Enterprise 2.0 Vendors: Mutual Respect, Friendly Competition

Chris| June 17th, 2010 9 Comments »

One of my favourite parts of this week’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston was the time I spent with other vendors in the space.

This segment of the technology industry attracts sharp minds who are intrigued by the same difficult problem: How can technology make workplace collaboration more effective? The answers require experts not just in technology, but in ethnography, human factors and psychology too.

Last night our VP Gordon Ross discussed the writings of Richard Sennett with Michael Idinopulos, a deep thinker from SocialText with whom I’ve engaged in lively online debate. We also talked about some of our common problems as vendors, such as figuring out the best way to explain comprehensive software suites in terms that the target customer appreciates. Are we enterprise collaboration, chaos management, Facebook for the enterprise or social intranet software? Is “social” even a good word to use?

Michael, Deb Schultz and Gord in deep discussion

Shortly before that, we were guests at an event hosted by Aaron Fulkerson and Isaac Garcia, CEOs of MindTouch and Central Desktop, respectively. Aaron introduced Darren to the noted Open Source developer Miguel de Icaza, creator of Gnome (Miguel is famous in geek circles). Aaron showed me his MindTouch tattoo (don’t worry, it’s on his calf), and we talked openly about a large bid that we’re competing against each other on. Isaac shared his advice on server farms as we move towards a hosted version of ThoughtFarmer.

I attended the Jive “New Way” briefing on Monday and enjoyed the free chocolates . Jive puts on a flashy show, and their new executives are seasoned presenters. I have to say, though, that there are too many men in suits at Jive for my liking. It was comforting to see their soon-to-be-very-wealthy co-founder and CTO, Matt Tucker, doing network configuration on the Macs at their booth. He’s still a geek.

Percentage of execs in suits apparently peaks around $100M in revenue

Lawrence Liu, now of Cisco and formerly of Telligent and before that, Microsoft, told me that all these software packages are overbuilt and 5 to 10 years ahead of where the customer base is at. We discussed ThoughtFarmer’s forthcoming SharePoint 2010 Connector, and he said there’s a lot of money to be made riding Microsoft’s coattails — if you don’t mind being their lackey.

Gord, Darren and Chris at the ThoughtFarmer booth. Photo by Jordan from Traction Software -- another friendly competitor. Thanks Jordan!

Rather than avoid or resent my competitors in this space, I like to embrace them. They’re great people with great ideas that I can learn from. And as Isaac said last night to the guests at his event, “This is a huge market. There’s going to be a lot of winners.”

ThoughtFarmer Elevator Pitch — IN the Elevator

Chris| June 17th, 2010 No Comments »

Boris Pluskowski from the Complete Innovator gave me 16 floors in a high-speed elevator to pitch ThoughtFarmer. I thought it was a great idea to actually do the elevator pitch in the elevator. Video below.

Round-Trip File Editing with the ThoughtFarmer Desktop Connector: Unveiling at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston

Chris| June 9th, 2010 7 Comments »

Update: See the video demo of the ThoughtFarmer Desktop Connector.

Imagine this scenario, which plays out millions of times a day: A colleague emails you a Word doc. You double-click the attachment. It downloads and opens in Word. You make some changes and click “Save”. The “Save as…” dialog pops up, you choose a smart location for it, give it a filename, then save it. Next, you open your email program again, hit “Reply” on your colleague’s email, select “Attach file”, locate your file, and hit okay. Finally, you send it back.

Ugh.

Detaching, editing, saving, re-attaching and sending is a nightmare. And it’s a nightmare that almost all of us are forced to deal with daily.

At ThoughtFarmer, we’ve come up with a brilliant solution for this problem that we call round-trip file editing. It’s a knowledge worker’s dream, and we’re unveiling it next week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston.

Here’s how that same Word doc works with round-trip file editing: You go to a ThoughtFarmer page that contains the Word doc. You click “Edit”. It automatically downloads and opens in Word. You edit, and every time you hit “Save”, the file is automatically uploaded back to ThoughtFarmer, ready for your colleague.

Unlike SharePoint, which only does round-trip editing on Windows using Internet Explorer for certain types of files, ThoughtFarmer does round-trip editing with any browser, on Windows or Mac, and with any type of file — Office, PhotoShop, AutoCad, you name it. It works through the firewall — if your browser can see your intranet, you can do round-trip editing. You can even work on the file offline and it will automatically sync up when you reconnect.

All this is made possible via our new Desktop Connector:

The ThoughtFarmer Desktop Connector lets you open files from your ThoughtFarmer intranet and edit them directly in their native application. No detaching, no emailing around, no re-uploading.

For anyone who’s suffered through downloading and re-uploading of files while trying to collaborate with a colleague: we’ve been there, we’ve felt the pain, and now we’ve done something about it.

If you’re in Boston next week, come visit us at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference for a demo.

ThoughtFarmer 3.7 released. Key feature for IT managers: Windows password reset

Chris| June 1st, 2010 Comments Off

ThoughtFarmer 3.7 is out today! Read the complete 3.7 overview in the Product section of our web site.

For this post, I’d like to focus on a feature that is much more popular than we anticipated: the ability to change your Windows network (Active Directory) password directly from ThoughtFarmer.

I work primarily from my home office. When my OpenRoad network password expired, I had 3 ways to update it:

1. Use Windows Remote Desktop. Log on to a server I have access to, and change it from there. Issue: Lots of steps for most users, and I usually forgot which server to use.
2. Use Outlook Web Access. Go to my Outlook web mail, and change it from there. Issue: We switched to Gmail. I can’t remember how to get to Outlook Web Access.
3. Phone Lawrence. He’s at the office, he has the admin passwords, and he can hook me up. Issue: Lawrence is getting sick of my password reset requests.

None of these solutions is ideal.

ThoughtFarmer 3.7, however, warns you of expiring passwords.

Follow the link, and you’re presented with a screen like this:

No matter where you are — at home, traveling, in a satellite office — and no matter what type of computer you’re using — Mac, iPad, Linux, Windows — if you can access ThoughtFarmer, you can change your Windows network password.

We’ve spoken to many IT managers over the past few months who literally bubbled over with enthusiasm when we explained this feature. Apparently, there are expensive, dedicated web applications to handle password expiry and updates for off-network users. But now, you get it for free with ThoughtFarmer.

Three screenshots of ThoughtFarmer intranet installations

Chris| May 27th, 2010 Comments Off

Potential clients often ask how much they can change the look and feel of ThoughtFarmer. The answer: a lot.

Here’s a look at 3 skins applied to ThoughtFarmer. See more on Flickr.

Continuum

Orange, the ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet of Design Continuum

Oxfam America

Padare, the ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet of Oxfam America

OpenRoad Communications

The OpenRoad Communications intranet

Design and branding in ThoughtFarmer is accomplished entirely through our administrator Skinning Console.