Pencils work when they are sharp.
So does marketing. So does information architecture. So does the user interface. So do viral memes.
We are sharpening Red Rover. There are so many things we could say about it. Many ways we could describe it. The current challenge is to define the POINT. The one thing we should say.
What is exciting is that we have lots of good material – we are throwing away good ideas that are just extra instead of trying to come up with marketing BS that sounds good.
But it’s a grinding process.
We are now starting to open up the software to pilot schools, friends, interested parties, and testers. All of them are grinding on it with us – making it smoother and helping us, through their incredible feedback, make it sharp.
One of those testers is Steve Snedeker**, who is currently graduating as a Network Admin from SUNY Cobleskill.
Steve logged in yesterday for about two hours and banged away at the administration features. He had a number of questions and generated a terrific list of bugs/thoughts/improvements.
He then asked about tags – he wanted a student to be able to click on a tag, and see the groups that had that tag, the people that had that tag, and be able to create a group with that tag if it was under-served.
I went into the explanation over IM. . .
Then Steve got it. He got the vision, got the potential.
It had only taken an hour.
Now our challenge is to bring that “get” to thirty seconds. That would be sharp. With help, from Steve and others, we’ll get there.
