no john

universal angst all around

i don’t know what to do

i have been so busy myself

Matt Madsen to team, John, me show details Jul 5 (6 days ago) Reply

I wouldn’t consider my attitude panicky so much as concerned about reality—and I feel like that’s my role, in some sense: the grounded guy.

I’d also like to emphasize that there’s a huge difference between giving a project enough time and having no time line. So, what can we expect to have done ~~- and done right -~~ by mid-August? (It doesn’t sound like squatting and cloudDB will be too bad.) And what’s going into the phase after that?

Emery Dora to team, Matt, John show details Jul 9 (2 days ago) Reply

I’ve had a chance to meander through this thread and other communications from throughout the past weeks. Some comments are below:

On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 3:44 PM, team srini wrote: > > ok > > 1) to enter this process properly, step one is brainstorm right ? would you > like to talk about some other things you would like to see ?

The key here is “like to talk” – it would behoove us to have at least one conference call per week, though probably 2-3 is better – having John in on at least one call at some point would be key. It’s been fairly evident that emails have been getting lost in the ether and we have not yet developed an optimized way to use MetaNotes for project prioritization and task-flow.

About main things I’d like to see – number one has been bandied about since February – initiating privacy and permissions on workspaces and notes. We need to map out the murkiness of how this will be implemented so that there’s a clear plan (i.e. what Matt was talking about in an email below – do we have separate groups with differing access permissions – such as family members, workmates, college buddies, etc)

2) look at flowpath.com – i really, really like their UI.

3) forgot about printing, search and export options.

Mapping a clear path to what we’d like to see with these functions will enable implementation

4) bookmarklet for time log. netvibes widget. igoogle widget. pageflakes widget. integrate with jott. test integration with pbwiki. alternate brand experiments.

Bookmarklet for timelog would be great, the others I see as secondary to the main architectural changes that need to occur in the next six weeks or so.

5) other technologies on the grill are Gears (formerly google gears), RSS, Jabber and oAuth.

Gears would be great – these technologies should fall lower on the prioritization list below the key main functionality issues which will get us to a real beta launch

6) note level includes things like:

4 comments (works like blog entry comments = pure linear)

4 better conversation threading – I combine this and comments in my mind, seems like similar technology

7 rating/voting (thumbs up thumbs down or one to five stars?)

3 send to (another) space – also, copy/paste/duplicate functionality for notes

5 link to another note

6 start a subpage from this note

2 don’t let other users delete my note (well they can delete it but it only is deleted-to-them)

1 lock this note and don’t let anyone move it

Some nice features here – again, this needs to be prioritized. I’ve added numbers to each according to how I view the importance for implementation – thoughts on this from you guys would be great. Another nice feature would be a tool for selecting multiple notes for movement in order to better organize spaces – i.e. ctrl-click on notes and then you can move them en masse, or have an arrangement tool for them (ie. organize into a grid, a row, a column)

UI level things:

2 a thicker top toolbar for common operations: create note, create space, create image note, insert widget (youtube/scribd/slideshare/slide etc), etc

maybe options along a bottom toolbar

2 better menus

4 a dynamically updating note-zoop panel so you can see what notes are on a space better – this can be done very creatively, and we’ve talked about several ideas for this. The basics should be implemented first, IMO

5 add more space at the top of a space (scroll all spaces down) agreed this would be nice, but it’s tough for me to visualize – is this like the ‘add rows’ function in excel?

3 select multiple notes with an arrow tool and link them, move them, windowshade-all – cool…. see my comment above

1 better welcome sequence – crib some UI ideas here from tumblr et al

Again, these tasks need to be prioritized, not listed. Number one priority should be a clean landing space linking to an interactive walkthrough, and some well-made videos demonstrating functionality. Let’s all powwow on the best way to create a compelling welcome space!

space level includes things like:

let the space creator create a “splash” note that all visitors see to define the space

2 notifications – someone left you a note on this space

1 privacy – set a password for this space

4 teamwork – send this space to other people so it appears in their metaspace too, create spaces in other people’s accounts, let people subscribe to a space

5 views – see this space with all these notes on it – a pop-out with the entire space would be cool – especially if you can navigate to somewhere in the space by clicking the pop-out

3 better inbox

3 integration of time log with spaces

Privacy, again, is the number one priority here. This really should be top of the priority list, period. Another thing on the space level is better organization/navigation abilities. This could be accomplished partially through a pop-out window a la number 5 above. Having some way to subcompartmentalize a space for additional organization hierarchy would be awesome to me, though I’m unclear on the intricacies of implementing such a feature.

user-level includes things like:

let them make all the fonts on the interface permanently larger, smaller etc

what teams are they part of?

who are they related to and how?

how do users discover one another?

there are many more specs. i have been using metanotes to do this in various spaces, but it would be super keen to consolidate these somewhere. one idea, i think this would be very nice, would be to create a shared google spreadsheet to do this.

So, those are some preliminary notes on my end, see what you guys think. I’m driving down from the Bay Area this afternoon, so perhaps a conference call sometime soon?

I think the number one project management task on hand is to set down concrete priorities on what can feasibly be done within the next six weeks to get us to a releasable application. So far I’ve seen a list of features in which nice bells and whistles are interspersed with vital, must-have features. If we can get this prioritized and add timelines to the various tasks then we’ll be in good shape. Sounds like Matt is being an evangelist for proritization and I’m definitely with him on that point.

Srini, I should roll back into L.A. around 9-10 this evening.

Matt Madsen to team, me show details Jul 9 (2 days ago) Reply

Srini,

I’m really amazed by the fight you’re putting up against any discussion of priorities and time lines.

OK ! I’ve removed John from this reply – it is like we are speaking space-language to him right now…

Why is discussing what he’s working on and what he thinks he can get done in the next month or two “like speaking space-language”?

don’t you want him to do this?

Do what? What is he working on, specifically, and when does he estimate he’ll be “done” with it?

I am sure you both know we’re choking with specs.

Yes, we need to prioritize the many nice-to-have features we’ve enumerated.

This is an OPPORTUNITY for us, not a problem.

Srini, we don’t need internal cheerleading. We need to make decisions about what we’re going to do to make the best product.

What John is building is like a blank slate to paint over again.

In software development, that’s a big, blinking, red light.

I urge you both to abandon any panic motifs and begin visualizing tons of people going crazy over the platform.

Srini, it’s not panic when the team wants to know what’s going on. We need a prioritized task list with a time line. That is basic project management.

Why are you fighting this?

That is what we REALLY need to be talking about, not just saying “JOHN WHAT THE HELL IS DELAYING YOU ?!”

Has anyone said, “John, what’s your problem?” No. We want to know what John, who’s the entirety of our development team, is working toward, and we want some kind of time line.

So we should be discussing: how to market this stuff ! Are you guys certain that just putting privacy and features in there will be enough ?

No one said anything about enough. The question is, What is highest priority? I have my thoughts, and you seem very resistant to either agree or disagree with them.

I think we need permissions to be a “real” product, and I think WYSIWYG editing would very visibly announce that things are changing and improving.

I’m hoping we could get both of those fairly large features implemented in a month or two. It would show VC Mark and our users that we’re moving forward.

Emery Dora to team, Matt show details Jul 9 (2 days ago) Reply

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 1:46 PM, team srini wrote:

OK ! I’ve removed John from this reply – it is like we are speaking space-language to him right now, he is very busy creating the new framework so that he will have something to show off to me next time we meet – the reason for his end of the delay. don’t you want him to do this? i want him to do this – it’s the technology under the features we’re speaking about, and he has something really cool to show off – it may well impact all of the feature decisions we THINK we are making right now.

What’s the framework he’s creating and what will be involved with it? THESE are the very important questions, and the important information for the rest of the team to know to address issues you’ve brought up below. Why are we not involving John in these questions?

I am sure you both know we’re choking with specs. The most important of these specs require this total reboot. This is an OPPORTUNITY for us, not a problem. What John is building is like a blank slate to paint over again. I urge you both to abandon any panic motifs and begin visualizing tons of people going crazy over the platform. That is what we REALLY need to be talking about, not just saying “JOHN WHAT THE HELL IS DELAYING YOU ?!”

So we should be discussing: how to market this stuff ! Are you guys certain that just putting privacy and features in there will be enough ? Privacy and these other features are coming of course, but does that exactly equate to “we get to relax ! no problem ! everyone will just eat it up automatically now !” Because that would mean John is doing all the work !!!

You’ve just said we’re working with a “blank slate” and now we should be discussing how to market it? This is voodoo. IF we know exactly what’s going to be implemented within the next six weeks, then we have something to market. If not, or the timeline is going to be much longer, then this is premature.

Another thing to keep in mind: we can’t serve google ads on private stuff. The silver lining is that maybe this means we must charge for privacy. This means a revenue stream. This is something we are going to create this time around – you get seven free private spaces, after that you have to subscribe. It would be cool for us to think about that some – what exactly should we charge, what exactly should they get, etc !

Charging for privacy was discussed at SXSW as a viable route to revenue. I’ve never thought that Google Ads were anything but a secondary supplement to revenue and have brought ths up from the beginning.

Of course features are very important, and we definitely want to get a good list for you guys to see and for us all to monitor. But there is nothing new in this discussion, other than “put it all in one official document”. I’m not seeing psychological hooks, promotional tactics, who to influence, why nobody used it at SXSW, why our users aren’t using it like crazy themselves (is it really just “privacy”?). The VC asked: “how are YOU using it?” and I showed him my account, full of notes on all kinds of topics etc.

Yes! This is good, focusing on usage. But, it’s tough to focus on usage without knowing the features to be implemented – again, the “Blank Slate” position doesn’t give us much to work with in anticipating the major usage. Test Users can help with this, but only after a ‘blank slate’ has been filled in.

John and I have a top priority that trumps much of the stuff here: it is simply to look at other company’s web 2.0 sites. we are going to go through a collection of screenshots to crib ideas, which I’ve been collecting over the last three months. I expect many specs, ideas, psychological hooks, welcome and help content etc to come out of this.

Ideas are aplenty. Execution is where the leverage is here. Can we identify some non-John execution opportunities ? John and I have not had a chance to pow-wow since he began the raw setup for the next version this weekend. I realize a lot of time has passed, but I believe that we have the spec in our vision if not documented (give us some time, please, we still haven’t even met!) What we are missing is a solid promotional plan for back to school; any idea what we are going to do at Defcon; competitive analysis against other platforms; and a basic “why will people use this and nothing else?” psychological hook. The “debate” concept is my contribution to that last part, and John and I are pretty keen on building a feature set that will enable this. But any ideas?

Will we have a product for back-to-school? If so, what features will it contain? Without knowing the answers to these questions, we cannot build a marketing plan for MetaNotes 3.0, I think. Defcon – what do we do there? Srini, your plan last we spoke was to solidly market TimeLog – is MetaNotes a plan now as well, and if so, in what capacity?

Matt – do you use anything online at all right now ? Do you use Facebook much ? If not, wouldn’t this make you “not part of our own target market”? Or is there something that we could build that would be so rich and immersive that even you would use it ? I honestly don’t think we’re going for 37signals type stuff at this point. So who should be our target market? Not just “students”, but what SORT of student, how do we approach them, how do we teach them, how do we make them loyal enough to start evangelizing on their own? Or is it even students that will go crazy for this – was that an assumption ?

Srini, I brought up these last several questions at the end of last October shortly after moving to CA. How do we segment students by likeliness of use? What subjects (will math and engineering students be likely to use this? Or is it more liberal arts types? What levels (undergrad, grad, high school)?

team srini to Matt, me show details Jul 9 (2 days ago) Reply

Matt ! Thank you so much for these replies :)

Please do not think I am AGAINST such a prioritized task list. John and I have not been able to meet yet. I like to think that THIS is NOW getting to be a discussion that gets to the heart of the real priorities we should focus on. This is now USER-focused, and not FEATURE-focused, and THIS will translate against what John’s got in the realm of possibility as far as what he should do first. We all agree that privacy is #1, it is built into the new framework which is why I believe we need to move forward from there. (Do you like the concept of “infinite privacy is what you pay for” ?)

I do think that a prioritized task list should invoke the three of us, not just John. I think that’s what I want to guard against. He also has a far deeper grasp of the performance angle – he has things that he’s building in that will for instance sequence the loading of notes to get rid of that annoying script loading slow error. Am I correct to understand nobody has yet downloaded IE 8 beta to test for compatibility ?

In order to deliver a list to you and Emery:

i need some time to see what John is developing now as far as the technology goes. basically, as i understand it, real-time will be REALLY real-time now (as well as privacy togglable)
- heck, we need to meet – i just finished my book today !!!
we should figure out what people are going to be doing with this:
- creating big walls of content is good, what will people want to see for that ?
- i have a fairly clear concept of what I see as the future of circles now with the debate paradigm.

These screenshots are a shortcut to implementation, not a “way to get more ideas” – perhaps I didn’t explain that properly. Looking at other sites has been instrumental so far. When another site implements a feature that is also on our list, it 1) clearly is technologically feasible and 2) they have probably hashed out a best practice for UI. so for instance, flowpath gave me the idea for a thicker top toolbar in which more layout features can be placed in a permanent way.

Here’s a for-instance: the login-register prompt. Well, that can be improved very quickly, and there are many ways to go about it. Rather than guessing, I have a screen-capture of a genius one from Projjex. We just implement something that looks like that, rather than me just trying to paint a picture with words. The screen mockup I made for the metaspace a long time ago has been instrumental in John’s thinking about where the metaspace is going to go; without that screen mockup, the metaspace would most likely still be in a “what should we do?” state. These screen captures represent a HUGE UI SHORTCUT which lets us match features to something more than a word description from which John has to best-guess the UI.

Please don’t think I ignored anything you said… but would you mind repeating why you don’t think people were using metanotes again ? that would be great. because then, if you repeat this right now, we can shore up weak points with features. i think that is being user- and not feature-focused.

THE VISION ENTAILS:

by the time we launch, we have created a psychological framework in which people a) want to dive in, b) become totally obsessed, and c) soon discover there’s no substitute for us.

I’m of the opinion that even if John didn’t do ANYTHING we could discover such a framework. This is why I am abreacting to feature-orientation. When Geocities, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook launched, they each had a framework that was appropriate to their era in web history. The “notes” framework is certainly “where we are in web history” – their blog isn’t titled “read-write web” for nothing. HOWEVER – it isn’t sticky enough a usage model for me anymore!

So you’ve proposed a “quick layout of a big page” usage model. That is a good one – however, I am worried it is too much like the Geocities value proposition ! A user of the internet who wants to publish a bunch of stuff has a bunch of free options today.

How about “quick layout of a WALL OF A BUNCH OF VIDEOS” ? ironically, THAT is a usage model that is “with the times”. I realize they seem semantically the same – but “lay out a big page” is not as compelling as “make a video mixtape” to me, it’s something you just can’t do as well anywhere else, but just putting up “content” sounds like a lot of other services too.

To wit: so how else are people sharing large blocks of videos they like ? how would an early adopter without metanotes go about doing this ? and what can we do to METANOTES to make this 1) compelling – maybe even a contest 2) content they want to create themselves, not just observe 3) easy as heck ?

Emery has a pet usage model that has helped a lot – he would love to see MUSICIANS switching from myspace. That usage model has taken a big stride forward because BooMP3 just happens to have the perfect widget for this – and I have convinced the developer to create an iphone app that can be used by us as a panel.

Another feature set I’ve been referring to is the “Brian Zisk Feature Set” – essentially, he needs a “PUBLISH” button that lets him create a metanotes page that is public, on his domain, and constrains visitors to leaving comments and not leaving/moving notes. This could be fleshed out as well.

To me, the real-time stuff is where the real magic is, but you haven’t ever seen it ! (am I wrong?) That’s the stuff that makes us like WebEx, makes us like a new kind of chat, a new kind of email even.

Emery Dora to team show details Jun 27 Reply

Sounds like it went well!

Merrill -

I just finished speaking with Mark Suster at GRP Ventures – it was AWESOME. the gist is that we are about to embark on a six week “long march” to get a beta version completed, and he wants me to call him when we’re finished !!!! Mark had some very good ideas for my future presentations, as well – we are going to be very user-focused (what problem can i solve with METANOTES?) as opposed to “big picture” (which presumably is obvious to him, he sold his collaboration company to SalesForce last year).

I haven’t heard back from Mark yet – thanks for asking ! I have a much better idea of how to present the system now too – it would be great to show it off to him !

- Srini

Matt Madsen to team, me show details Jul 5 (6 days ago) Reply

Srini,

I’m glad Mark convinced you that we should get a beta completed and should focus on the user.

So, do we have a road map for the next five or six weeks? Does John know what we want him to do, and is he excited to do it?

Matt

P.S. Don’t forget that VCs never say no; they just neglect to say yes.

Matt Madsen to team, John, me show details Jul 5 (6 days ago) Reply

I don’t know what moving from camping to squatting involves ~~- it might not be much -~~ and I don’t know how much work it is to introduce cloudDB on the back end, but a ground-up revision sounds like it could easily eat all five weeks before VC Mark wants to see what we’ve got.

(John, what’s your best estimate on the bare-bones revision, including QA and bug-fixes?)

Also, it looks like we have a long list of “nice to have” features, but we need to prioritize the list. What do we really expect to get done on top of a complete rewrite from the ground up?

team srini to Matt, John, me show details Jul 5 (6 days ago) Reply

matt -

squatting is just john’s custom updates to camping.
john’s been working in cloudDB for a few weeks now on his other project
maybe not so panicky, the VC is not a big deal compared to giving John the time to do it right…

team srini to Matt, John, me show details Jul 5 (6 days ago) Reply

i just want to clarify: the VC side of things is no deal at ALL until we get it right. VC becomes an option for us once we hit a serious revenue milestone – the guy would just “like to see it” and is “interested if we do x, y, z” which means users, usage, money. product quality – which isn’t just usability but FUN – is the holy grail, not showing it off for anyone specific.

BUT: we have also applied for TechCrunch50, and Sean Parker and Mark Cuban (who know me) are judges. that could put us on a fast track of course, which game we wouldn’t mind playing, but really all we want to do is satisfy users, not demo it to a VC.

STRATEGIC INVESTORS are another story entirely. Merrill’s trying to hook something up for us with Intel Capital, for instance, and we have been invited to join the IBM partnership ecosystem (whatever that might mean). If Cisco’s business development folks were like, “hey metanotes is neat, let’s give them some money” that would not be a problem. But we aren’t making a demo tape here – we’re making the real thing this time around !

team srini to Matt, John, me show details Jul 8 (3 days ago) Reply

actually we didn’t get to meet yesterday…. typical monday obstacles. we’ll meet tonight instead i think, have to call john to confirm.

Matt Madsen to team, John, me show details Jul 9 (3 days ago) Reply

Srini and John,

Did you meet last night? Do you have recommendations for our prioritized task list for the next month or so?

team srini to Matt, me show details Jul 5 (6 days ago) Reply

yes…. metanotes 3 is underway ! john and i spoke yesterday. it’s going to be using not “camping” but “squatting”, an augmentation of camping that is faster; it is also going to be using something called “cloudDB” this time. so it is a ground-up revision, and any UI thoughts or usage model insight stuff, now would be the time.

there are note-level changes, space-level changes, UI layout changes, user-level changes, a social network, time log integration, the metaspace as a floating panel, integrated tinyMCE for full word processor option, and a subscription model where you get seven free private spaces then you have to subscribe to get more. there will be “stats” which lead to things like gaming elements so we can do things like contests and debates. there will be a thicker top toolbar enabling more options at any given time – inserting an image or video will be a one-button wizard-driven thing (as well as the textile stuff). we’ve got plans to use twitter as a notification tool. circles now mean what you wanted them to mean as “debates” is more fun as a label for what we’ve got currently as the circles. you’ll be able to sell things on paypal inside notes (a premium subscriber thing). we’ll have a subscription infrastructure and links into our autoresponder. a few of our users are itching for an API (especially scrottie) which is exciting. i mean there’s a big long list.

marshall kirkpatrick of read/write web will write about us if we do a good job; i am fairly certain of that, we’ve been in email contact all last week. emery got a whole week of me last week and will be getting some more next week. i’m getting into BooMP3 as a way to host music quickly and with that we suddenly have a big play with musicians. we also have a few new cool domain names on which to deploy time-log-like apps. i’m going to learn how to code some customizations into the time log so i can deploy sub-apps myself; i’m also going to learn how to do a basic facebook widget and create help docs and videos (better to do this as the beta is more complete). mostly getting john started on the right path for the beta is my #1 responsibility.

Matt Madsen to team, me, John show details Jul 5 (6 days ago) Reply

On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 4:17 PM, team srini wrote:

there are note-level changes, space-level changes, UI layout changes, user-level changes, a social network, time log integration, the metaspace as a floating panel, integrated tinyMCE for full word processor option, and a subscription model where you get seven free private spaces then you have to subscribe to get more…

I’m excited to see tinyMCE on the list. I’ve been clamoring for WYSIWYG editing, and it looks quick and painless to integrate.

What note-level changes, space-level changes, UI layout changes, and user-level changes are we talking about? Is the list somewhere? Is it prioritized?

What’s our plan for the social network?

How do we plan on integrating the Time Log? Are we going to keep calling it the Time Log? Is the integration two-way?

team srini to Matt, me, John show details Jul 5 (6 days ago) Reply

ok

1) to enter this process properly, step one is brainstorm right ? would you like to talk about some other things you would like to see ?

2) look at flowpath.com – i really, really like their UI.

3) forgot about printing, search and export options.

4) bookmarklet for time log. netvibes widget. igoogle widget. pageflakes widget. integrate with jott. test integration with pbwiki. alternate brand experiments.

5) other technologies on the grill are Gears (formerly google gears), RSS, Jabber and oAuth.

6) note level includes things like:

comments (works like blog entry comments = pure linear)
better conversation threading
rating/voting (thumbs up thumbs down or one to five stars?)
send to (another) space
link to another note
start a subpage from this note
don’t let other users delete my note (well they can delete it but it only is deleted-to-them)
lock this note and don’t let anyone move it

UI level things:

a thicker top toolbar for common operations: create note, create space, create image note, insert widget (youtube/scribd/slideshare/slide etc), etc
maybe options along a bottom toolbar
better menus
a dynamically updating note-zoop panel so you can see what notes are on a space better
add more space at the top of a space (scroll all spaces down)
select multiple notes with an arrow tool and link them, move them, windowshade-all
better welcome sequence – crib some UI ideas here from tumblr et al

space level includes things like:

let the space creator create a “splash” note that all visitors see to define the space
notifications – someone left you a note on this space
privacy – set a password for this space
teamwork – send this space to other people so it appears in their metaspace too, create spaces in other people’s accounts, let people subscribe to a space
views – see this space with all these notes on it
better inbox
integration of time log with spaces

user-level includes things like:

let them make all the fonts on the interface permanently larger, smaller etc
what teams are they part of?
who are they related to and how?
how do users discover one another?

there are many more specs. i have been using metanotes to do this in various spaces, but it would be super keen to consolidate these somewhere. one idea, i think this would be very nice, would be to create a shared google spreadsheet to do this.

Matt Madsen to team, me, John show details Jul 6 (5 days ago) Reply

I guess my list hasn’t changed much from Miami:

WYSIWYG editing probably tops the list, and I’m thrilled that there is in fact an open tool to do just that (tinyMCE). I loved John’s very “meta” way of defining themes, and I still want to extend it and make it even more meta: Let users create notes on a space and format them however they want via tinyMCE. The names of the notes are names of new note templates or themes. However they format the first (or last?) h1 element on that note is how that template formats h1 elements, etc. Very meta. Then they can import an entire theme from a space and use the named note templates from it to set the styles for their own notes. (Thus they don’t have to manually format each note to keep them all alike. There’s a style.) Also, we need to make sure they can format not just the notes but the entire space, including the menu title bar.

We obviously need permissions to be a legit tool. We should think about what that means: The UNIX convention of read, write, and execute permissions doesn’t seem to carry over well. We probably need multiple kinds of write permissions. For instance, I probably want to give my friends permission to add notes to a space, but not to edit or delete my own notes. We need to realize that any semi-public space will attract griefers who’ll do whatever they can to ruin the experience—like post notes over other people’s notes, move notes off screen, etc. Does each space have a single owner/administrator? Or do we want users to have some aggregate power via upmodding, etc.

We need to tie permissions to a social network. We should probably borrow plenty of conventions from OpenSocial. It should handle more than just friend or not friend. We should be able to define any relationship: colleague, BFF, family, frat brother, etc. Ideally the permission system would allow me to present an entirely different profile to friends than to family, etc. It may even understand certain transitive properties: Srini is my classmate from KFBS 2007, and since Emery is also his classmate from KFBS 2007, we’re classmates from KFBS 2007 too. (That’s hardly a top priority though, just something to think about.)

Those would be my first priorities to get done in the next month or two. And I’d love to use the UI code improvements to re-do our home page and welcome process.

Matt Madsen to team, John, me show details Jul 8 (3 days ago) Reply

Srini and John,

What did you guys come up with? What do you two recommend for our prioritized task list for the next month or two? (And do you two agree?)

team srini to Matt, John, me show details Jul 9 (3 days ago) Reply

nope, didn’t meet yesterday either…. it’s 7am here, i’ll get up with him this afternoon

Matt Madsen to team, me show details Jul 9 (2 days ago) Reply

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 4:46 PM, team srini wrote:

Of course features are very important, and we definitely want to get a good list for you guys to see and for us all to monitor. But there is nothing new in this discussion, other than “put it all in one official document”.

Srini, it is disingenuous to say that there is nothing new in this discussion, other than “put it all in one official document.”

Emery and I have both been extremely clear that we want a prioritized task list with a time line.

We want to know what’s going to go into the product in the next month or two, and I certainly think that merits discussion—amongst all four of us.

I’m not seeing psychological hooks, promotional tactics, who to influence, why nobody used it at SXSW, why our users aren’t using it like crazy themselves (is it really just “privacy”?).

Srini, you ignored everything I said about why people weren’t using MetaNotes.

John and I have a top priority that trumps much of the stuff here: it is simply to look at other company’s web 2.0 sites. we are going to go through a collection of screenshots to crib ideas, which I’ve been collecting over the last three months.

Srini, if you think John’s top priority right now should be looking at other Web 2.0 sites for cool ideas, then we totally disagree about how to best spend John’s valuable time.

Ideas are aplenty. Execution is where the leverage is here.

So why do you think enumerating neat ideas is a top priority?

I realize a lot of time has passed, but I believe that we have the spec in our vision if not documented (give us some time, please, we still haven’t even met!)

Could you tell us ~~- informally -~~ what this vision entails?

The “debate” concept is my contribution to that last part, and John and I are pretty keen on building a feature set that will enable this. But any ideas?

I obviously like a good debate, but I’m not sure that MetaNotes is the tool for it. MetaNotes lends itself to creative mosaics and montages, and it lends itself to white-boarding. I’d build on both of those with WYSIWYG editing and some basic PowerPoint-like drawing tools, e.g. a palette of images of block arrows, etc.

Matt – do you use anything online at all right now ? Do you use Facebook much ? If not, wouldn’t this make you “not part of our own target market”?

I use plenty of stuff online. I’ll admit I’m not a Facebook guy, but I know folks who are—including Heather’s little brother, who just graduated last year. (He, of course, has a giant network of fraternity brothers and sorority girls who would jump on a better Facebook, but MetaNotes most definitely is not it. Not yet.)

Or is there something that we could build that would be so rich and immersive that even you would use it ?

As a grown-up, I don’t want a public place to rant, or to impress the ladies, so the lack of privacy has limited what I would want to put online.

The real killer though has been the awkward formatting. There’s a place for Textile, but if I’m going to cut and paste bits and pieces of the web, I want something like Blogger’s BlogThis bookmarklet—something that effortlessly brings over the bit I’m interested in, ideally in a blockquote, with a link.

But I mentioned that last year, at your apartment in Durham.

Or is it even students that will go crazy for this – was that an assumption ?

That was definitely an assumption.

Whatever we may have thought, our tool has turned out to be a great way to make a free-form web page. We should run with that.

Here’s what’s on my mind: I personally am the “i will start a wiki for myself” type. Emery, Matt, neither of you seem to be that type of person – which is definitely OK !!!!!! In fact, it is awesome – because the real question I’m trying to figure out is “what would make non-wiki-generating types get into creating their own wikis?”

What has stopped me from making a wiki is that it seems like a pain in the ass. It is not a pain in the ass to start a blog. In fact, it’s not a pain in the ass to maintain a blog, if all you’re doing is linking to other people’s hard work.

the best answer we’ve come up with is “back to school kids will need notes”

I don’t think kids need online notes at all. I think that’s a great way to get professors to let kids use MetaNotes in class, but I don’t think that’s nearly as big a draw to kids as letting them make a really cool, expressive site.

This is why “live debate” excites me. This is something that 1) people want to do, 2) shows off the real time coolness, which is going to make a quantum leap with this revision, 3) there’s no perfect place online to do this, just a bunch of bulletin boards and comments, 4) suggests a GAME, an intellectualish one to boot, which means to me tons of users, 5) would bring the unamerican audience into play in force.

We both enjoy debate, but if I were designing a better forum from scratch, it would bear no resemblance to MetaNotes.

Debating gets my blood pumping, and there is no place for me to go in order to do this.

Seriously?

Matt Madsen to team, me, John show details Jul 7 (4 days ago) Reply

Srini et al.

I’ve laid out what I think our priorities should be for the next month or two. Does anyone agree or disagree?

Emery Dora to Matt show details Jul 7 (4 days ago) Reply

Hey all,

I’m back from the mountains and am now reconnected to the ‘net. Looks like there’s a lot of discussion in this thread, so I will digest and weigh in. Hope everyone’s 4th went well.

team srini to me, Matt show details Jul 9 (2 days ago) Reply