Who's interested in project management & collaboration tools? And...

[Miles Fidelman]

.... where are they and how do I get their attention?

Hi Folks,

A lot of folks here are involved in using/developing technology to
support various forms of networked collaboration, with particular
leanings toward open, decentralized approaches. So I wonder if I might
solicit opinions on the following.....

I've been working on some open source software to support virtual teams
and projects - putting some of the experiences and techniques I've
acquired over the years into code - and I'm trying to gather some
support via Kickstarter.

The thing is, I'm having a very hard time getting people to even visit
the project's web page - so far, only about 300 people have visited the
Kickstarter page, despite some serious attempts to spread the word
across various email lists, twitter, and so forth.

It's one thing if people were looking at the page and not contributing,
but I can't even seem to get people's attention - which suggestions one
or more of four things:

- nobody cares about project management (I hope this isn't the case - I
know administrivia isn't sexy, but an awful lot of people are working on
an awful lot of projects, and getting buried in mountains of paper,
email, phone calls, texts, meetings, and yellow stickies. I sure know
that I'm always looking for ways to declutter that side of my life)

- I'm not reaching people who care.

- I'm reaching people, but not getting their attention.

- I'm reaching people, getting their attention, but not providing enough
motivation to go the next step and click their mouse (on

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947703258/smart-notebooks-keeping-on-the-same-page-across-th


So... I'd really welcome any feedback on the questions who cares about
project management & collaboration tools, how to reach them, and what
might motivate them enough to take a look at what I'm doing?

Thanks very much,

Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra

[Mark Adam]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 7:25 PM, Miles Fidelman <mfid...@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

.... where are they and how do I get their attention?

Hi Folks,

A lot of folks here are involved in using/developing technology to support various forms of networked collaboration, with particular leanings toward open, decentralized approaches.   So I wonder if I might solicit opinions on the following.....

I've been working on some open source software to support virtual teams [...] 

The thing is, I'm having a very hard time getting people to even visit
the project's web page - so far, only about 300 people have visited the
Kickstarter page, despite some serious attempts to spread the word
across various email lists, twitter, and so forth.

An option you seem not to have considered:  people have been introduced to project management sites (campfile, asana) and don't find (yet) another one sexy.  It looks like what you really need to sell is not project management, per se (because that is already available), but p2p solutions for the same because that's what differentiates your proposal from what's already out there.

mark

[Melvin Carvalho]

Have you seen bettermeans?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlnMWlvw9g
 

[Miles Fidelman]

Mark, Thanks! That does seem to track the comments I've been seeing
from others, and I'm working to fix the pitch at Kickstarter. Now if I
can figure out how to get that message to folks who might be interested
and get them to take a look...

Best,

Miles

[Miles Fidelman]

Hi Melvin,

>
>
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947703258/smart-notebooks-keeping-on-the-same-page-across-th
>
>
> So... I'd really welcome any feedback on the questions who cares about
> project management & collaboration tools, how to reach them, and what
> might motivate them enough to take a look at what I'm doing?
>
>

> Have you seen bettermeans?
>
> www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlnMWlvw9g

> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlnMWlvw9g>
>

Have now, and in a sense it's the exact opposite of I'm working on - it
imposes its view of how to manage collaboration, and it's a centralized
system.

Most of the feedback I'm getting has been telling me that I need to to a
better job of differentiating what I'm doing from the mass of project
management products and services, so...

1. Simplicity: The model is more about keeping everyone on the same page
(like actors following the same script) than about lots of process. In
the case of project management, a script looks more like a list of
action items - hence the reason that an awful lot of project managers
end up simply keeping track of things in spreadsheets. The trick is how
to share the same "script" across the net.

2. Distributed and Peer-to-Peer: If you're happy with sharing a
GoogleDocs spreadsheet, this project isn't for you. If you like linked
spreadsheets, but wished they actually worked across the net, and used
open formats and protocols - that's what I'm shooting for. Write an
action item list in a spreadsheet-like format, email it to
collaborators, then as folks update things, those updates propagate
automagically - no sorting through tons of emails to extract updates.
(Also allow more wiki-like things, for Q&A, background materials, etc. -
again, distributed rather than all running on a central machine).

3. Open everything.

[Miles Fidelman]

Jay Sulzberger wrote:
>
>>>
>>> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947703258/smart-notebooks-keeping-on-the-same-page-across-th
>>>
>>>
>
> Perhaps just limited encrypted Usenet?

Funny you should mention that. NNTP is, to my mind, the world's
greatest messaging protocol. Back in the day, Netscape built a
"collaboration server" that added access controls and some management
functions to an NNTP server - it was an incredibly powerful tool.

In some sense, the model sitting in the back of my mind, is:
- NNTP (with encryption and crypto-based access controls)
- easier management of (private) group creation
- messages containing HTML & JavaScript that can do some embedded
threading (think about sending a Wiki page, the initial page shows up as
a news message, edits are automatically applied rather than showing up
as separate messages)

>
> Also perhaps:
>
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant-like-dropbox-but-with-your-own
>
> with a daemon that labels files, presents histories, and such like.
>
>
Yes... saw that a while back - does look really interesting.

Miles

[Bryce Lynch]

Search: "distributed version control fossil"

---
The Doctor [412/724/301/703][ZS]
https://drwho.virtadpt.net/
Sent from a Global Frequency satphone.

[Miles Fidelman]

Thanks to all who've sent me comments!

The new, and hopefully improved Kickstarter page and video are now up at:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947703258/smart-notebooks-keeping-on-the-same-page-across-th

Take a look! Comments welcome. So are donations, likes, tweets, diggs,
+1s, re-distribution, blog posts, and any other visibility! And... if
you happen to have a large, distributed project coming up - a
conference, event, crowd sourcing effort, flash performance, disaster
response exercise that just begs for a collaboration support tool -
let's talk!

Best,

Miles

[Miles Fidelman]

That's the intent:

- Initial document distribution will be by email, so PEM for distribution.

- Peer-to-Peer communication between documents will be over an encrypted
channel

-- model is a publish-subscribe "channel" per set of linked documents
with a channel key (perhaps several keys with different privileges)
-- channel key will be generated and distributed as part of initial
document distribution
-- still thinking through the threat model and responses (e.g., if a
single copy of a document is compromised, there goes the channel)

The early prototypes will probably NOT be encrypted, but will have hooks
in the design.

Miles


Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
> Will this be end-to-end encrypted?
>
> -Jonathan
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Miles Fidelman <mfid...@meetinghouse.net>
> *To:* The Next Net
> <building-a-distributed...@googlegroups.com>;
> "Liberation Technologies unho...@googlegroups.com"
> <liberat...@lists.stanford.edu>;
> freedombo...@lists.alioth.debian.org;
> tiddl...@googlegroups.com; theory and practice of decentralized
> computer networks <p2p-h...@lists.zooko.com>; web...@librelist.com
> *Cc:* unho...@googlegroups.com
> *Sent:* Friday, August 10, 2012 5:10 PM
> *Subject:* [Freedombox-discuss] Update: Who's interested in
> project management & collaboration tools?

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