November 28th, 2008 by Scott Annan
This is an open appeal for your help.
As you probably know, we are just about to launch a new website that will completely change how professionals and companies manage their professional network. It’s like a really smart, connected address book that tells you who you should call and when. We think its a revolutionary service and a major improvement over the way most companies currently manage their “customer database”.
As part of the product development process, we had to name our new “baby” and after several months of debate, we finally settled on the name DEX.
Last week we received a “Cease and Desist” letter from a law firm representing “Dex Media“, the company that delivers yellow pages online and to your door, telling us that it was illegal to use a name that was similar to theirs. After seeking a lot of advice and soul searching (crushing), we have decided that we cannot afford to fight this allegation, even though we believe it is false.
This kind of reaction by established businesses needs to change. While we have openly blogged about our process and as we try to develop our product collaboratively, they pay a team of lawyers to “monitor the internet” and guard them against other people. I think that lawyers and businesses need to update their “cease and desist” letters from aggressive and threatening warnings to “inform and engage” letters that seek to educate and engage their “potential competition” and their customers, and that they need to get involved in the ongoing dialog that is taking place – whether they are listening or not.
Well, while they’re trying to protect what they have, we’re going to use this opportunity to open up and collaborate even more by “crowdsourcing” a new name for our product. In case you’re not familiar with the term, crowdsourcing is when you use a network of people to accomplish a task that is often performed by an employee or agent (then called “outsourcing”). Over the last five months we have received some fantastic ideas and inspiration from all of you who have been following our development process and I think this is the perfect way to engage you to complete the story.
In our business – much like other businesses – a catchy product name is paramount to success. So, please take a minute to visit the crowdsourcing product page and recommend a smart product name or vote for one of the names that have already been submitted. It would help us in a really big way, you’d be showing “big business” that cooperation is a viable alternative to protectionism, and you’d be doing your not-so-small part in helping the little guys prevail.
Thanks.
October 28th, 2008 by Scott Lake
Scott A. and I were trying figure out ways that we could get a bunch of people in one place to help us with some great videos that we are doing for Dex.
Scott A. came up with a great idea which was to offer to take everyone who shows up to be an extra in the MG video shoot to a free breakfast in downtown on Saturday morning. We would have breakfast first, then do the video shoot.
The shoot is actually two short videos and would filmed on location at the Code Factory and at the corner of Metcalfe and Queen in downtown Ottawa. The whole video thing may take 2 hours max.
If you are interested in attending, just reply to this post and let us know how many people you will be bringing with you. Also when filling in the comment form be sure to put your email address and I will send you the exact details.
Feel free to invite friends and family as well. The weather is going to be great on Saturday morning and the more the people we can get the better.
This will also be your only real chance to make fun of Craig Fitzpatrick who will be wearing a white suit for the shoot.
The whole thing would start at 10am on saturday morning.
October 16th, 2008 by Scott Annan
We’re getting close to launch, and for people who have been following this blog, you know that we are trying to introduce a more “human” and modern approach to CRM and online professional networking. We also want to raise local awareness about dex. And we all wear t-shirts.
So… we decided to solicit ideas from you for evocative, funny, appropriate captions for wearable t-shirts.
Here are some ideas to help ignite your creative flame:
“Dex. It’s like a dating site for co-workers”
“Dex could have saved your marriage”
“Let’s talk about Dex baby,
Let’s talk about you and me…”
Send us your idea (in the comments below) and we’ll send you a t-shirt with the “winning” caption.
September 24th, 2008 by jeff
Reading about the concept of the fatal flaw got me wondering: how can so much time and energy be spent on refining an idea, only to have it fail because of one flaw?
Was it passed off as not important? Did they hope nobody would notice? Or did they just not think of it?
It’s easy to get so close to a project that you can only see what you want to see. Having an innate understanding of your idea – your product – can often blur the big picture.
We’re about to expend serious energy to introduce people to dex. Like proud parents, we are in no position to provide truly objective feedback about the proposed messaging.
We know too much. We’re too close.
We need to solicit feedback from people who are genuinely meeting dex for the first time.
September 1st, 2008 by jeff
I’m back. Five weeks of paternity leave split between our cottage and our home was great bonding time with my infant daughter. I’d do it again tomorrow. Vive le Quebec.
Taking a step away from Mercury Rising offered me a refreshed perspective. I found myself describing the Mercury Grove project to friends and family with no props – no computer, no web sites, no paper. Just talking, active listening and animated hand gestures – engaged conversation.
We have done well to describe dex in industry language, but now we need to focus on the most basic of explanations.
The people I was speaking with are laypeople. They don’t follow the leading edge of this industry and they’re not early adopters. They represent the majority. I realized that if my friends and family can’t repeat the salient points from our conversation, they’ll never tell any one about it, or even think to tell anyone about it.
We need to create an experience that will tell dex’s story in a way that everyone can understand and that people can repeat. Everyone likes to share new stories and everyone likes to sound knowledgeable. We have to refine the details so that people can do both.
Laypeople won’t seek dex out. They will need to hear about dex from a few friends before they’ll even start hearing it (how many times did you hear about Facebook before you were ready to join?) For that to be possible, dex’s story has to be easy and entertaining.
Succinct.
Simple.
Worth repeating.
When I was done explaining myself everybody that I had spoken with said the same thing: Cool, I could use that. Would they be able – and feel compelled – to go and tell a friend about it? Not yet.
There’s always Thanksgiving.
August 4th, 2008 by Scott Lake
This week MG started eating their own dogfood even more than before. If you take a look at the screen cap above you’ll see an email form and below that a blog sign up screen for the MG beta. This is important because the beta sign up form is now being generated from the MG application and the people who sign up are being directly entered into the app as email responders.
This little bit of functionality is great for email marketers or anyone who solicits participation via the web. You can essentially create forms then have the email addresses that they collect be put straight into the MG “CRM”. In addition to this, you’ll also be able to send out email marketing campaigns and have response entered in the system as a respondent to a specific email campaign. Its all powerful stuff especially when coupled with the rest of the MG feature set.
July 16th, 2008 by Scott Annan
I just got back from an intensive two-day brainstorm / working retreat with the team up near Mount Tremblant in Quebec.
It’s difficult trying to make the best use of such a short period with everyone in the same physical location – it’s only happened one other time – at the beginning of this project – and it’s unlikely to happen again.
The highlights of the meetings:
- A lot of progress was made on how we integrate the customer management, customer portal, and team collaboration modules. We discussed where they overlap, and how we can ensure smooth transitions for all of the different roles of the people who will use the software.
- Huge progress in design. I think we have an excellent, innovative navigation and data structure model that will make it easy to find information quickly without feeling overwhelmed by the screens.
- Some killer features. Like a combo twitter-like IM / mobile notification and communication platform that is extended across the apps. Or a scrollable, graphical timeline view of all information about an account in the company section. I am really excited about some of the concepts that are playing out.
However, for me the biggest challenge and opportunity that came out of the last two days is how we are going to “name” the software. We came to a conclusion that we are not doing traditional CRM or support management – and that our software really “humanizes” the relationship that companies have with their customers. So we’re looking for a name that will reflect this.
Any ideas?
June 6th, 2008 by Scott Annan
Yesterday I sent out a “Friends of Mercury Grove” email announcing the launch of our blog. Below are the click rates from the email using our email campaign tool (code name marathon).
The Friends of Mercury Grove list is made up of personal contacts and people who have signed up for our newsletter over the last year. We haven’t sent out a note in several months, so our we had a higher bounce rate than normal, but we also had a lower open rate (people who open emails) than I expected.
Industry standards for opt-in newsletters is between 18 and 21%. I was hoping to be closer to 30%, but forty-eight hours after sending the email we have a 23% open rate. Although this is lower than I hoped, the click-through rate (people who click on a link in the email) was 87% versus an industry standard of around 30%.
Prognosis: We need to clean up our list so that only people who are interested receive our message; we need to improve the subject line of the email (so people open it); but we have some excellent content that people who care are interested in reading.
PS – if you’re interested in joining our Friends Mailing list, click here.
June 4th, 2008 by jeff
We spent a lot of time talking about the right message for Mercury Grove’s splash page before there was much to show for it.
I think that this particular task took on serious significance for Scott A. There’s a lot riding on this call to action and so it needs to be just right. We need to hit the right chord with potential customers/ community members, find our voice and phrase it smoothly enough that readers won’t give it a second thought. It’s a lot to expect from 50 words.
With several discarded drafts, it’s easy to lose site of the progress being made – however incremental. Our meeting at Dunn’s was valuable – there’s nothing like blueskying over smoked meat on rye – but the more business-minded contingent of the group shot our idea to pieces before I was hungry again. First comes frustration, then comes perseverance.
Later that night, it took a shift in thinking and a 45-minute conversation with Scott A. to brainstorm a new direction. We still had nothing concrete, but we knew what might work. Scott wanted to bounce the idea off a few people.
Working this problem through has been purley collaborative. There are a lot of really strong writers working together so a bit of a defined approach might tighten up the way we work through drafts.
That said, all this stop-start contributes to an intimate appreciation of who we are, what we do and how we’re going to tell people about it. Try having the same high-level conversation 20 times over, but explaining it in a different way with different vocabulary each time and you’ll see what I mean.
I understand Mercury Grove more today than I did yesterday. And I’ve been saying that since day one.
