new content is clearly marked on the home screen to prevent wasted time

The Results

When we told our partners (who have been in the publishing business for years) that we would go from draft to publication in 6 weeks, they laughed and said it couldn't be done. Especially since the design and editorial work was being done by outside professionals. The book was published on schedule because we were able to maximize efficiency of the team through the use of Gabitat. Everyone knew exactly when and where to look for critical information, discussions and files. Eliminating the traditional route of email communication made a huge difference to everyone in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

The Technology

Gabitat by Gabitat.com

Metrics

Our book: Chaos to Calm: Discovering Solutions to the Everyday Problems of Living with Autism (by Martha Gabler) went from author draft to published in 6 weeks. The cover design went through 8 rounds of editing and the manuscript went through 24 rounds of editing. This took 9 weeks less time than predicted by experts in the publishing industry.

Disruptive Factor

This adventure in rapid publishing facilitated by Gabitat shows that no longer does it take 6 months to a year to publish a book. Much time is wasted while documents are sent round to multiple people and emails are sent back and forth and the project manager tries to put everything together. Never again will we use email as a communication method or attachments as a way of sending files. All our projects are now run through Gabitat and users are very happy with this new way of working.

Shining Moment

Several of the leading experts in the field of teaching children with autism have provided 5 star reviews for our book on Amazon.

About TAGteach

TAGteach is a teaching technology that is based on behavioral science. TAGteach provides a structure that allows teachers to distill their learning goals into manageable pieces, deliver these to the learner in an effective way, and signal success to the learner immediately. TAGteach International provides learning opportunities through both and public seminars, and private consulting. Teachers, sport coaches, parents and business managers have seen increased success as well as reduced frustration and injuries as a result of learning how to use positive reinforcement in an organized, targeted way.

TAGteach International is the publisher of the book, “Chaos to Calm: Discovering Solutions to the Everyday Problems of Living with Autism”, by Martha Gabler. This is a parent-to-parent book that explains how the author used the principles of TAGteach to increase desirable behaviors in her non-verbal son with severe autism.