The project you are working on is a group project, but the members of your committee are not even in the same building. You could “old school it” and email the document to all of them for input then get all the drafts back and try to get all the edits into one, meanwhile you have 8 copies of the same document on your computer – Good Luck!
While there are several options open to you, Microsoft has a very interesting option for you. It’s called Office Web Apps. It’s free and has many of the same features as the very popular Google Docs. You can write, edit and share documents online.
This is one of the services Microsoft launched under its SkyDrive. That means you get a lot of online storage space. Microsoft offers 25 gigabytes of free storage, to be exact. Did I mention that its FREE
With that much space, you can share more than simple Word documents. You can also share photos, videos and more.
Getting SkyDrive/Office Web Apps is quite easy. All you have to do is create a Windows Live account, which again is free. Once you have an account, you can create new documents from scratch.