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• Can iWork on the iPad?

  May 27, 2010

  Okay, so it’s impossible to shield yourself from the iPad hype. Especially for an Apple fanboy like myself. I mean, an entire episode of Modern Family revolved around it.  I’ve read the mammoth Arstechnica and iLounge reviews. I’ve stalked early adopters on New Jersey Transit to take a sneak peek. It got to the point where my wife limited my iPad talk to one mention a day.

  But let’s take a step back for a second. Leading up to Apple’s announcement of the product with all of the rumors circulating, I was most interested in the business case for the iPad. Why would someone want such a device, and how would it fit into their lives? Up until January this year, this space was mostly filled with netbooks for people who wanted smaller laptops to run Microsoft Office, check email, and browse the web. Sure, there were a few tablets still out there leftover from when Ja Rule was still popular. But by and large, tablets hadn’t caught on.

  What is the iPad good for? Whenever anyone asked me about the iPad, this was my answer: inherently, the laptop is a compromise. When you’re at the office, it isn’t as fast as a desktop nor does it have as big a screen built in. And when you’re away from the office, out of the box, it isn’t as light, simple, intuitive, fast, always connected, and long lasting battery-wise as I want it to be. In my dream world, I’d have a 27” iMac at work for all my power user creation needs (design, video, multimedia library, MLB.tv), and everywhere else, I’d have a supremely portable, simplified, thin client to do basic work (email, presentations, word processing/blogs, spreadsheets, calendar, address book) and browse multimedia content for inspiration (music, videos, magazines, newspapers, books, websites) without carrying around a lot of paper.

  So after my extensive research which was essentially an exercise in delaying the inevitable “buying a first generation device when it’s obvious you should never do that but you’re powerless to stop yourself,“ I took the plunge recently and ordered my iPad 3G. As the head of a hosted collaboration software company, I’m always looking at the next horizon for new ways of working digitally. It truly is a new day.

  Since I couldn’t find that many blog posts out there reviewing the iPad exclusively from a work perspective, I decided to set out on an ambitious five part series (I’m prone to never ending blog post series on bootstrapping and Economy 2.0) to delve into my experiences over the course of a month of using an iPad for work. Along the way, I’ll be inviting a few guest commentators to weigh in with their experiences.

  Although this is all probably just a ruse to finally convince myself to pull the trigger on an iPad, I figured others out there are wanting to know the answer to this burning question:

  “What would happen if I never turned on my laptop/desktop for a week and just used an iPad?“

  Stay tuned to find out!
  -Justin

  Continue Reading…

  

• Ning and the importance of a free version

  May 24, 2010

  Let’s talk about Ning. This is a timely topic since Ning has been in the news lately for replacing their CEO, cutting staff, and ending their free version. But occasionally we’ll get questions about how our service compares with Ning. We both offer platforms to create a social network for a group of people. Here are the main differences though:

  Differences between FMYI and Ning

  1. Ning is usually for public networking. FMYI is only for private invite-only groups, and we offer many levels of access permissions.
  2. Ning was created for people to network and communicate with each other, like a more social version of older tools like Yahoo Groups, or Google Groups. FMYI is specifically for collaboration, meaning the team of people are working together to achieve goals, such as managing projects, tracking contacts, and sharing resources in the workplace, in a class at school (college, university, or other higher education environment), or as part of a membership/networking association.
  3. Ning no longer offers a free version. FMYI has offered a free version for years, and always will.

  This brings us to a big question: why does FMYI believe in a free version? We think it’s important to let people experience what we’re all about without a limited time trial period. It take a little time for you to get to know us in terms of inviting people in to your site, experiencing the free email and phone support we offer, and trying out all the features we offer as activity ramps up in your site.

  We feel like the more time you spend with us, the more you’ll like us, and be interested in our upgraded features. But no pressure if you don’t want to upgrade, because you’re helping us to spread the word about FMYI with the people you invite into your FMYI site. And this viral word of mouth referrals are important for us to reach new clients. Tools like SurveyMonkey has had a commitment to providing support to their free users, and they’ve grown tremendously as a result of people spreading the word.

  So if having a free version is great, why did Ning stop offering one? A company has to make money, and Ning is smart to focus on boosting their revenue. At some point, even in this age of cheaper cloud computing, the cost of hosting millions of free users starts to have a major impact on the bottom line. If the percentage of paying users is in the single digits, that makes it tough unless you have major venture capital (2% of Evernote users pay but they have $25.5 million in funding) or other revenue streams to fund the product (less than 4% of Google Apps users pay but 95% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising).

  For FMYI, although we provide free support for all users, and free generates paying leads for us, our business development focus isn’t on the freemium business model. We spend most of our time generating revenue from our large corporate customers. This is key for the bootstrapping portion of our how we’ve grown over the years. It’s the notion that we try not to spend more than we earn. And we have a singular focus on providing a great collaboration platform, not on other activities that could distract from the quality of our service or our responsiveness.

  What do you think about the importance of free versions?

  -Justin

  Continue Reading…

  

• Five keys to collaboration success

  May 18, 2010

  Thinking about rolling out a collaboration site at work? Been researching online workspaces but you’re not sure how to get one going? There’s a lot of buzz about the social enterprise, collaboration software, crowdsourcing, etc. But frequently there are obstacles to getting full user adoption. Here are some lessons we’ve learned at FMYI after six years of empowering teams to make a difference:

  Download a copy of this presentation
  
  

  1. Rally your team around a goal.

  • Bring together people motivated to work together to achieve a goal.
  • Make it clear what they are responsible for contributing.
  • Focus in on how the collaborative effort benefits them.
  • Get support from leadership and share the results of the collaboration.

  Case study: A global hospitality corporation brought together green team members across hundreds of locations worldwide under the common banner of achieving their sustainability goals. They tailored their FMYI collaboration site to easily capture best practices and green team results. Everyone understood their posts would generate visibility for their sustainability efforts. Their CEO supported the initiative and had visibility to posts on the site, which gave transparency to the efforts of the green team and the VP of Environmental Affairs.

  2. Cut the red tape by making the business case for internal stakeholders like IT.

  • Focus in on how this specialized collaborative effort addresses a specific goal.
  • Be sure to convey how your initiative is different from others.
  • Make sure to address IT’s requirements and reduce their workload.
  • Lean on your vendors to help provide technical and customer support.

  Case study: A global media corporation rolled out an FMYI collaboration site focused on keeping everyone on the same page when it came to strategic planning. They wanted to make it easy to share information quickly, make changes to the site on the fly, and empower other team members to share information as well. This helped reduce the workload on IT by eliminating the need to deploy or customize another enterprise platform that was struggling to get user adoption. And FMYI addressed IT’s security requirements and provides all support needed, minimizing the burden on the media company’s team.

  3. Make it as easy as getting back on the bike.

  • To minimize the barrier to user adoption, set things up so the collaboration is as natural and familiar as possible.
  • With the rise of social networking, embrace the spirit of those sites to enhance adoption.
  • To create the conditions for maximum user adoption and stickiness, provide easy ways for people to collaborate together to answer questions, share updates, and get things done.

  Case study: A global sportswear corporation is using FMYI to easily and effective engage over six thousand athletes to provide input and data regarding new products. With a userbase reflecting a wide range of computer skills, and the importance of getting regular input from a cross section of athletes, FMYI’s social networking site look and feel helped increase user adoption, made the transition from an older solution seamless, and reduced the need for support. FMYI’s collaboration features also made the site more than a data repository and enabled collaborative conversations to happen, creating a private social network for greater engagement and insight.

  4. Give a helping hand right at the start.

  • It’s critical to understand how you can help the team achieve its goals, and build the collaborative effort around that. This includes learning what motivates most team members.
  • Involve key “change agent” team members in planning the rollout. They will give great input and assistance with getting others on board.
  • Schedule a kick off training event (in person, virtual via webinar, or a pre-recorded video/slide tour) to convey excitement of the benefits in addition to showing how things work.

  Case study: A multinational insurance corporation is using FMYI to help its salesforce improve results, track prospects, and manage clients. FMYI helped them understand the needs of its field force sales teams, worked closely with top agents across its salesforce, created customized template sites, and rolled out entertaining and approachable training sessions to engage the sales teams.

  5. Like karaoke, you need to rely on continuous improvement.

  • You can count on not getting it completely right the first time.
  • Ongoing support for the entire team is important for input to refine things.
  • It’s essential to have a solution that easy to update and change on your own.
  • Incorporating sustainability can help increase performance.

  FMYI provides all its customers free support no matter how small or large they are. This helps refine the features in our software. Configuration changes to FMYI sites are easy for site administrators to do without any technical knowledge, and updating pages in the site are intuitive for users. That way, the site stays relevant and useful over time. And FMYI’s commitment to sustainability means we minimize our environmental footprint, maximize our positive impact on our community, and empower our clients to do the same with built in triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit) features.

  Click here to view and download slides illustrating these five keys to collaboration success.

  -Justin

  Continue Reading…

  

• Three observations about FORTUNE Brainstorm Green

  April 21, 2010

  It’s been a week since I moderated my panel on sustainability employee engagement at FORTUNE Brainstorm Green 2010 and I’m still trying to digest the entire conference experience. Besides the beautiful setting and my “Hey, I’m from the Pacific Northwest” sunburn, I came away with three key observations:

  1. Collaboration is at an all time high.

  I have to say that the conference was unlike any other sustainability gathering I’ve ever attended. The level of discourse was frequently at the macro level, probably due to the preponderance of C-level executives in attendance, including Walmart Chairman Lee Scott and Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford. Ann Davidson at VOX Global had this to say:

  “...the third annual FORTUNE Brainstorm Green conference had the feel of a high school reunion where the star athletes and cheerleading captains (in this setting, major corporate CEOs and capitalistic entrepreneurs) are now happily walking the halls with the class nerds (the tree huggers and animal lovers).“

  I was struck by how much collaboration I saw going on, including references by corporations to what they’ve learned from partnering with NGOs and sustainability consulting firms. The atmosphere was all about thought provoking dialogue across stakeholders. And the Fortune Editors did a masterful job of facilitating the discussions to minimize speeches and get at pointed questions. The main message I heard was that corporations have learned that sustainability is good business, not just a values-based commitment. Because of these multinationals’ massive footprints, any improvements they make have major positive impacts on their industries. To his credit, Bill Ford said last year he could only attend to give his talk, but this year he wanted to attend the entire conference so he could learn more from everyone.

  2. Snakes on a plane? Nope - snakes on a stage.

  A priceless moment was when Julie Scardina of SeaWorld brought a few friends of hers on stage, and a 14-foot boa constrictor immediately took a liking to Andy Serwer, FORTUNE’s Managing Editor. It was a metaphor for the most polarizing moments during the conference.

  When Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant took the stage, the Twittersphere lit up with posts accusing him of sidestepping the big issues. But arguably the most controversial sentiments expressed came from long time environmental writer and creator of the seminal “Whole Earth Catalog,“ Stewart Brand. Once he started talking about being pro-nuclear and pro-biotechnology, to many environmentalists in the crowd, it felt as if he had transformed into a snake right before our eyes.

  I don’t know if I came away convinced, but it definitely took me down the path of questioning assumptions. And that’s what the conference did so well with so many thought provoking sessions on major polarizing issues. I’m looking forward to diving into Brand’s latest book, “Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.“

  3. Optimism for the future.

  For the most part, attendees were optimistic about the future of sustainability and the prospects of creating a new clean economy. Bill Gross‘ eSolar was out in force, and I wish I could have taken Mission Motors’ electric superbike out for a ride. I had a great talk with the folks at Unisource about their innovative sustainable packaging. And I was also inspired by my chats with Herman Miller, eBay, and many others.

  The intimate environment that the conference fostered helped make the conversations and breakout sessions more effective. I really enjoyed moderating my panel with Sodexo, Hyatt, NBC, and Ernst & Young. It was great to see so many great companies at our panel, including REI, Zipcar, Nordstrom, BMW, Chick-fil-A, and POET. My biggest takeaway from the session is how the trend of engagement is accelerating, and including more stakeholders including customers/clients/consumers. This definitely bodes well for FMYI’s approach to leverage our social media tools to make engagement more effective. I hope to post a transcript of our panel discussion soon.

  For next year, it would be great if FORTUNE Brainstorm Green covers “elephants in the room” in more depth, such as this quote from Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard:

  “Saving the economy by consuming more has to stop.“

  Also, with all the old and new economy power brokers and visionary NGOs in the same room, I’d love to see FORTUNE create more “roll up the sleeves” sessions to help forge new innovative partnerships to accelerate our transition to a triple bottom line economy. This could include building a 2020 or 2050 vision for a truly sustainable economy across all sectors, figuring out solutions to reduce the barrier to entry to new markets, or how to create economies of scale to revolutionize sustainable products and services. We all have a piece in creating sustainable prosperity for everyone, and everyone has something to gain from realizing this dream.

  -Justin

  P.S. To read a great summary of the conference, read FORTUNE Editor and conference creator Marc Gunther’s blog post. Also, there’s video online of select sessions. And special thanks to Marc and Starbucks VP of Global Responsibility Ben Packard for giving me the opportunity to moderate a panel at the conference!

  Continue Reading…

  
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