Groupware with socal networking bent?

I"ve been searching through different online solutions to a need I have. 

I've created an informal network of managers across the country, and we want to support each other in learning about and applying the principles in the book, "Good to Great."   I'm looking for something more like a workspace than listservs can offer, and something more social and member-centric than groupware.  

 I think about each member working on their plan, in their own space.  Perhaps each part of the plan being on a tab. Each tab would have a set of questions with check-offs, other questions with comment fields, and then documents which could be attached (the administrator would create the underlying questions and fields, which would be the same for everyone).   A comments section would be at the end, so that everyoen could comment on the plan. If someone needed some help, they would e-mail the group, referencing that page with a link so that others could go directly there.

I think of it more like personal improvement than typical office work.  Maybe what I'm thinking about approaches online workspaces, with social networking mixed in. Anyone have experience with these? I know there is google docs, but this just has documents. Google groups can be connected to google docs, but nothing sophisticated. Microsoft probably has some service you can pay into. Maybe Moodle?

ps- I'm afraid that what I'm talking about requires programming, hosting, using tools like Drupal, but I just don't have the ability to use tools like that.  Anybody have suggestions for online tools that come closest to what I'm talking about? 

ftchang

There are a few product that can do most of what you want, at a cost but a low hosting cost.  The product that I think best meets your needs is centraldesktop.  You might also use wiggio, sosius or basecamp.  I know less about wiggio and sosious so you may wish to investigate those further.

I can see each of your features in centraldesktop, but the feature that I'm not sure how to accomplish is the individual pages with questions. Let me go over your feature requests in centraldesktop as a way to think out loud:
-"I think about each member working on their plan, in their own space."  – the lowest plan gives you 10 workspaces in centraldesktop, so you could use one for the social networking and everyone is in that one plus a workspace per person. (Or you might just use one folder per person all in one workspace.) 
-"Perhaps each part of the plan being on a tab."  – centraldesktop allows any folder to be it’s own tab
-"Each tab would have a set of questions with check-offs, other questions with comment fields, and then documents which could be attached (the administrator would create the underlying questions and fields, which would be the same for everyone)."   – I don’t think this is an existing feature, but the wiki feature might do it.  Or mabye you could add a form from another service like wufoo.
-"A comments section would be at the end, so that everyone could comment on the plan." – comments and forums are a strong part of centraldesktop
-"If someone needed some help, they would e-mail the group, referencing that page with a link so that others could go directly there." – yes forums that are also listservs is a feature.

I’d also be interested in the Good to Great group if you have space for another member…

Best Regards,
Will
 

ftchang,

I'm wondering if a wiki might work well for this. I've onlyl worked a little with wikis, but what you are describing sounds very much like what I remember.

Here is some info on wikis that provides a bit of an overview and some links for more resources. At the bottom of that page, is some further discussion

There are many wiki services. Some are free and some cost some money. I used a free one, Netcipia,  that worked well. We researched it to make sure that it had the features we wanted.

I also notice the TechSoup Stock offers a wiki product.

Best wishes,

Sasha

Thanks, everyone for your ideas.  I evaluated different wikis, and finally chose Wetpaint.  It has nice Wiki controls, with nested folders (each person can have a folder), I can create "template" pages for each goal we are working on, and then each person can add and update their own set of goals. 

It also has nice commenting features on each page, with e-mail notices when a page is changed.