Collaboration Archives - Page 15 of 20

Crowdsourced Software = Your Second Best Idea + Digg + Open Source Community + Incentives + … ?

Posted on July 17, 2006 ·

Recently my friend, Chris Yeh organized a special SDForum event, “Your Second Best Idea“, where he brought together:

Creative thinkers who have a killer idea to build a company – if only they had the time
Entrepreneurial types who’d love to make it happen, but lack the “big idea”
Venture Capitalists, Angels who would fund it all (?)

Chris’s concept was that after brief idea-presentations the participants would “bid” to team up with the idea owner based on their initial plans to execute and an equity offer to the owner. And if all runs well, perhaps a VC will jump in, too. I had some doubts on how far the process can go in one short event, but it was certainly an interesting experiment. We heard ideas, the crowd discussed them, but we never got to the point of entrepreneurs bidding for the ideas – which somewheat masked the underlying big question:

What’s the value of an idea? In a different context, as part of the NDA discussion I’ve previously stated tha ideas by themselves were not that valuable, it’s the entrepreneur behind the idea that makes or breaks the startup. Well, if that’s true, than how much equity is an idea presented in 5 minutes worth? And if that’s all the idea-owner had, hasn’t he/she just given it away for free?

While the inaugural session did not answer these questions, I’ve recently heard about Canada-based Cambrian House whose entire business model is based on Chris’s concept .. and more. Here’s how they explain it:

So the creative types submit an idea, the community votes (here’s the digg-effect), others will develop it, Cambrina House markets the product. All contributors to this “supply chain” will share the profit, according to a Royalty Point system. All projects start with 1500 Royalty Points, and submitting an idea is worth 75 out of the 1500, so if my math is correct, that’s a 5% equity for the raw idea – pretty high, if you ask me.

What noone can predict for now is whether those Royalty Points will ever get converted to real money, and at what rate.

Does Cambrian House have a sustainable business? I have no clue… and I suspect nor do the contributors, or even the Founders of Cambrian. In todays heated entrepreneurial environment apparently being radically different is good enough (and being a serial entrepreneur doesn’t hurt, either), so they landed $2.5M in funding from aptly named Adventure Capital in Alberta, Canada. This funding will go a long way, as they essentially outsourced everything, not paying contributors until profits roll in. I guess we can say their currency is hope:-)

The Cambrians certainly know how to create awareness: in 16 days of existence they had 100K site visitors, there daily reach per Alexa is in the top 100 in Canada. They are not afraid of unusual publicity stunts, although frankly Feeding Google was more about noise than being smart: followed by cameras, completely unannounced, they descended on the Google campus with 1000 pizzas at 3pm. Did you get that? Google, as in Google the company famous for it’s free g ourmet food, at 3pm, as in just after luch, before dinner – no wonder they were soon escorted off campus. Cambrian guys, I have a free idea for you: next time set up camp with your 1000 pizzaz at Stanford, you’ll be heroes and won’t leave without 100’s of new ideas…and I don’t even want 75 points, just invite me for the pizza-fest.

Update (3/23/07): Read/WriteWeb just published an excellent overview of crowdsourcing.

Technorati : business model, cambrian house, canadian startups, crowdsourcing, digg, google, outsourcing, royalty points, second best idea, startups

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Marketing / PR, Open Source, Software, Startups ·

LinkedIn Pulling a Plaxo?

Posted on July 6, 2006 ·

From my junk email folder this morning:

LinkedIn Profile Updates		See all updates

	X. Y. has an updated profile X. Y. has new profile information. View profile.

Update your own profile! It only takes a moment.

This is an automatic update about the careers and projects of your LinkedIn connections. Adjust your update preferences.

Hm, this reminds me of those unstoppable Plaxo notifications, and I don’t like it a single bit. So far I’ve only got the typical mass contact requests from strangers which get the standard “decline” treatment. Less is more. But this is new, and I hope it’s not an early sign of the Plaxoization of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is good as long it’s there when I need it, but don’t bother me otherwise.

Update (7/6): Although I consider this spam, it’s not that bad, you can stop it via the “Adjust your update preferences” link.

While on the subject, read David Berkowitz’s Do’s and Don’ts of LinkedIn.

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Software ·

SAP Duet Video

Posted on July 5, 2006 ·

Having seen it at SAPPHIRE 06, I wrote about the importance of Duet for both SAP and Microsoft: “Duet’s importance by far exceeds what the limited number of currently available scenarios might imply: for SAP it means potentially tripling / quadrapling their user base, even if indirectly, and for Microsoft it’s another way to lock users into their Office suite.”

Jason Wood posted an insightful, analytical article on his blog with screenprints and all the bells and whistles.

Now there is an online video showing several scenarios. Use the pull-down menu to select the different tracks available.

Filed Under: Collaboration, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Personal Productivity, Software · Tagged: crm, Duet, Exchange, informationworker, knowledgeworker, Mendocino, microsoft, MSOffice, Outlook, sap, SAP Duet, SAPPHIRE06, workflow

Zoho Office Suite is Now Complete

Posted on June 22, 2006 ·

(Updated)
What a timing! When I wrote about Zoho yesterday, two products I mentioned, Zoho Show and Drive were still in the “pipeline”, unannounced, I simply guessed the URL’s. Today Zoho Show has been released as a “public beta”, and with this move we now have the first Ajax-based Office 2.0 Suite:

Zoho Write (ditch Word)
Zoho Sheet (who needs Excel?)
Zoho Show (no more PowerPoint)

When I say complete, I simply mean that we now have a web-based service for the main applications that make up part of MS Office – completeness by far does not imply that Zoho is done for now. In fact, here’s a partial list of their additional offerings: Zoho Creator is a quick and easy application generator, Zoho Planner is an organizer, Zoho Drive is online storage (yet to be released).

The company also has business applications like “Virtual Office” and Zoho CRM, and a few other utilities to be found at the main Zoho page.

Instead of repeating myself, here’s a quick reference to my two previous posts on the significance of the Zoho Suite:

There’s also a good summary at ZDNet: Zoho releases Ajax presentation app – last piece of Web Office jigsaw?

Update (6/24): TechCrunch profiles Zoho Show.

Update (6/27): Office 2.0 evangelist Ismael Ghalimi agrees: Zoho is Complete.

Update (6/28): I was one of the first to complain how slow the PPT import to Zoho process was, so I’m really happy to announce that the Zoho team fixed it. Now you can jumpstart your presentation by quickly uploading an existing Powerpoint deck. I really love the responsiveness Zoho has shown repeatedly.

Technorati : office 2.0, powerpoint, weboffice, zoho, zoho show, zoho suite

Filed Under: Collaboration, Software ·

WetPaint, the Wiki-less Wiki

Posted on June 22, 2006 ·

Recently I wrote: “You Know Wikis Have Arrived When …. they become the feature post in your regular junk mail – this time from an Executive Recruiter firm:
What in the World is a “Wiki”? If you don’t know what a Wiki is, you probably should.”

Well, maybe you shouldn’t. Let me rephrase the original statement: Wikis have arrived when …you don’t even have to know what they are to use one. You don’t have to know you’re using a wiki, just happily type away, creating shareable content on the Web. This just became possible on Monday, with the launch of WetPaint, a hosted free service that combines the best of wikis, blogs, and forum software.

It’s like a wiki: you can create any number of pages, arrange them in a hierarchy, navigate through top-down in a tree fashion, or via direct links between pages. Anyone can edit any page a’la wiki (optionally pages can be locked, too). There is version control, audit track of changes and previous releases can be restored at a single click.
It’s like a discussion forum: you can have threaded/nested comments attached to each page
It’s like a blog: editable area in the middle, sidebars on both sides with tags and other info.

The launch created quite some interest: TechCrunch profiled Wetpaint, and several bloggers say it’s the best wiki platform ever. I respectfully disagree. There is no such thing as a “best wiki” – there are only “best” tools for specific purposes. Here are a few examples:

Confluence and Socialtext are both Enterprise Wiki’s , robust, well-supported, targeting corporate customers. Clearly not end-user products.
JotSpot is more geared towards smaller businesses and consumers and in fact it’s a mix of a wiki plus a few basic applications. I still had to watch the demo videos before getting started though.
Central Desktop is a “wiki without the wiki”, more of a full-featured collaboration platform with calendar, task, project ..etc features for small companies.

Yet I couldn’t have used any of the above platforms for setting up the Techdirt Greenhouse wiki, the online space supporting the recent successful “unconference”. Why? We needed the simplest possible site that’ so easy to use that anyone can get started without even a minute of training. WetPaint (in closed beta at the time) was simply the only choice:: easy-to-use, yet powerful, a platform that allows anyone to contribute to the website in minutes, without any training, or even reading help.

Forget wiki. WetPaint is a wiki-less wiki. It’s the most user-friendly self-publishing tool that allows anyone to create a site and transform it into an online community. Don’t take my word for it though: the proof is the 3000+ sites that were set up in the 3 days since the launch. That probably includes people who have not had a site before, and some who moved, like Mike:

“I’m moving from the current Wiki (based on Mediawiki which runs the beloved yet always under fire Wikipedia) to a new Wiki doo-fangle called Wetpaint. Why? Coz it’s a gazzilion times easier to use and I like it.” Well said.

Here’s what Yule says: “I just started a wiki – my first ever… Blame WetPaint – couldn’t resist starting this up.”

Check out samples of WetPaint sites, then it’s your turn to create your own… I will soon be launching mine.

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Software · Tagged: atlassian, Central Desktop, Collaboration, confluence, Jotspot, socialtext, wetpaint, wiki

Would You Rather Be First to Market or Better?

Posted on June 21, 2006 ·

(Updated)
Adam Kalsey thinks Michael Arrington is paid off:

“At Under The Radar a few months ago, Mike Arrington was one of the judges for a panel on web-based productivity apps. One of the companies that presented was Zoho, a company that’s building web office apps using OpenOffice.org as the backend. Arrington was particularly hostile toward Zoho and made it rather clear he didn’t like them. From my notes on the session…

Arrington: You’re perceived as second on everything. Features seem to be copies of everyone else. And PR efforts are too aggressive. Zoho: Not really. Arrington: You’ve gotten in fights on my blog comments with 37signals and Chillis. Zoho: they apologized. They’re copying us.

So imagine my surprise today when TechCrunch carried a blog entry thanking their current sponsors and making nice about all of them – including Zoho.

Zoho has quietly put together one of the best and one of the fastest Ajax office suites.

It seems that all it takes to go from “features seem to be copies of everyone else” to “best and fastest” is a little cash.”

Adam, I believe it’s the other way around. I know for a fact that Zoho (AdventNet) wanted to be a TechCrunch sponsor from the very beginning and Mike refused them. He did so in the spirit of what he stated, i.e. he would only accept sponsorship from companies that he actually truly believes in and as such writing positively about them would not become a conflict of interest.

So why did Mike change his mind? Well, I am not reading his thoughts, but I have a fairly good guess. Zoho has been diligently executing, coming out with more and more products (plus a few in the works), and it does not take a nuclear scientist to see their vision: to offer the most complete and eventually integrated suite of office / productivity tools over the web. It’s not only the individual products, but the full vision that differentiates Zoho, as I stated before. If Mike came around and realized this, I respect him for changing his view of the company.

Adam, I thank you for your post, as you pushed me to sit down and type up what I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while: If you’re not the first to market, does it mean you’re just a copycat? Can a startup “claim” a space that others should stay out of it?

The whole debate around Zoho products started on TechCrunch, when Mike posted a positive review of Zoho Writer:

“Zoho Writer is the newest entrant and is as good as the rest. Think Word + Group Editing + Ajax. It’s a rich ajax application that allows sharing and group editing, and, like Writely, has a great wysiwyg editing interface and excellent image import and manipulation features.
In fact, it’s pretty much exactly like Writely, except they do not yet support Word format import/export or tagging (coming soon).”

Than all of a sudden an entire lynch-mob arrived, led by Jason Fried of the 37Signals fame, who chastised Mike for covering “rip-offs” like Zoho’s products. (As brilliant as Jason is, I wonder why the Web2.0 camp should treat him as a cult-leader… but that’s worth another post some day). Clearly, some commenters thought “land-grab” should be the law of Web 2.0, new entrants have no right to compete, and TechCrunch should definitely not cover them.

A similar (but far more business-like) discussion ensued at the recent TiEcon conference, where Mike moderated a panel on “Web 2.0 – Why Now?” . Kevin Rose, Digg’s Founder was of the opinion that there’s no value in being a “me-too”, startups should always do new things. Yet on the same panel were Tony Conrad of Sphere and Emily Melton of DFJ, speaking for TagWorld. Both Sphere are TagWorld are addressing an existing market with mature “incumbents”, and Mike agreed with Tony and Emily that their approach is significantly different to give them a chance to be successful.

But forget panelist, let’s look at some of the truly big names in software. We would not have a Google today if Larry and Sergey simply had accepted the fact that Yahoo “owned” search. How about Microsoft? How many truly “new” products do they have? Office? Years before Word I used WordStar, and Excel was a “me-too” compared to Lotus 1-2-3. Access? Hm… perhaps Dbase II from Ashton Tate? The very existence of the Microsoft’s OS monopoly is due to IBM’s generously stupid license deal with them, and Bill Gates’s shrewd deal with the creator of QDOS.

The list could go on, but I think the point is clear: there is no land-grab in software. “First mover advantage” is significant in some areas – like Kevin’s Digg, since it depends on a network effect – but in others the second or third player to the market may just execute better. (Btw, second to the market does not mean copycat, since anyone will likely recognize that developing these products takes some time, so parallel efforts are going on at different companies – but timing is beyond the point here anyway). Update (7/22): Innovate or Imitate…Fame or Fortune? by Don Dodge list additional examples, and so does his new post on Zune.

At a previous post I went to great length explaining why I consider Zoho’s offering superior to others. Without repeating the entire post, here’s the summary: individual products may or may not be “better” than the competitors, but at least they are equal, and Zoho is the ONLY complete Web Office Suite (and more). They may not have been first to the market with the individual products, but they likely will be the first in achieving three major steps:

Complete Suite: Writer, Sheet, Show, Drive, Creator, Planner. Oh, and they happen to offer a complete “Virtual Office” as well as CRM. (Please note, Drive and Show are not yet announced, but it didn’t take a lot to guess the URLs. Update (6/22): Zoho Show has just been released. Au revoir, Powerpoint!)
Since they are the only ones with all the components, they will also be the first ones to integrate these products (remember when you could not move data between Excel and Word?)
The last step in the “master plan” has to do with this chart– but I’ll keep it for a separate post.

When you look at all the above, it’s hard not to see innovation. Is it Product or Business Innovation? As a user I really don’t care, I’ll be just happy to enjoy the benefits.

Update (6/21): The comment thread below is worth reading through: Zoho received anonymous criticism, which prompted CEO Sridhar Vembu to show up here and promise immediate investigation. Within half an hour he came back with the facts, and two hours later he reported the copyright issue fixed. I’m impressed by his responsiveness, which is consistent with my previous positive experience of help and support at various levels in the company. To complete the story, please read Sridhar’s post on his own blog.

Technorati : 37signals, adventnet, blog sponsorship, competition, copycat, excel, first mover, first mover advantage, google, innovation, integration, lotus 1-2-3, microsoft, mikearrington, ms access, ms office, ms word, office 2.0, techcrunch, vyew, web office, word, yahoo, zoho, zoho creator, zoho crm, zoho drive, zoho planner, zoho sheet, zoho show, zoho virtual office, zoho writer

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Software, Technology ·

Another Excel Security Hole? Yawn… It’s Safer in the Cloud:-)

Posted on June 20, 2006 ·

“Attack code for a new security hole in Excel has surfaced on the Internet, just as Microsoft is scrambling to respond to a separate bug in the spreadsheet program.” – reports ZDNet.

Yawn…. same old story. I’ve lost track of the numerous bugs, patches that further and further disable my computer. I’ve told you: it’s safer “in the Cloud“

And yes, I know Zoho Writer, Writely or Zoho Sheet can’t match the capabilities of MS Word or Excel: so the 10% of the world who need all the sophisticated features… well you’re still stuck in Microsoft Prison. The rest of us enjoy the freedom of Office 2.0.

Technorati : MS Excel, MS Office, MS Word, Office 2.0, Writely, ZDNet, Zoho, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Writer, bugs, excel, microsoft, patches, security hole, weboffice

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, Software, Technology ·

Techdirt Greenhouse: It’s all about the Participation

Posted on June 13, 2006 ·

The success of traditional conferences largely depends on the quality of the presentations: that’s not the case with the Techdirt Greenhouse. Techdirt’s secret sauce is to minimize “presentation” time, and get everyone involved in lively discussions/debates. Add to this an innovative scheme of randomly rotating participants through different groups, and you get maximum networking effect. A perfect mix for a great unconference.

But instead of me describing the “secret”, get it right from the source: Mike Masnick, Techdirt’s Founder & CEO was interviewed on CNET/News.com.

The crowd was a mix of startup-types, service providers to them (consultant, lawyer..etc), venture capitalists, media types…a good mix. For example at one of the breakout-groups tackling the issue of “What is the place for traditional media in an environment where the public is making their own entertainment” we mostly had entrepreneurs, but there were 2 participants representing “old media’, which provided a good balance.

The quality of the presentations or simply their relevance to the predefined, more generic question is always the unknown factor, and this event was no exception.

Jeff Nolan does a good job of explaining what went wrong with the first presentation. Before we knew what was going on, we were deep into looking at features, the presenter typing away live, when all she had was 5 minutes. I would have spent that 5 minutes describing the business, the problem I am solving – basically focus on the what and why, rather than the how.

I few other presenters insisted on using their Powerpoint slides, despite Techdirt’s explicit request not to. Mike, if you don’t mind me giving unsolicited advice, these are issues you can handle in advance: guide your speakers whether you expect a product demo or overall intro, and most importantly, stick to your own rule: No Powerpoint means exactly that, No Powerpoint. If someone cannot speak for 5 minutes without the slide, they are likely not the right presenters, so move on.

Initially I was baffled at some of the selected presenters/subjects, for example Alignent, a company developing a process management/control product around innovation at large corporations. Now, in my world, innovation and structure, process, control do not belong in one sentence. (see Jackie’s comments here). But it turned out to be a good choice, after all, the key tenet of the Greenhouse is that it’s not about the presentations: we spend most of our time on the breakout groups, and this presentation provoked quite a lively discussion.

I will write separately about some of the discussion topic I lead or participated in .

While on the subject of discussion I’d like to believe it’s not over .. in fact we just started something that will live on. The intensity level of the debates, the energy level in the rooms was fantastic, and we often felt we were just warming up by the time we had to wrap up… so why lose that energy? In fact why not widen the group of people and involve many others who could not make it California last Saturday? Everybody, please feel invited to participate: the Techdirt Greenhouse Wiki is open, waiting for you. There are two ways to contribute: adding comments to the relevant pages, which is like using a typical discussion forum, or clicking on “Edit” which allows you to modify the original entry. Yes, there are no controls – it’s an open social experiment. (Thanks to WetPaint, whose easy-to-use platform will launch in the very near future)

Summing it up: I enjoyed the the second Techdirt Greenhouse just as much as the first one: Mike, when is the third one?

Update (6/14): Special thanks to Sean Murphy, who keeps on updating the wiki with valuable information, and is doing a lot of mundane background work, to include all attendee’s URL’s, links to presenting companies sites, as well as related ones.

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Technology ·