A sense of responsibility to the community

It's been a few weeks since my last post. It's not that I haven't had anything new to report, just that we have been in the midst of trying to battle our way through what has ended up being our greatest technical challenge...making a social calendar. I'm happy to report that we finally found a template and user process that looks and works well.

You wouldn't think that making a calendar where your friends could look at your schedule and invite you to events would be so difficult but my goodness has it been. The trickiest thing about web design is that it is near impossible to see your site through the user's eyes. Each template was completely a riddle to users. They could never figure out how to input and access the contents, therefore it was just a useless feature. However, we figured that this feature is going to be a huge part of the service so we had to go back to the drawing board at least three times and rebuild the design from scratch, incorporating feedback and new ideas. We've done it so many times that I actually felt obligated to apologize to our developer.

Well today we got the new calendar up and it looks and works well. I've had users play with it while I silently observed and to my relief they have been able to do everything it offers without coming to the procedural roadblocks they were coming to before. Of course, it still needs some tweaking but I am confident it is a calendar that everyone will be able to use without any instruction.

Onto other things, I have my meeting next week with the Venture Capital firm mentioned in the last post. I have been putting together a presentation as well as compiling an up to date business plan. The benefit of doing a business plan over and over again is that you can see how much you have developed over time. I look at the one I did in March and I can see we are miles of ahead of where we were only 3-4 months ago. I also see how my knowledge of the potential of bodbook grows with every version of the plan. I feel very confident that the VC I am meeting with will be impressed by my level of market knowledge and insight into how our technology will change how word of mouth travels at the very least in the post-secondary market.

I also came across this great article that describes a recent study talking about how technology is giving those that are naturally inclined to share their opinions about products more effective tools to get the word out. The entire article supported our model and niche, but what really stuck out to me was the reason that these evangelists gave for sharing their word of mouth...community service.

These evangelists thought that it was important that others be given the benefit of their opinion so that they could make informed decisions. This was an incredible find because it supports what I believed would be a great motivation for our connectors to share their reviews...a sense of responsibility to the community. That's why with every discount coupon we distribute we include a reminder that says "Remember to share a review to save your friends money, and earn reward points". This statement is designed to emphasize to our connectors that simply sharing their review helps save their friends money. They don't have to do anything that they were not inclined to do before, just that the benefits of what they do will now be greater.

As I learn more about social behaviour I become more confident in the power of bodbook to enhance and accelerate word of mouth to the benefit of all our users. It's exciting to know that what you are doing really will transform the world for the better of all those involved.

Anyhoo...I'll let you know how my meeting with the VC goes.