"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds."

– Mark Twain

 

Hello all,

 

It has been a little longer than usual since the last newsletter.  We have been working very hard to complete the release of SharedPlan Professional 2.0, and we can finally say it is complete!  Thanks to the heroic efforts of SharedPlan’s developers, today we announced  the product’s immediate availability, including a free upgrade for current Pro license holders.  SP Pro 2.0 is the next major step on our path to providing you with the world’s most collaborative project management tools.

 

 

SharedPlan Professional 2.0 delivers a major new collaborative feature, the ability to publish plan information to either RSS or iCalendar.  Now project managers can export updates to team members, project sponsors, and other affiliated parties using either RSS or iCalendar formats. 

 

With iCalendar, users can see their tasks and milestones in their calendar application, whether they use Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, or any other application that supports the iCalendar standard.  (iCalendar is a standard format for sharing information with a calendar application.)  Now project team members can view their tasks directly on their daily planning calendar or to-do list!

 

Similarly, with RSS publishing, team members can view their tasks in their browser using their favorite RSS aggregator application.  Last month I discussed RSS a bit, pointing out that we have an RSS feed on our website for product news.  I use RSS as an efficient means to quickly browse* lots of different websites, but it’s capable of doing much more.  Here’s a site that lists several creative and entertaining things that can be done with RSS.  With this feature, SharedPlan Pro becomes the first project management application on the planet to enable users to publish their plan information to RSS. 

 

With these new RSS and iCalendar features, project managers have a powerful and efficient tool for ensuring that all parties have the latest project plans and status.

 

 

Thanks to all of you who came by to visit Roger at Macworld.  He gave out every demo CD we sent, and he reported that our vision of collaborative project management seemed to resonate strongly with the audience.  I’m not sure when we’ll do our next trade show, but we were certainly pleased with the results of this one.

 

 

Here’s a unique concept.  Robert May has started a new business in which all of the firm’s strategic decisions will be made by the outcome of a vote of a group of 2500 unrelated individuals.  In The Business Experiment, he solicits volunteer members to implement, via the Internet, the Wisdom of Crowds as applied to a startup business.  This company will solicit funding, hire employees, and make products (or deliver services), but the 2500 registered members will do all strategic decision-making.  If the company is successful, the 2500 will even be awarded equity stakes.

 

If you’re unfamiliar with the Wisdom of Crowds, it basically describes how a large group of people with not much expertise can analyze a problem as accurately as a single expert in the field.  A common example is that when a large group of people tries to guess how many jellybeans are in a jar, the average turns out to be quite accurate.

 

Feel free to read all about this new company, and even join the Crowd.  (For another view of the use of the Wisdom of Crowds in business see Dave Pollard's blog.)  I found it intriguingly off-center enough that I signed up to participate.  (Roger and I have often discussed the power of community and how we might grow a community interested in the problems of project management, particularly regarding improving team collaboration.  However, I don’t think we’ll take the step of having the community make SharedPlan’s decisions, but we will at least listen to their suggestions …)

 

Until next time …

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