Workshopedia.org?

When people want to check something, they go to wikipedia. Where do people search inspiration or answers when planning a workshop? And WHO plans workshops and team engagement / project processes? Do we really know their needs and habits? Would there be a market need for an open-source Workshopedia.org? Would people contribute? Would there be enough readers? If yes, shall iPilot participate? How?

When we pick a title and a guru, shouldn't we contact some users of their method directly to capture lessons learned, may be creates some short videos with tips etc? I feel we should do online research and direct interviews with at least a couple, may be even as a pre-screening mechanism before we pick a title.

Team meeting: Guru value proposition

In today's call we focused on the best way to approach gurus. The goal is to start calling them after November 3rd.

Next steps:
1. Mary - will draft the key assumptions for a contract with a guru, to be discussed with Paul Zimmer
2. Tomasz & Rita - will do some brainwriting editing of Mary's draft for approaching the gurus
3. Tomasz - will create a Googledocs xls with the gurus. The initial list of ca 30 gurus shall be created and top 10 selected for first concept testing.

Next meeting:
Tuesday, November 3rd

Inspirations from John Findlay (Zing)

John is leveraging TED.com videos and builds extremely easy workshop ideas around them. It takes him a couple of minutes to develop a powerful multimedia workshop idea and put it for free online. His business model is made profitable by the Zing platform that can be used (purchased) to have a more powerful meeting.

1. What shall we offer for free to make our brand loved, visible and connect with the fans?
2. What resources can we leverage to make kit production easier and / or increase its value?

What is our customer experience - how do we meet the needs of the "too busy to read" generation?

Just read the story about Joshua Bell, the famous violinist who usually gets more than a million $ for his performance on Stradivardius violin. When he performed in the subway, only one of over 1000 people stopped and gave him 20 $.

I think there is something we can learn from the story:
- people are too busy to stop and appreciate the real value of things around them (OR READ BOOKS)
- they need simple clues helping them perceive something as really good (BRAND IS KEY)
- the customer experience, not the content is the key to getting people's appreciation of our product (SIMPLICITY & EXPERIENCE DESIGN WILL BE AS IMPORTANT AS THE PROCESS WE PACKAGE)

The full story is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/06/DI2007040601228.html

Selecting Gurus to work with - are speakers' bureaus a possible partner?

I was thinking that people that call speakers' bureaus are usually planning a conference or an event. They might be looking for just a speech, but more and more might want something more interactive.

Some ideas:
- What if we crafted a special offer for speakers' bureaus to know that our demo workshop team is able to facilitate a live workshop session even with large groups - for each product we launch + for new topics that they are looking for - where we might be the partner of choice to ADD the interactive element after any guru holds his speech?
- What if we checked through them what topics are most wanted right now? Which gurus are most wanted for strategy, processes, etc.?
Here one example to look at:
http://www.speakers.co.uk/csaWeb/home. They have also a cool list of most wanted speakers....

another competitor: 1000 Ventures

http://www.1000ventures.com/ is another site that offers (methods in a box), but similar to your take on the previous note, it only provides a ppt deck and facilitation guide. We come closer to interacting with a human and reducing the necessary reading, which people are getting sick of.

Competitors: SolutionPeople KnowBrainer

I keep getting messages from Innovation Tools (Chuck Frey's) on different innovation methods. This one keeps coming back - it is interesting to explore as the "Solution Store" is full of concepts similar to our thinking - posters, cards, etc.

Our Difference: this is limited to their stuff only, no video facilitator of "full process pack" focused on getting a certain job done - just pure gerneric creativity help
http://www.solutionpeople.com/store/

Let's start!

Last week Mary, Rita and our team at Innovatika have reached an agreement to launch IPILOT as a joint venture next year. To document this exciting journey together and log our insights, observations and stories, we have set up this blog.