Mesh 2007 this week and ConceptShare is one of the winners selected to present at Mesh’s: 15 Minutes of Fame. We join 5 other companies that are given 5 minutes each over the 2 days to pitch or say whatever they want to over 400 movers and shakers at Mesh.
We kick off Thursday’s presentations at 11:30am. Stayed tuned to this one because big things are afoot at ConceptShare!!!
May 30 - 11:30 a.m. to noon
Octopz - Great tool for Online Document Collaboration with Video conferencing
DemoFuse - Quickly create interactive tours and demos for your Web site
FiveLimes - A valuable resource to find eco-friendly products and services. Lots of cool mash-ups.
May 31, 11:30 a.m. to noon
Conceptshare - Us!! Review, Markup and Collaboration for designers by designers.
SneakerPlay - an innovative invite-only social network designed specifically for our generation — a place where style conscious individuals can connect with friends, meet like minded individuals and express their unique styles..
Wild Apricot - Event and Web site management service for non-profits, clubs and associations.
May 31: Then see Scott’s Panel: See our very own Scott Brooks speak at the Panel Conversation (3:10pm to 4:00pm):
Startup Stories - I’ve Fallen and I Can Get Up
Paul Kedrosky talks with Scott Brooks, Mary Hodder and Leila Boujnane.
“This is the conference that started it all for us.” Scott and I attended last year to listen to others talk about their startup stories and learn alot about the industry and particpate in the great community around this industry.
Armed with a laptop each we would show anyone that would sit with us an early prototype of ConceptShare. In our version of “Is this something”. We managed to show alot of people at both Barcamp the days before and at Mesh 2006. It was a busy few days and we managed demo Stowe Boyd, Chris Messina, Tara Hunt, David Crow, Mike McDerment , Amber MacArthur as well as pitch to Sean Wise, meet Om Malik, Jason Fried , Jim Coudal, Salim Ismail and many others. All of these people have become good friends and have shared alot with us over the last year. They’re early feedback and encouragement is what made us take the leap from employment to startup in the following days and create ConceptShare as we know it today.
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Posted in ConceptShare ~ 2 Comments
Written by Bernie
So I have been keeping an eye on the Facebook growth within Canada. Impressive to say the least. I decided to go back and look at the numbers one month since I did my original post that looked at the saturation of Facebook across the country. Now I will say that this is not an exact science as a number of people pointed out that they were not in fact from the area that they belonged to. So for Sudbury for example people from surrounding communities could be included in this as I am sure is the case for each of the communities. Aside from going through each network and asking where people live I am not sure how else to distill this.
So what I am instead going to focus on is the growth in each of the networks over the one month since my last post on this issue.
So as soon as we get over the fact that the last column on this is probably skewed due to the centralizing factor. (small centers latching onto larger closer networks) We can look at how the networks have grown based upon their size last month. As you can see the numbers are quite revealing. Canada is gobbling up Facebook in an unheard of manner. This is very impressive and I hope it keeps going.
In fact this was cited by Nico Vera over at Facebook in the blog post entitled “Oh Canada” I grabbed this graphic to illustrate the growth that the Canadian network is enjoying over other country networks. Nico conveys some deep gratitude over the adoption ….thanks Nico.
So what does this mean? Are Canadians more interested in staying in touch? Could it have to do with the large percentage of us that leave our original birthplaces to move to the cities …but want to stay in touch with our friends from home? I am not sure what this means to be quite honest.
What I think we can glean from this is that when something is done right …like face book … there is no limit to where it can go. I plan to keep up with this look at the growth of Facebook and see how far it can go. I am trying to predict what will happen over the summer months … slow down because it is nice out …or speed up because people have a bit more free time …..stay tuned for the june 24th edition.
On another FaceBook note the marketplace is now open for biz and as a test of that I am going to try and sell my car through it. Lets see how effective that will be. From all indications the Marketplace seems to be a great idea and when deployed around the structured trust network I think we have a real winner here. I can only imagine what else they have cooking in the back room over at FB.
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in Canada, Facebook ~ 2 Comments
Written by Scott
ConceptShare has been nominated for the Webware 100. What is the Webware 100 you ask ?
“What are the best Web 2.0 services? We don’t know. But you do.
Here’s how to share your knowledge and your preferences with the world: check out our ten Webware 100 categories. There are 25 services listed on each. Vote for one service in each category. The 10 services per category that receive the most votes will be the Webware 100. Simple.”
So how do you vote ? Visit the Webware100 page. ConceptShare is located in the Productivity Group.
Want to read a bit more about us from the folks over at Webware ? Check out these articles by Rafe and his Webware team.
Thanks for all your support! It is always appreciated !
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in ConceptShare, Tools ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
I was reading Steve Rubel’s blog over the weekend. He always seems to have some great posts that really makes me think. He hit the nail on the head today. Curiosity as the most important career skill you can have.
“So as I thought about it, the most important “tool” you can have today in business is insatiable curiosity. The minute you lose it, you’re dead.” - Steve Rubel
An interesting statement. Is curiosity the most important thing you can have in business today ? I agree. I don’t think you can be an entrepreneur or an innovator if you aren’t curious. Looking at it from inside ConceptShare if we weren’t curious, ConceptShare would never have come to fruition. We would have never asked if there was a better way to do it. We would have taken everything at face value and resigned ourselves to the fact that there was no better way to share visuals. But we asked the question …what if?
I look at all sorts of people who have created great things. They have all challenged the status quo and gotten curious.
So become more like a kindergarten student. Ask questions. How do they do that? Is there a better way? Why do we do it this way ? Why?
You might be interested to find when you start to be curious. Maybe there are things that are being done right in front of you that could be improved. Have a read of the article and see what you think. Are you curious?
Curiously yours,
Scott
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Posted in Ideas, Innovation, PR ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
I think we can all agree that the ‘web2′ or what ever you want to call it is changing the way that we are doing business. Apps are moving way from desktop to the net, blurring the once distinct line between applications and the web. These sites are are giving greater flexibility to the new workplace. This web based approach reduces the cost of ownership, increasing the availability while reducing internal IT infrastructure issues.
There are some really great apps out there that are really worth looking into. I think that these will certainly expand your definition of what the web can provide for business.
This one from the Aviva Directory came out a while back and was a trim 25 great apps for entrepreneurs. This list is very useful and has some really great apps with excellent description that get down to the essence of the offering.
This list is recent and it has 100 apps to look at. This list seems to link to alot of other tools on sites that may be handy ….but not all are applications. The descriptions are much shorter but give some idea to the nature of the offering.
We are very happy to have ConceptShare listed on both! So do check them out. I hope this might prove helpful as you look for new ways to manage the aspects of your work life ….and in some apps cases your personal stuff too.
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in ConceptShare, Ideas ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
When we set out to create ConceptShare we understood the pain, it needed to be fixed.
The three of us had all worked with each other in different roles previous to our lives as ConceptShare. All of which required us to communicate back and forth on elements of design centric projects. This allowed us to come at CS with a real understanding of how the process was broken when it came to communication over visuals. It was far too laborious.
- Scott’s company designed for Bernie’s company
- Graphic Design
- Print Layout
- Production
- Bernie has been a contractor for Scott’s company
- Chris and Bernie worked together in PM<>Lead Developer way
- Interface design
- Web Design
- Scott and Chris have worked together -Account Exec >creative director<>Programmer
Understand that we did this took place over a number of years and we never really identified it until we started encountering the problem between the three of us at the same time. We started to look at the inefficient work flows that we had created to cover for the lack of suitable alternatives. We would carry on conversations regarding designs over a number of different channels, Email, Instant Messenger, Web project services. Since describing changes to a visual design are pretty hard to communicate in text. We often found ourselves adding to the work flow as we would go into other products to mark up the visual, save and forward. We wanted to create a place for conversations over project visuals that evolve over the life of the project. We are continually hearing about how this pain is relevant in so many industries and in so many countries. Albeit in many different languages and many different types of visuals. It seems that our message has gotten out and around the world.
We have paying customers in 30 countries worldwide:
USA - Canada - United Kingdom - Mexico - Brazil - Ireland - Scotland - Italy - Sweden - Ukraine - Russia - Italy - Indonesia - Philippines - Australia - Czech Republic - Netherlands - Israel - France - Malaysia - Spain - Denmark - Hong Kong - Belgium - China - Japan - United Arab Emirates - Argentina - Columbia - Venezuela
Quick List of Usage Types
Architecture - Toy Design - Movie Storyboards - Web Design - Graphic Design - Pre-Press and Print - Engineering - Display Design - Landscape Architects - Environmental Design - Logo Design - UI Design, Instructional design, Product Design, Packaging Design ….. there are so many, but you get the idea.
I have had a great time being able to talk to our customers. I love to hear about what they do and how they do it. It is so interesting to hear how different we all think we are in this industry but there is alot of pains that are completely similar …..described differently but the same at the core. I have also come to realize that people are infinitely creative in building ad-hoc systems to handle image related feedback.
An unnamed client
One large corporate client used this method prior to ConceptShare. It was described to me by an account exec as a the merry-go-round from hell. This company is not unique …. there are lots of systems that create as much chaos and pain as this.
- Project Established
- Creative Brief
- Designer Creates
- Shared internally via pdf, typically 10 copies shared with various internal stakeholders
- A comment logs are created in either word or excel with each user sending a different file to the originator
- Comment logs from reviewers compiled into one document
- Comments then forwarded back to the group
- Changes made by designer and the process repeats until done.
- When the project had gone through internal checks the client gets involved
- Once the client has signed of in principle these ideas then get floated past a focus group of clients.
Now with ConceptShare the process is much easier
- Project Established
- Creative Brief
- Create CS Workspace with relevant team members
- Designer Creates
- All designs posted to the CS workspace
- Internal review
- Add more people to the room as applicable
They have found that ConceptShare has allowed them to move projects from the inception to final product faster. There has been an increase in the quality of the feedback. Early idea and mock-up sharing identify issues early on in the design. Over all there has been an over whelming response to it.
We love the great outcomes of companies that are adopting the ConceptShare way. We have a lot of companies that are using ConceptShare across their organizations. They have spread out the system to their entire teams and are now experiencing the benefit as they use it to for all of their projects. We look forward to hearing more stories.
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in ConceptShare, Tools ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
Lots of people have been calling and emailing wanting to know more about how we made our demo video and where they can get the music etc, so I thought I would answer some of the questions here. The actual production happend pretty quick. After a few takes of each screen capture movie they took only about the time that they ran which is usually no more than second 5-15 seconds.
The Video:
The screen video grabs can be done quickly with any number of screen capture utilities. The popular ones are Camtasia Studio and Scott uses Snapz Pro for OSX. These popular ones give you alot of options for exporting (flash, quicktime avi) which give you the most amout of flexability in editing.
Once the videos are captured, they are then imported into Adobe After Effects for assembly in a timeline format and I can create the text with some effects and transistions and also add some other types of media quite quickly. Alot of this can be done with online services lately so check some of those out. We will probably do more of a ‘talking head’ tour type demo in the future. Oh, and after the video was published, I switched my PC to Vista and the source that was on my desktop got lost. So yes, we know there is an error or two that most people won’t pick up on, but not much I can do now. Lesson learned about backing up everything. Expect a new demo video shortly with some of the new features we have and are releasing.
The Music:
For the music overlay we wanted something original, catchy yet not take away from the visual content. It would also be nice if it could fit the tempo of the video that was already being assembled. Oh ya and also if it could done the next day that would be great too. For that I enlisted the help of my brother Ben who records under the name Ben Cooper, who is a professional musician, singer songwriter and composer. Where I’d like to be in the digital media/designer world he is in the musical word. I sent an early composition of the video to Ben at 9PM on Monday and he had this musical piece back by 11:50PM the same nite. Simply amazing! Very little direction was given. When you have a extremely talented, creative musician at your disposal you just learn to let them do their thing. For anyone that is not related to Ben, he’s available to do contract work for commercials, movies, demos etc at fairly competitive rates.
Contact him if you are interested bencooper37 at hotmail. Also checkout his Myspace page to hear some of his original vocal music. You won’t be dissappointed.
http://www.myspace.com/bencooperlive
Have fun,
Bernie
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Posted in ConceptShare, Technology, Video ~ No Comments
Written by Bernie
We have run into Robert Scoble at an number of events. Bernie caught his eye during the demo at Under the Radar. We had won both the audience and the judges nods in our category. He called us “the coolest thing at under the radar” So paths crossed again at Mix in Vegas. Bernie had a chance to sit down and talk more with Scoble about ConceptShare.
[flv]http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/05/PID_011145/Podtech_MIX_conceptshare.flv[/flv]
This is a great interview in a very busy MS hospitality suite some where in Vegas. Check it out and have a listen as Bernie mentions some upcoming stuff that we have planned for ConceptShare and the emergence of ConceptNation.
We will have lots more to talk about regarding ConceptNation so please stay tuned.
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in ConceptShare ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
A while back we posted that we were setting up ConceptShare Labs as a way to engage the ConceptShare community in shaping the direction of the product. The community driven ideas filtered up from the needs of our users. When we introduced our first group of users to the workspace we weren’t really sure what to expect. The group consisted of a wide variety of users.
- Graphic Designers
- Architectural
- Engineering
- Software developers
- Product designers
- Web designers
- Print & Pre-Press
The goals for this project space
- Engage our users in the direction of the product
- Continue to improve upon the user experience with great tools
- Prove ConceptShare as tool for innovation
Once the workspace was created we simply posted design mock-ups along the product road map. We found that the flexible nature of ConceptShare made the discussions very relevant. Users from around the world didn’t have to sync to the schedule of EST. It was interesting to see how quick on the trigger some users were; we would post new designs and users would instantly come online after getting the notification email. We would start the discussions generally with a general description of key features, from there questions and suggestions began to grow.
As we made changes new designs would be uploaded replacing the older design. Starting the review process again. This drastically reduces the time between iterations. What would have taken many months of back and forth via email and meetings were completed in weeks.
Features being Discussed
This is a look at the concepts within the workspace. Once features were implemented concepts are moved to the completed folder, resulting in a clear experience. (Drag-and-Drop Folders are a graduate of the Labs)
A typical discussion in ConceptShare Labs
The users really took to using ConceptShare to discuss the new features. The ability of CS to structure discussions around specific elements of a design ensured that users were able to discuss fine elements of the design. Layering of comments keep users focused on the discussion at hand and away from comments and markups of other discussion items.
Users discuss the crop tool idea. You can notice that this was one comment of three on this particular mock-up
Continuous Innovation
We have more then one workspace underway in ConceptShare Lab. We are ready to roll out the GUI Upgrades 2 workspace to more users with the next evolution of GUI improvements. We also have other projects that we are working on quietly with the internal team. The flexibility of ConceptShare allows us to work internally first and then open up the workspaces to more people when we are ready.
We have some interesting stuff that is going to come out of the Labs in the coming month or so. These should prove to be very interesting to our users and greatly extend the use of conceptshare by ……oh wait that is another post.
The Result:
We have completed 11 features thru this process and it has proved to be incredible. We are very committed to this process as it has allowed us to be incredibley agile as we develop. We are a small team so the ability to have a feedback loop that is so accessible and instant makes the process faster. By integrating the feedback loop tighter to the design process we were able to take fast steps getting feedback needed along the way. This is a stark contrast to older styles of design where the design might get a lot further along in production before getting feedback.
We accomplished the goals that we had set out for this workspace.
- We had the conversations with our users giving them a real stake in the next generation of features.
- We created some incredible new features that have greatly added to the effectiveness of ConceptShare as a tool for business.
- We demonstrated that ConceptShare works as a tool for innovating.
We look forward to the release of the next round of GUI upgrades to the community. There’s lots of things that have been asked for that and we are really excited to let them loose on the ideas.
I hope this article is helpful, I wanted to give you some food for thought about how a different approach to the design process worked for us. Opening up for feedback early, coupled with the proper tools create a very fast development cycle. Think how this can apply to your product, your users, your designers.
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in ConceptShare, GUI, Ideas, Innovation, Product Design ~ 1 Comment
Written by Scott
This sums it up.
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in ConceptShare ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
