Aug
21
Alpha 2.0 coming soon
Filed Under alpha, production | Leave a Comment
In the next week or two, we’ll be relaunching our alpha site with a few key features that should make the site a live and working local event discovery tool. I’ll be sure to update everyone with an email and invite you all.
Key improvements include:
- Complete working offering (no more bugs or random pages that don’t go anywhere)
- Access for all browsers (IE, Safari, Firefox, Opera and a few others)
- The ability to invite your friends to events through our guest list feature
- Simple event management and tracking with a new dashboard
- Improved recommendations through our updated suggestion engine
- Capability to invite friends to the Event Seek system (more users and less closed doors)
Before you know it, you’ll be discovering new events through Event Seek, inviting your friends and tracking all of your interesting events in one place - just like you’ve always dreamed.
Get excited - alpha 2.0 is just over the horizon!
Jul
2
Coming soon…
Filed Under production | Leave a Comment
* This message has been brought to you by the Event Seek Production Team*
Greetings everyone! I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your excellent feedback to date. Please know that all of your suggestions are being weighed and prioritized each and every day, so please keep them coming and I will make sure to let you know when you can start to see your ideas in motion.
Just a couple of updates on what you can expect to see in the coming weeks. My first priority is getting Event Seek compatible with Internet Explorer (versions 6 and 7). While our front-end programmer spends his evenings developing nefarious plans to facilitate the downfall of Microsoft, both Connor and I realize that accomodating 60% of the browsing market is substantially more than a “nice-to-have”.
Also, look out for Version 2 of Searching and Sorting in the coming weeks. I have a little secret for you all, good recommendations start with a good search engine. Once we fine tune our search methodology, our recommendation algorithm will have the room and flexibility it needs to grow and develop over time.
Keep the suggestions coming! I will let everyone know when new features get pushed to our Alpha site.
Jun
23
Let’s be clear on exactly what an “alpha release” is
Filed Under alpha, product design, production | Leave a Comment
Wikipedia defines an alpha release as “The alpha build of the software is the build delivered to the software testers, that is persons different from the software engineers, but usually internal to the organization or community that develops the software. In a rush to market, more and more companies are engaging external customers or value-chain partners in their alpha testing phase. This allows more extensive usability testing during the alpha phase.”
Say what you want about Wikipedia and whether or not it will ever make a valid source, but they are dead on here. Alpha is a chance for us as business owners to take the software out of the hands of the development team and have some of the QA department really take a look at the product. In many cases an alpha release is internal to the company - no one else is allowed to see or use it - especially given than an alpha release tends to be buggy and inconsistent.
No, we don’t have a formal QA department. Tristan and I do our best, but we’ve both got about 100 other jobs to do any given day, so we’re soliciting your help. Many of you’ve asked me for an invitation - and many of you haven’t. We want to see as many people using the product as possible and deep down I know you all want to play with it, so yes everyone will get an invitation. At least everyone who won’t go sharing our hard work with the press or our competitors.
It’s late Sunday night and we all still wish we had three more days to work on the product, but we’re sticking to schedule. We’ll deliver invites tomorrow morning and unleash a bevy of friends and supporters on Event Seek. Be kind, but be brutal. Tell us what works, what doesn’t, what needs to be fixed, and what needs to be added. Event Seek is a consumer driven application that is designed to help people discover and attend events - so tell us what we’re doing to support that and what we could be doing better.
Imagine you have an early pass to the development of facebook, MySpace, or Google. Think about how many times you’ve wished a website would do something differently or offer you different functionality - this is your chance. You have a great power, and with great power comes great responsibility - we need you to talk to us. Don’t just keep it to yourself when something doesn’t work right - tell us! Don’t mutter when you wish another feature existed - tell us! Links to the forums can be found in your alpha toolbar - don’t be shy.
This is our alpha launch of Event Seek, but this is your chance to shape a young product and a young company.
Jun
20
Time to ship the product
Filed Under alpha, product design, production | Leave a Comment
Our invitations to private alpha hit mailboxes monday morning. If you haven’t already signed up, send an email to MakeMeATester at event-seek.com and we’ll send an invite your way. It should be pretty cool to see all the neat things we’ve been working on. It’s time, as they say, to ship the product. We set a deadline for ourselves and have stuck to that deadline.
We will deliver alpha on time.
Is every last piece of functionality we dreamed up for alpha included? No.
Are their bugs that we don’t know about? Surely.
Are there bugs that we do know about? You betcha.
Are their portions of the website that could and probably should work better? Uh Huh.
Do I wish I had several more weeks to go back to the development team and get this thing right? More than you know.
It is time, however, to ship the product. It will inevitably have errors, minor bugs and things we wished we noticed before the launch, but that is okay. That is sort of the idea of an alpha launch - put a stake in the ground and push yourselves to deliver. We could spend the next three months building the product, getting it perfect and you know how we would feel three days before launch? Exactly the same we feel now - wishing we had more time to go tweak.
There is another incredible benefit to a private alpha launch - customers. We get to see in a real live working environment what the consumers use, what they like, and what they find difficult. The best product design comes from customers and we want to harness that. Sure they’ll dream up ideas we’ll never be able to complete anytime soon, but I’ll bet more than anything else, they’ll want the very features we want and help us shape what those features should look like.
Is my development team wary of what people will say? Yeah. Should they be? Maybe a little. Am I? Of course. Do the vast benefits outweigh the risks? Damn straight. It’s time for Event Seek alpha.
We may not yet be ready for prime time, but much like “Magnum,” the preview is still pretty breathtaking.
May
7
So, after all of this hoopla about me “stepping back” and getting out of the way of production, it has been a fairly smooth transition. Thanks go to both Event Seek’s and Hashrocket’s teams, but mostly to the respective production managers, Tristan and Rein.
To give it bit of background, we’re now in our third week of full-scale production and we’ve had a few hiccups in the first two weeks, but are settling in. After two weeks, it was clear to both Tristan and I that we weren’t building at a speed which would allow us to hit expected milestones and goals. Obviously this was incredibly disappointing to us and something we had to remedy right away (we’re not made of funding). As a young CEO, I really had a few options:
- Get on the phone with Rein and hoot and holler that they need to work faster
- Get on the phone with Rein’s boss and hoot and holler that they need to work faster
- Threaten to stop the project, not pay my bills, etc.
- Give my production manager (Tristan) a few days to create a plan to get us back on schedule
In keeping with the “stepped back” Connor, we chose the fourth option. You know what happened? Exactly what needed to.
I came to work Monday morning to a full status assessment - a complete an honest review of our progress so far, identification of the major issues that had plagued us, and simple next steps to remedy the situation. I should comment this wasn’t halfway done either. This was exhaustive and brutally honest. Tristan had spent a significant amount of time talking with Rein (their production manager) about the progress, the issues, and how to get back on track. Together they were able to identify the issues and develop a plan to overcome them.
The really cool thing about working with talented motivated individuals is that even though you know they are good and you have high expectations from them - they can exceed those high expectations.
Obviously we’ll continue to track our progress and have honest reviews of where we are, but we’re already getting back on track. Who’s ready for Event Seek Private Alpha testing? Counting the weeks…
Apr
28
Hitting our stride
Filed Under management styles, production | Leave a Comment
After a lovely weekend in Charlottesville, Va at the Foxfield races, we’re back to work in Atlanta.
Starting the third week of full-scale production, our team is really beginning to hit its stride. We’ve worked out a few of the kinks associated with working in different locations and having the development team split between Atlanta and Jacksonville. I’d like to give credit here both to our development partner, Hashrocket, Andrew (our front-end guy), and Tristan. Specifically Tristan has really taken up the responsibility of making sure all of the pieces are moving smoothly and making sure everyone has the direction they need to move as quickly as possible.
Because of the progress we’re making, we are hoping to have a private alpha version of Event Seek available for testing by friends and family in the next month or so. We’ll put up a semi-working version of the product for everyone to check out and give feedback on. You’ll all be part of the development process, sharing what you like, don’t like, what you want to see, and what you managed to break. Keep your eyes open…
I’d like to take a moment as well to comment on some of the production tactics we’re using that have been working well:
- Front-end driven development - Thanks to the hard work put in by Tristan and Andrew, much of the design for the product is already completed. This allows them to sit down with our development team and walk them through how the site will actually work when it is being used. Nothing paints a picture for developers like the ability to “see” the finished product.
- Output focused - The team overall is very focused on generating valuable output. Rather than tackle big meaty problems off the bat, we’ve tried to break them into smaller pieces that can be completed and show meaningful progress. Not only does this keep me (the end client) happy, but it also allows us to very clearly track and understand our successes and what is holding us back.
- Distinct roles and responsibilities - Even though I struggled with the idea at first, we have all begun to really adapt to our different roles. Everyone on our team knows what they are responsible for and is focused on delivering their piece of the puzzle. This makes sure that we aren’t all looking over each other’s shoulders and second guessing work. At the end of the day, I believe this is making everyone more productive and happier.
Tristan and I certainly didn’t plan all of these facets in advance - it is a very organic and constantly changing and improving process. Our production processes will continue to get better and better over time. I just keep my fingers crossed that we don’t screw up anything big before then.
Kudos to the team for their progress to date. Next time maybe I’ll talk about all the things we’re doing poorly. I wouldn’t hold your breath though…