OPEN INDEPENDENCE: BETA – A Labor of Love...

[riddings]

Talk about a labor of love...

When we started to create the Open Independence Initiative (Open Independence) it was more of a challenge than a realistic business project. So, myself and 2.5 others embarked on this part-time endeavor to create a social platform for business-minded individuals that allow them to brainstorm, discuss, and eventually OPENLY collaborate with other like-minded people...

The project has taken many swerves and turns – it's been scrapped and redone – it's been loved and hated - and that's just between the 3.5 of us!

So, what in the world are we trying to accomplish? Well, we want to take the social media model and see if it can be applied to business – can it build relationships, build meaningful discussions, and foster collaboration? If it can it could be a tremendous resource...

Obviously, Open Independence is a work in progress; like I said, it's myself and 2.5 other people... We add things, we remove things, we've started over several times but in the end we're determined to build a platform that's easy to use and USEFUL... and to do that, we really need feedback from people like yourself... I like to think of this as our very first collaboration project...

Also, one of the first things you'll notice is twitter-like microblogging... We've done that so people can easily update everyone on what their doing... However, the true strength on openindependence.com will be collaboration – meaning, people will create and join groups where interaction takes place... If people do not join a group they won't really get a sense of what the website is about... I hope that makes sense... So, in the case of helping us build a better collaboration tool, I hope you'll join the BETA group which will be reorganized from time to time to keep the project moving along...

Thanks,
~Richard Iddings

[ciaossu]

Explain the 3.5 part considering this is already a "part time endeavor", how are you getting half a person in there LOL. I am taking the assumption that the .5 is someone putting less time in than the other 3? It does look a lot like twitter with a bunch of random topics being thrown in the mix. Social media is already being leverage by a lot of companies to do PR for their brand and such. Collaboration among businesses is a good concept but businesses and entrepreneurs vary so much that unless someone has similar or complimentary businesses, there's going to be a lot of noise to filter through. Just a random thought at the moment.

[riddings]

Yeah, when we started, it started as a simple conversation with 4 of us brainstorming and working on it between our 'day jobs'... As the project got bigger, and bigger, and bigger... one of the guys dropped out... But, he still contributed to the overall direction of the project and he still shares his opinions and insights from time to time so I consider him, 'half a man'... I think he dropped out so we wouldn't depend on him, although he does still help out - we just can't give him a hard time when he doesn't finish something...

I certainly recognize the 'PR' qualities of social media and I am also familiar with PRIVATE social networks companies can use internally for collaboration... What we would like to build, and obviously based on your comment, we'll need to do some cleaning up, is an OPEN network of collaboration where people can collaborate on projects or topics they have an interest in... Obviously this project is plagued with many, many, many challenges, just one of which is filter the noise and keeping interest...

One of the thoughts was remove the microblogging from the front-page and replace it with communities... But, I feel microblogging is important because if users filter it 'by friends' they can read quick updates their friends have or questions they're asking without having to search for them... Someone could post, "Need some thoughts on the logo I just posted..." and you could go to that collaboration group and check it out... Or another friend could post, "Having problems getting my CSS to work..." and if you read that and you could help them, you could just reply back, "Hey, post it and let me take a look..."

Thanks for the feedback, I do appreciate it!! It forces me to reconsider things and reexamine how this things works from a USER standpoint and not a DEVELOPMENT standpoint...

~Richard Iddings