Inspired by Chris Brogan’s Rockstar badges and by the special request of some of our more ardent admirers, we’re pleased to announce BatchBadges! These are little badges you can post to your website or blog that will display not only your love for BatchBook, but also how smart and well-organized you are. Nothing says “I’m a savvy business professional” like a well-organized contact network!
Please feel free to choose your favorite from the ones below. And thanks so much for being a part of the BatchBlue community.
We love Twitter. And we love user feedback. So we figured, why not marry the two? So, starting today, we have asked our Twitter networks to take part in our very first usability test via Twitter! The form is below. Even if you didn’t hear about this on Twitter, you can still take part!
Update: The usability test has ended. Thanks to everyone who helped out!
Thanks! You can now get back to your tweeting workday!
Don’t get me wrong. My middle school principal called me Perfect Pamela. I am not unfamiliar with the virtues of flawless design, stunning prose, or impeccable offerings and the hard work it takes to get a creation to that level. But as a wise husband likes to tell me, “The enemy of good is perfect.” It’s a slightly mangled quote from Voltaire that nicely conveys the pitfalls of overworking a solution.
We’ve been cooking up some exciting new BatchBook features (if you like sneak previews, join our usergroup and weigh in on what is coming) and part of the exercise for us is resisting the urge to send our new features into product development’s version of the perfectionist’s purgatory. You see, smart and insightful and driven as we are, we are only eight people and there are about 6 billion or so other bright and talented people out there who might help us make our product a little perfecter.
There comes a time in all creative (as in creating something, not artistic) work that you have to realize the value in sharing your creation with your audience versus continuing to make your own improvements. The question is, will that thing that needs to get done, get launched, get sent out into the world be 100% better if you spend twice as much time on it? Probably not. Maybe 5% better. Or 10%. But if you use that extra time collecting feedback from all those people in the world that will have a completely different experience with your thing, you are much more likely to get your 100% improvement back tenfold.
Not sure I kept my point of view consistent here, but hey – I’m not trying to be perfect.
Congratulations to Kai Jesse of Karlsruhe, Germany. He’s the lucky member of the Blue by You user group who was randomly selected to receive the Small Business Starter Kit.
Thanks to all our Blue by You members who participated in the survey. If you’d like to be a member of Blue by You, our virtual user group, please let us know.
UPDATE: Here’s a little more information about Kai and his business in his own words:
“I’m a freelancer and consultant for Enterprise 2.0-technologies since 2007. I’m planning to build an enterprise-2.0-platform for small and smallest companies in Germany next year.
I’ve been in business over 10 years. I was CEO of a small company called TeraSystems until last year. TeraSystems is a service provider in CRM-solutions for small and medium business. I founded TeraSystems during my study (computer science at the excellence university of karlsruhe), because I’ve felt that I’m an entrepreneur and not an employee, because the best thing at entrepreneurship is the freedom of execution and the exciting work daily.
The biggest challenge for me as an information worker is the management of the information flow. This is the main reason because a solution such as BatchBook is highly interesting!”
Glückwünsche again to Kai. We look forward to sending him his cool prizes!
You’re invited to join Blue by You, our virtual user group. We’re in the process of running our very first survey and would love to hear what you have to say.
With each survey, we’ll be giving away a Small Business Starter Kit or other cool prize to one randomly chosen responder. This survey’s Kit has got many great things including:
Kitty not included!
a $100 gift card to Best Buy/Geek Squad
the books “Word of Mouth Marketing”, “Small is the New Big” and “The E-Myth Revisited”
a bag of BatchBrew coffee
an IrisCard Mini card reader
most exciting: a free one-year subscription BatchBook (once we start charging that is)
The survey runs through Friday, November 16th and the winner of the Small Business Starter Kit will be announced on the BatchBlue blog on Monday, November 19th.
To find out more about the group and to sign up, please visit the Blue by You page.
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Kitty not included!
