Scott A. hasn’t said much about this but I just wanted to pass on that Dex is going to be making its world premiere at the Ottawa Venture and Technology Summit on Oct 8th.  This is pretty exciting stuff as this will be the first public demo of the site.  Mercury Grove is taking part in the Venture Demo part of the program and it will be a good chance to see how business people react to Dex and the overall concept.  I’m guessing they will love it.  I’ll try to shoot some video of the presentation if I can.  All in all it should be an exciting time since after that we can really kick off the Dex world tour.

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.

Over the last two weeks project development has hit a speed bump and gone from warp speed to a crawl – despite Creighton’s best efforts.  The reason for the major slowdown?  Ajax.

The slowdown has caused a lot of issues in our production schedule as we try to coordinate launch activity, do early demos, copywriting, website development, and all of the other activities that surround the last phase of product development.

But mostly it just causes frustration because we don’t know how long it will take to flesh out the new design (the AMAZING design!!!).

We’re putting out the word to everyone we know that we’re looking for some heavyweight help.

If you or anyone you know is a “code ninja” with Ruby, CakePHP, Design, Ajax (!) and is looking for an exciting opportunity to build some pretty revolutionary products – send me an email… quick!

(Photo cred: Dunechaser)

I had breakfast this morning with Nick Desbarats of Choicebot and we were discussing the Newton – Apple’s first version of the iphone – and Nick mentioned that the product had several “fatal flaws” – a term they use often at Choicebot to describe something that is not “ok”, or “I can live with”, but is a feature that actually eliminates the product from consideration.

It’s an important consideration.

In fact very few things are on a linear curve from “bad” to “great”.  Most things that I don’t engage with are because of one very specific fatal flaw – it is too expensive, it doesn’t integrate with my email, I can’t do x with it…  I can pinpoint a specific issue that deterred me from the product.

Oddly, I assume that the opposite is not true.  It is not one single feature that leads me to purchase or engage.  It has to be a couple of features – brand association, reliability, and a killer feature.

As we get closer to completion of Dex, I have been working hard on making sure our killer features are going to really impress people.  Now I’m going to be spending more time looking for fatal flaws that will turn people away.

Thanks Nick.

(PS – for more information on fatal flaws and great product selection, check out choicebot.com)

I receive several invitations every week to join people’s network on LinkedIn.  Some are from past colleagues looking to reconnect, some are from a “super-duper sales guy” who is trying to rack up connections to sell on craigslist, but most are from people looking for work.

Which makes a lot of sense, because that’s when people turn to their professional network.

It’s the old adage “it’s who you know, not what you know” when it comes to finding work, and LinkedIn does a fantastic job of connecting you to that network… when you’re looking for work.  However, there are some problems with this model:

1. Professional information is often spotty. I know of three senior managers that uploaded their professional information and were active on LinkedIn until they found a new job.  They didnt update their information afterwards, because, let’s be honest, who has time for that?
2. LinkedIn “Recommendations” are a good idea poorly implemented. When job seekers are looking for work, they spend a lot of time building a beautiful profile, and then send “recommendation requests” out to everyone they know.  Although similar to a letter of reference, LinkedIn recommendations are used like an online employment bartering system or currency.  I have recieved over a dozen “if you recommend me, I’ll recommend you” emails… not very genuine.
3. It can be a little too obvious. When I first joined LinkedIn I sent out invitations to many people in my professional network.  Several months later one of my invitations was accepted by a senior Vice President of a fortune-1000 company… at 2pm on a Thursday.  Sure enough, two weeks later he was actively looking for a job.

LinkedIn does a great job connecting job seekers and people who are hiring, making finding work through your network much more efficient – even if it does sometimes seem a little desparate…

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PS – the invitation above is from my brother who recently graduated with his PHD in biochemistry if anyone’s hiring

One of the core goals of dex is to create a dependable and complete source of information about the people in your professional network.

To keep contact information dependable we reach out to your contacts and ask them to confirm or update their contact information to keep it updated.

To make information more “complete”, we encourage you to write regular notes about your contacts, automatically collect email and calendar events related to this contact (more about this feature to come!), and collect relevant content about this person from popular “networking” and news websites.  We try to gather as much relevant information as we can about the person so that they aren’t just a name in a database, but a three-dimensional person based on your relationship with them.

Through dex people will finally transcend the sterile address book view and take on a much more complete, relevant, and useful profile that will help you interact with them in a much more meaningful way.

Why it matters:

1. An undependable or “dirty” contact database won’t be used
2. Strong businesses rely on strong relationships with customers and partners
3. Your knowledge of a person is limited.  By gathering external information, you can learn more about people which can help strengthen your relationships.

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This is a series about killer features and common sense approaches to professional network management (and what used to be called CRM).  If you have any specific things that vex you about CRM or professional networking, please comment and I’ll blog about how we are addressing it through dex.

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.