I think that the power of the blog is pretty big. It allows you to communicate and keep people interested in what you are doing. Now in my line of business it is very hard to stand out as it seems that everyone has a blog that is somewhat related to technology.

I find it very refreshing when I stumble upon a non traditional localized business that has a blog and has really put some time and effort into it.

So go figure …. a pastry business located in New Jersey has a kick ass blog and delicious looking deserts. This is certainly an interesting combination and really not one that I had expected.

This is a useful case-study for all of you who aren’t sure if you should have a blog or if it would matter. This is a great example of why you should consider blogging. According to Jesse Heap, husband and web manager “We’ve found it to be very beneficial - it’s driving more business then we can handle at this point. In fact my wife has jokingly asked me to take the blog down just to give her a chance to catch up on prospective customers. “

Sounds like a great problem to have and one that really doesn’t cost them anything. So should you be blogging ? Could it hurt your business or help? It is a great place to toot your horn and have people check out your business and learn more about what you are doing.
Be sure to check out the site
Cheers

Scott

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Ideas ~ 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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in ConceptShare, Ideas ~ 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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in ConceptShare, GUI, Ideas, Innovation, Product Design ~ 1 Comment
Written by Scott

So after a holiday break and some minor tweaking …DemoCamp is back and it is going to be better then ever!

David Crow, Joey Devilla and Jay Goldman have tweaked the program a bit. They went out to the group and asked for some feed back on what should be changed to improve the overall event. From the looks of it ….. they have done it.

Here is the new format:

Demo Schedule

1. Flock - Will Pate
2. Distributed Development Mozilla Style - Mike Beltzner
3. BubbleShare v2.0 - Albert Lai
4. 2 minute updates by previous DemoCamp presenters

Bernie and I will be presenting a 2 minute update on where ConceptShare has gone since our presentation at DemoCamp9. Wow 2 minutes for wrap up …..that is pretty fast. There has been alot that has happened since then. There is alot we have learned and want to share with the group.

So if you can make it I encourage it. TO has quickly emerged as one of hottest tech scenes anywhere. Things have really started to come together and we are really excited to be apart of this. We will be there and hope to have a chance to catch up with all those we don’t see so often.

Cheers

Scott

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Ideas, Innovation ~ 1 Comment
Written by Scott

Guy had an interesting featuring a visual periodic table of elements. It’s pretty neat in that it interactive but would be nice to post on a wall as well. Man, is there really that many visualization methods? Maybe one day ‘ConceptSharing’ will be on that table. I think it would fit nicely in the “Concept Visualization’ area under Interactive Concept Visualizations…But thats just me.

From blog.guykawasaki.com: 

“ Check out this excellent compilation of visualization methods called “A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.” This came to my attention via a convoluted path from BoingBoing (who thanks Mike Love) to Seth Godin to Acorn Creative. Ralph Lengler and Martin J. Eppler created it. You might also enjoy reading their paper, entitled “Towards a Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management“

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Ideas, Product Design, Visualization ~ No Comments
Written by Bernie

ConceptShare has launched with enough usable value that will help out a lot of firms, software companies, designers and creative people, theres more to come but it solves a real problem now. Our crazy account creations and early sales figures have shown this but there is something thats brewing in the background.

Now that the platform is there and circulating around and people are seeing how it can help. All the pieces are there for our expert model. What is our expert model? Well..we think there are a lot of talented people out there who have a lot of skills that can contribute to any visual project. We envision a community of these people that would open themselves available to be tapped for what’s inside their heads. You don’t need them to do the work. Just give their experience, feedback and wisdom to your project. For some people they only need 10 minutes in front of a design to say “change that, wrong color, move this down below” etc. etc. ..We believe the expert directory will contain usability people, designers, business people, ad execs…you name it.
How does it work. From a users perspective we will have soon a direct expert registration in which you will not need a ConceptShare account to list yourself. You can upload a bit of your portfolio some information, links etc.. Natural fits are people with experience or education in design, usability and human factors, color, photography, advertising etc. but anyone is useful..Tag yourself with your hobbies..Who knows, PING golf may want to select a bunch of golfers to discuss new ads, or equipment.

The account holder who needs expert help can browse the directory and invite people based on their skills, demographics or reputation. Not everyone has a UI guy on staff, or a logo guy. So why not ask an expert?
Compensation: We are still working all this out..for now its just fun to help others with design and its not a lot of work to give feedback. We figure reputation points and rating is a good way to start. We want people with good reputation and those that create alot of value for others to be compensated in some way. But its not labour work. its mind work so what would people pay for recognized experts. I assume people that have proven themselves invaluable to ConceptShare users would create their own celebrity in our directory and could set their own prices.
Let’s Survey!!

How much would you pay for one feedback session with:

• Jason Fried on your new web app interface
• Seth Goodin on an AD campaign
• Guy Kawasaki on anything
• Tom Kelly (IDEO) on anything
• Tom Peters on anything
• Famous Photographer or Photoshop re-Toucher
• Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots on your football offensive plays that you uploaded field diagrams and have drawn arrows showing movement and routes.

Bernie

*** Update***

We do not actually have these people in our expert directory this is a hypothetical question. Please do not email these people inviting them into your space.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in GUI, Ideas, Innovation ~ 6 Comments
Written by Bernie

Ok, ConceptShare has launched now, so there’s no more excuses to send designs by email anymore right?. (Free to try)

I have learned alot watching people using ConceptShare what I found most intriguing is that the design is now being used to initiate conversations. People now are just getting an invitation with a link to a workspace with a bunch of visuals and then they just start talking. - no verbal cues - no phone calls - Its an interesting thing to watch. If you show any one that walks by a few logos and ask what do they think, you will get an answer. For some reason people feel very comfortable giving opinions on visuals rather then obligatory politics or world issues. Visual feedback is usually easy for people because it is in their gut, it’s personal, yet they know they won’t be judged by it. And it’s faster for them to point out what they don’t like about something rather than write a story about it.

A lot of people from an outside perspective that hear about ConceptShare in passing like to say, “It’s neat but not sure I would use something like that, I’m not a designer…”. Trust me I have invited alot of these people into a ConceptShare workspace, and they have ALOT to say once they are in there. Almost anyone can make comments about usability of both interfaces and objects. Comments about color choices, ease-of-use, hard to read text, wrong language. You don’t have to be a designer to play, just a human. Sure, designer to designer feedback is always good but remember wisdom of crowds?.With email alone people are reluctant to share early designs or concepts. I say screw that. Put stuff up early and often. Scan sketches and post them. Do anything… just start a conversation. You would be amazed and how fast and how far you can take simple ideas when you have the frequent evolving feedback of others.

Have fun,

Bernie

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Ideas, Innovation, Product Design, Usability ~ No Comments
Written by Bernie

We are running at a rapid pace lately and we all wear many hats here and I had to quickly make up a postcard for a upcoming Trade show. I want to talk about 3 services (including ours) that make this really fast (and cheap) for us and how we use ConceptShare to develop them.

I have been using iStockphoto.com recently which is a great social stock art service. High quality photos at good prices. I usually have several tag lines in mind and a few vision ideas. I start browsing with some various keywords and save several to my light box in istock. At this point I have a lot of photo ideas now in my light box and I need to start incorporating them in some layouts to see how they workout. Now I don’t want to commit to any one image until we decide which direction we are going to go in, so I just copy the web preview image from istock. It has the watermark which is ok for now because the look/headline I want to develop first. I do wish they had a save comp like Comstock has for registered users. I just need something to get the idea across. It doesn’t have to be big just lose the watermark. But it’s all good, I start assembling some of the concepts in Photoshop and then I upload them into ConceptShare so I can share them with the rest of the team to help me make a decision. The comps are fairly low res, partly because the photos comps are low res but its just to help me narrow down some ideas and pick a few to develop more. I probably won’t purchase one until we are down to the final 1 or 2 tops.

ConceptShare enables me to setup a project with several concepts and I start adding some initial comments explaining where I was going with the creative choice. This will be the project where all visual design work related to this postcard will reside. I will upload the finals here as well for proof reading as they develop. New people added to the spot will see how the entire piece developed and be able to read the comments to see how we got here. Once I added a few people to the space I await their feedback and go onto something else. It takes less than an hour before the first few comments start to come in. They are very helpful in eliminating some of the choices. Some comments involve larger logo placement, headline changes and some color changes. I make some of these simple changes to the low res comps and upload them again. During the process one of the members is actually working from home. We have very little actually dialog besides ConceptShare comments and chat window.

As we get close to the final we have already gone through 4 rounds of new uploads with about 8 concepts inside of ConceptShare. The whole process happened over a span of about 4 hours. Which really isn’t bad because thats from start to final and I was able to do many other things during the time between uploads. It is very productive and I can see whats happening if I choose to, unlike email or other methods. As the design and headline was finalized I now feel comfortable purchasing the highres istockimage and assembling the final layout. I upload the final print ready version to ConceptShare for one last once over then I am ready to send them to the printer.

I have fallen in love with Overnightprints.com, a fantastic service that enables me to upload any print ready art or design using their wizard (which i don’t use really but good for non-designers). They print almost immediately and ship out next day in some instances and a few days for a bit cheaper. Some local printers wouldn’t even take the file til the week after. The print quality is amazing and you can proof right away. They do brochures, business cards, letterhead and post cards. They are a great service and I ecommend companies of all sizes giving them a whirl.

Have fun,
Bernie

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Business, ConceptShare, Ideas, Product Design ~ 8 Comments
Written by Bernie

Shel Israel …..good guy.

No seriously ….Anyone who puts nice guy on the business card…that is making a statement. But I can’t disagree. I had the opportunity to chat for a while with Shel before the talk …we had run into each other at TC7. He is a real person …no airs about him. You know in this world of BS it is cool to talk to someone like that. It makes the information he shares all the better.

I got to talk to Chris Clarke, who I had originally met at Mesh and who was responsible for my finding out about this event. It was great to hear that Thornley Fallis has an eye for talent. I think that he is going to be a person to watch as PR turns the corner on this social media thing. I remember being really impressed with the fact a PR student found out about mesh and made his way there. Great to see that good guys getting good jobs.

I met Jeremy Wright who I must admit I didn’t immediately recognized. Once introduced I had recalled reading many articles by him. It was very interesting to have the opportunity to talk with him, I would really like to talk more with him, great ideas and an interesting past which i think makes him what he is. Cool dude. Also ran into Mark Evans, who ironically has just left his post at the post to join forces with the the B5Media team ….sounds like a great match. I wish them lots of luck!

Donna Papacosta was there, who I had also met at Mesh. We had a great chat and I have been invited to do a podcast with her. I will besure to line that up when I have a chance the next time I am in TO.

Talking with the group after Shel’s talk. It was a real interesting as there was a healthy mix of people that provided for a wide array of interesting feedback in discussion. I am somewhat left with the feeling that there are still alot of people who are saying that they are getting it when they really aren’t. I think that more events like this will certainly go along way to spread the word.

What would be interesting to me is to know how companies broach the subject to clients. Or how they have adjusted the billings for these new services. I also wonder if the PR firms are holding back the reins. This is all very interesting to me and will go along way as i work with the PR program at Cambrian to rejig the program.

Thanks so much for letting in an outsider in to the group and I look forward to the next meet up.

Cheers

Scott

technorati tags:Shel, PRmeetup, Toronto, conceptshare

Blogged with Flock

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our web feed!

Posted in Ideas, Innovation, PR ~ 2 Comments
Written by Scott