SharedBook: On Demand

Disruptive Learning …

My friend Tom Ryan at Bessemer Venture Partners recently reported about his participation in a $2.7M Series A round with San Francisco based Grockit.

Grockit has been in the online learning space for a couple of years now, but has apparently decided to reinvent its business model with technology they describe as MMOL - Massively Multiplayer Online Learning – on the theory that students learn best from each other.

Tom’s pumped, but nobody’s talking. Not Grockit, not the investors, and not the media. There’s a complete vacuum around the specifics of what MMOL will actually be.

From what I gather, this is a fairly recent shift for them so I’m not quite sure how far along they are in commercializing the product. To be quite honest, I’m not even sure how to evaluate the placement. The VC community is an interesting bunch to say the least.

I guess I’ll just have to take Tom’s exuberance as a positive signal and wait for the details to surface.

The Customer Is Always Right?

When it comes to Usability, there is always a lingering question for me:

How do you know you aren't just building a self-serving Web site?

Surely, there will always be biases by the information designer or the creative studio as to what is the simplest and most engaging design.  The goal, of course, is to build a site that an average user can successfully navigate.  And an average user would never have the detailed knowledge of a Web site that the information designer has.

A common solution involves the use of "personas." You create a fictionalized customer with a personality and a list of goals.  Then you pretend to be this persona and try to make use of the Web site you are designing.  The idea is that accessing things from a very specific agenda will give you new insight into the usability of your site and allow you to make changes to accommodate your persona.

But does this really work?  I was reading a blog entry by Mark Hurst recently ('On product management, personas, and customer focus').  He points out that nothing can replace actually speaking with your customers (or at least listening to their feedback).  And I have to agree with him.

There are, in my opinion, two critical issues with "persona" based design.  The first one is choosing the right personas.   If you pick based on your intended demographic instead of your actual demographic, then you aren't looking at your average user.  It becomes a matter of your biases being migrated from your design beliefs to your persona beliefs.

And suppose you do successfully get your personas right.  The second issue is your ability as an actor.  The underlying assumption has to be that the persona is someone other than you.  So how well you are able to get into someone else's head and behave as they would becomes the challenge.  And even good actors don't always envision the role the same way.

Bottom line is that creating a good user experience must always start with the customer.  Then it is the role of a good designer to take their feedback and channel it into a good design.  The customer IS always right in Web site design.

Being SMART in Sports ...

I like waking up in the morning and logging miles. Biking, running or even swimming, all these are a great way for me to start the day. To clear my mind, organize my thoughts, and get ready for the challenges of a brand new day.  In fact the idea for our Open API came to my mind during one of my early morning runs. The fresh air, the quiet peaceful sunrise, and the high adrenalin make my thinking sharp and focused. This is where I get the best ideas, and why I like exercising so much.

But, sometimes, all this is not enough to get me out of bed bright and early, before the sun is out. And at such times, I realize that I need to set a new goal for myself.

As managers, setting goals is our second nature. Everyone speaks about SMART goals (SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely). Setting really SMART goals is an art that requires skill and experience. When it comes to software, I know how to set SMART goals for myself and for my employees, as well as coach others in doing so.

Often, as I coach new managers, we discuss SMART goals. And they find it tricky defining specific, measurable, realistic goals.

This time when I tried to apply these principles to my favorite hobby, suddenly it became tricky for me. To make sure it is timely and specific, I set a particular race as a goal race. Yet, how do I make sure that my goal is realistic, but not easy? How do I measure it? Every race course is different; even the same course on a different day, with different weather conditions can be different. I turned back to all my management experience, trying to apply the same principles to set my race goal – quite challenging. Eventually, with some help from my coach, I managed to do it, and set a SMART goal for myself.

In software projects, when you set good SMART goals – magic happens. Suddenly, the plan becomes clearer. Making a decision on what is important, and what can be spared or postponed to a later phase, becomes very easy in light of the goal. Projects just start running fast forward when you define your goals well. In many cases developers come back to me amazed, saying they never thought they could do this stuff.

The same magic just happened to me in sports now. Suddenly, I got my motivation back. Getting up in the morning and hitting the road feels good. And I am amazed to discover new things about myself as an athlete, doing stuff I never thought I was capable of.

Once again (last time was when I was doing a fast bike race), I discovered how much this crazy hobby of mine, and this crazy job of mine have in common. Both bring huge satisfaction. J

If you want to learn more about SMART goal setting, here is a nice Web site I recently came across discussing how to set goals.

The Marketer's Apprentice

In a previous marketing life I was, in essence, the brand steward of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.  Well, the assistant brand steward, actually.  Cocoa and Fruity Pebbles.  Yum!

And in strategic terms, I was always told by those who knew that there was great value in creating or licensing spokescharacters to promote a brand.  I was particularly impressed with the ability of spokescharacters to yield substantial equity over years and years, as I watched celebrities come and go.  "An animated character never takes the perp walk," or so the joke went.  Fred and Barney certainly were model citizens on my watch.

I’m not tempted yet to commission Susie SharedBook.  But after witnessing the Michael Vick affair … it’s a lesson, isn’t it?  I wonder how that "swoosh" is going to look on an orange jumpsuit …

ABCs of the SharedBook API

Hi, I'm Benjamin Horst. I fill a variety of roles here at SharedBook including product management and community relations. I'm filling in for Ann today since she posted yesterday in someone else's place. 

We just enhanced a section of the SharedBook Web site catering to developers interested in our Open API. Here I'll describe some of the resources available on these pages to help you find what you need more quickly, so you can come to understand our system faster. This information should be helpful if you are interested in working with our API, or possibly entering the SharedBook Open API Challenge, which we introduced this week.

We provide a general overview of what can be done with the API on the Developers' home page. This is a good page to show to marketers and non-tech people, but if you're looking for the meat of the site, you can skip over it.

Another page will introduce you to the content types that appear in SharedBook's printed books. This page is called the "Starter Kit" and you will find it a good starting point if you're not deeply familiar with our online application and printed output.

Once you're a bit familiar with our terminology and the final form of our printed products, you'll be ready to hit our Methods documentation page. Each method is listed on this page under its general type, and you'll find its parameters spelled out on its own page linked from here.

Now, to really get an understanding of how to use these API Methods, you'll probably want to see some code. We've designed two pages for you. The first is our Resources page, containing API wrappers for PHP, Java and Python, with ASP coming soon.

The second is our Examples page, with actual components that we've developed using our API. Feel free to download these, inspect them, copy them and do whatever you need to learn from them.

To wrap up this quick review of our online support for API developers, we have started two Google Groups. For detailed discussions and technical questions, please join our SharedBook APIs group. If you'd like to follow a less-trafficked group to keep up with our general activities, join or visit the SharedBook Announce group.

With Appreciation

It is hard to believe that Friday is almost here again -- this has been another very busy week around SharedBook! We're in the process of introducing the CarePages Keepsake Book and the SharedBook Open API Challenge, our first developer contest. We also relaunched SharedBook.com which produced some late nights and strained eyes for Andrew, Gokce and Tracey, as well as several others. Check it out if you get the chance. The new features include an enhanced developer section for anyone that is interested in working with our API.

Before the week gets away from us, we would like to acknowledge a few individuals that have mentioned SharedBook recently. Kristen Nicole of Mashable, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks and John Musser of Programmable Web have posted information regarding the SharedBook Open API Challenge. Blog2Print was featured on the BizIII podcast by Les Bain and Mike Hughes and Taeho Lim mentioned the widget on Databazaar's PrinTips blog. Thank you for noticing how much Blog2Print simplifies the book making process -- that is the basis for everything SharedBook offers! Thank you to all.

Learning the Lingo

As the new kid on the block (I'm just into my third week now), I have already complied an extensive list of new words and phrases.  Some of them are standard publishing terms- like “full bleed” (this refers to an image appearing on a page without any borders).  Some are SharedBook vernacular like "book making space" (a BMS is the storage area on the SharedBook server where we store your work while you are creating your new book).

This all reminds me of my days at Hertz.  When I started work to design their Web site, I had already worked in car rental for over 10 years.  I was so fluent in "rent-a-car speak" that I didn't even know it was a foreign language to the rest of the world.  It took a customer to correct my thinking.

One of our most commonly used terms was 'fleet' (this refers to all the vehicles the company offers).  The Web site had a popular section called "Fleet Guide." This particular customer innocently asked, "What do you mean fleet?  Do you now rent ships or something?"

It turned out every customer we spoke to thereafter informed us that they found the term odd as well.  And the popular section of the site wasn't always hitting its target audience.  So we changed the words, and ever since it has been known as the "Vehicle Guide."  No more confusion.

In a Web 2.0 world, there are new words coined everyday.  At SharedBook, we have new terms for our customers to learn.  The trick will be to limit our lingo as much as possible and, when we need to introduce new terms, make sure that our customers get the benefit of a handy definition for each.

These Guys Get It!

The Internet and personal computers have certainly ushered in a new era. Digital content is here to stay and may even be the medium of choice for creation, storage and at least initially … consumption.

Many of you music aficionados have been ripping your CDs, purchasing digital downloads, subscribing to all-you-can-eat Web based music services, and even satellite radio, and I’m sure you’ve come to realize the ease and viability of listening to your music can very much be limited by your venue, device and service.

How do you listen to your iPod in the house? Do you walk around with ear buds? Do you have a dock in the kitchen? How do you change the song from the living room?

Do you sit in front of your computer listening to your Rhapsody music service? What about your Sirius subscription for the car? Does it play in the house too?

I’ve been on the hunt to unlock my digital music library and came across Sonos. They’re based out in Santa Barbara, CA. and have been around for a few years. These guys get it: existing digital content (your music, and subscription services) and a multi-zone home audio system that’s moderately priced, sets up in roughly 15-20 minutes and has the reliability of dial-tone. Not to mention that the UI on the controller will knock your socks off.

In short, you can play your digital music on your traditional analog stereo equipment, bookshelf and/or in-wall speakers. You have complete control over volume and song/playlist selection on a per zone(room) basis and can even select party mode so all zones receive the same tunes.

The Web is great and digital media is liberating, but somehow as we move forward our content gets locked into the digital world and the traditional consumption models get lost!

To me, Sonos reminds me of SharedBook: Web to Print, Reverse Publishing and Blog2Print!

SharedBook Open API Challenge Starts Today

We're in the process of launching our first developer contest today, the SharedBook Open API Challenge. The 40-day contest will award the best extensions from third party applications to SharedBook in three categories: social networking, photo sharing and desktop applications or collaborative online communities. It is open to all programming languages.

Dion Almaer of Ajaxian.com and Benny Schlesinger, CTO of Jacada, will join a panel of SharedBook representatives (Ze'ev Bubis, Peter Budd and John Paul Lorenti) to evaluate the entries based on their business utility, originality and technical elegance. The winners in each of the three categories will receive their choice of an OpenMoko Neo 1973 mobile phone, a 4GB iPhone™ or $500.

We were inspired to offer a quick contest after it only took our developers a few days to show us a working example of the Blog2Print widget. Entries will be accepted through Sept. 30. For more information, please go to www.sharedbook.com/apichallenge. 

SXSW 2008 Panel Picker

Just FYI, the 2008 SXSW Interactive Panel Picker went live today. If you're planning to attend SXSW, or just interested in learning more, please check out Caroline's proposed session entitled, "Make More Money: Set Your Web Content Free." SXSW panels are selected based on feedback from the community. You can create a quick sign in to rate and comment on the sessions you think sound the most interesting.

SXSW is currently planning to include 80 sessions from the Panel Picker in the 2008 event. With 683 different panel ideas submitted, we are going to need everyone's help to make the cut! If you click on search options underneath the header on the top left of the main page, a green box will pop up that will help you navigate through the proposed sessions.