How to connect 2 laptops to separate monitor and work simultaneously? There are two of us with Mac book pros working on the same project and we'd like to connect our work to one one single monitor as we work to be able to share ideas and build the presentation we are working on together... how can we do this?
This is impossible.  You cannot have two inputs on a monitor simultaneously display.

What you need is to do is have one of the laptops hooked up to the monitor and share that desktop to other users.  Skype, Go2Meeting, TeamViewer and other screen sharing and collaboration software have this capability.