{"id":2487,"date":"2011-02-10T21:33:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T04:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=2487"},"modified":"2011-02-10T21:33:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T04:33:50","slug":"sharpening-and-tightening-part-4-of-the-agile-one-pager-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2011\/02\/10\/sharpening-and-tightening-part-4-of-the-agile-one-pager-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharpening and tightening: Part 4 of &#8220;the Agile one-pager&#8221; (DRAFT)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">Draft!  Revised version to appear <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwen.org\/blog\/\">on NWEN&#8217;s blog<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwen.org\/index.php?option=com_events&amp;Itemid=15&amp;id=526\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"border: 0pt none;\" title=\"Northwest Entrepeneurs Network logo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nwen.org\/templates\/nwen_home\/images\/logo.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"369\" height=\"87\" \/><\/a><em>In the first three parts of the series (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwen.org\/blog\/?p=392\">1<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwen.org\/blog\/?p=399\">2<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwen.org\/blog\/?p=404\">3<\/a>)  we got to an initial version of an executive summary and begin iterating on it.  This installment focuses on improvements in a couple of individual sections.  For impatient readers, here&#8217;s the tips:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Get feedback from a lot of people &#8212; they&#8217;ll see different things<br \/>\n<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>You can get great feedback even if people don&#8217;t read the document<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Iterate repeatedly.\u00c2\u00a0 Incremental progress adds up.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>A picture is worth 1000 words<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Read on for more &#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>After the flurry of revisions following the intense phone call, I had what I felt was a decent starting point, so began talking with a lot more people.\u00c2\u00a0 Only a few of them read the executive summary; instead, I&#8217;d cut-and-paste a paragraph or two to start off a  conversation in chat or email, or talk through it verbally.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, most people had something useful to say.\u00c2\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On Facebook, I saw that Giovanna was starting up a new business in Ottawa focusing on crowdsourcing and communications so asked for her input.  She was intrigued, and we spent an hour on Skype where she had some great insights on SEO and how useful this approach would be for political advertising.<\/li>\n<li>On a mailing list, Marci saw something I had written about diversity, approached me for some input on her startup .  When we met for tea we realized that the approach I was taking to advertising was a great match for their business model &#8212; and other political advertising situations as well.\u00c2\u00a0 Hey wait a second, I&#8217;m noticing a trend here.<\/li>\n<li>Josh, a designer, politely hinted that the logo needed a lot of work.\u00c2\u00a0 So did Sonya, another designer.\u00c2\u00a0 I got the message.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And the list goes on &#8230; After each conversation, I&#8217;d write down some notes and update the document.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 What&#8217;s fascinating is that while there was some stuff everybody liked, they also all saw different things, bringing their own backgrounds and experiences to bear.\u00c2\u00a0 Opportunities that I hadn&#8217;t thought much about before started to look like intriguing early targets.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Conversely some of the possibilities I had in my first version (enterprise sales for example) now started to look like distractions, and I realized that some of what I was discussing was too tactical to be in the summary.\u00c2\u00a0 Incremental progress started to add up.<\/p>\n<p>For example, here&#8217;s what the Competitive Advantage section looked like when I started these discussions:<\/p>\n<p><em>Diverse participation is key for effective crowdsourcing.  [Reference: Scott Page\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Difference.] Qw3ries founder has years of experience in diversity in technology, and a track record of building highly diverse communities.   Conversely, competitors like Quora and StackOverflow have a primarily techie-oriented and overwhelmingly male, and ignore the needs of multi-lingual speakers and people with disabilities. Diversity is like security: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s extremely hard and expensive to add in after the fact if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t design it up front.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Also: usability (current bar is very low), brand (positive, inclusive, happy), IP in crowdsourced ranking techniques, designing in privacy up-front, understanding needs of activists and non-profits, advisory board.  And most importantly, of all our parties will be better than anybody else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the space.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Question: the space is extremely cluttered, and in many cases there are significant company-specific competitive advantages \u00e2\u20ac\u201c e.g., unlike Mahalo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our cost of content acquisition isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t obscenely high; unlike Demand Media we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exploit our community members.  How to fit those in?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A week later, it had turned into this:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Photo Sharing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/31110324@N03\/5435393718\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 0pt none;\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5255\/5435393718_66052e6b95.jpg\" alt=\"competitive landscape: diversity and social media integration with qw3ries at the top right\" width=\"182\" height=\"141\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a><em>Diverse participation is key for effective crowdsourcing, and integration with social media is the key to involving more people in the process. qw3ries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 team has years of experience in diversity in technology and social network activism, and a track record of building highly diverse communities.\u00c2\u00a0 Diversity is like security: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s extremely hard and expensive to add in later if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t design it up front.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>We are also on the path to patentable IP in several areas: crowdsourced ranking techniques, privacy-friendly advertising, multi-perspective user experiences and troll-reduction.\u00c2\u00a0 And our parties and shwag will be a lot more fun than everybody else&#8217;s.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Still far from perfect, but a lot shorter, clearer, and more active.\u00c2\u00a0  Instead of focusing on specific competitors, it&#8217;s now much broader.\u00c2\u00a0 &#8220;Patentable IP&#8221; is the kind of thing investors loooooove to see. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 And what&#8217;s that they say about a picture being worth a thousand words?<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\"><em>To be continued &#8230;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>jon<\/p>\n<p><em>If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve  launched an innovative business with growth potential, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking  for expert coaching and some exposure to the investment community and  you have not yet presented your plan to an angel group membership or VC  partnership, then <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwen.org\/index.php?option=com_events&amp;Itemid=15&amp;id=526\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NWEN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s First Look Forum could be the perfect opportunity for you! <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Draft! Revised version to appear on NWEN&#8217;s blog. In the first three parts of the series (1, 2, 3) we got to an initial version of an executive summary and begin iterating on it. This installment focuses on improvements in a couple of individual sections. For impatient readers, here&#8217;s the tips: Get feedback from a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[31,120,242],"class_list":["post-2487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional","tag-agile1p","tag-drafts","tag-nwen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}