Category: Free Idea Friday

It’s Free Idea Friday! I like ideas. Others might say I need focus. So here’s an old one cluttering my head. Ideas are free. Execution isn’t. Take my idea, let it live long and prosper in your capable hands.

I like the trend of experiences over consumption, and I like the proliferation of web services and apps that integrate your online and offline experiences – I’m thinking about  location-based apps (Facebook Places, Foursquare, Gowalla), and those calendaring and event services ( Plancast, Tungle, Socializr).

Wouldn’t it be hot though if these services married and made babies on your iPhone?

For simplicity’s sake, let’s call this a social calendar that aggregates and creates experiences for young professionals. As a collaborative gateway service, the social calendar could partner with young professional, business and philanthropic institutions (your local young professional org, the United Way, political activist groups, etc.) that have a desire to serve and market to young professionals, but have been a bit left behind in all the web 2.0 hubub. These organizations work hard to create real-life experiences and connections, but often haven’t been able to successfully reach the younger demographic.  At the same time, young people everywhere are asking, “What is there to do?”

We’ve aggregated and monetized content and ideas, but no one has done the same with events and experiences. You can add your own events to existing services, but no one takes the time to aggregate the many existing calendars already out there. The social calendar would aggregate local and national experiences of interest to young professionals.

Not just music, entertainment, concerts and plays, but business, political and networking events as well. Our lifestyle is a blur between work and life after all. Existing local sites and services separate information into traditional boundaries of business or entertainment, and lack a cohesive and definitive picture. By aggregating experiences into one spot, the social calendar enhances the availability of community and its quality of place to users.

The social calendar could take existing iCal feeds and user-generated feeds, and bring them together in an intuitive and slick service. You could work in a freemium model where you entice new visitors with a default multi-calendared view, but with registration, users would be able to, via a drag and drop interface, select which feeds/calendars the user wants to see represented at a time, enjoy saved customized views, see private events, and other benefits.

You’d never have to worry about scheduling an event on the wrong day. You’d always know what was happening. You’d build the social calendar for the ultimate networker and the coolest hipster, but everyone would benefit.

Registered users would also be able to subscribe (via iCal and/or RSS) to those feeds, receive email reminders, share events with friends, etc. Registered users would also be able to add items to the calendar. Registration could be tiered: new users (events will be vetted/approved by an admin) and trusted (events automatically go on the calendar).  Events can be tagged in multiple categories, but shows up once even when multiple categories or feeds are selected.

You’d want to keep it simple in the beginning, but should you be a fan of feature creep, there are endless directions to go once the basics are built. You could allow added value and content that included tips and recommendations, that could be turned on or off. Users, such as a small business or blogger, could embed their calendar onto their site with a link back to your social calendar (imagine being the native language for all calendars). You could follow other people’s calendars. There are a lot of places you could go.

Schedule a little time for Sunday to Saturday innovation.

I wrote about this idea in my first post ever on this site, so it holds a special place in my heart. Won’t you make it a reality for me?

I like ideas. Others might say I need focus. So, here are some old ones cluttering my head. Ideas are free. Execution isn’t. Take my idea, let it live long and prosper in your capable hands. Tell me when you’ve brought it to fruition. I’ll be the first to promote it.

There are really great plot lines and true stories out there, but they’re often difficult to find even with, or likely because of,  the magnanimous amount of choice we have today. Let’s face it. It’s easy to start watching Dating in the Dark when you’ve watched all the newest TED videos and have nowhere else to turn. Oh sure, there’s Hulu, which is one of those services I’m not sure how I lived without before, and the ever-reliable Netflix which is oh-so-good at suggesting what I’ll like next. There are even niche sites like  Revision 3 and Current.tv dedicated to creating original programming outside of the mainstream.

But there is no site dedicated to the gems of independent film and television. There are great festivals dedicated to the exposure of these filmmakers and storylines, but their films often drift into the oblivion of their friend’s condos after the fact. We need a media site that streams the independent and documentary filmmakers, and small-time content creators like my buddy and his brother that is curated and brought together in one magnificent online theater.

How have the hipsters not created this yet?!

I like ideas. Others might say I need focus. So, here are some old ones cluttering my head. Ideas are free. Execution isn’t. Take my idea, let it live long and prosper in your capable hands. Tell me when you’ve brought it to fruition. I’ll be the first to promote it.

There is a huge market for a new kind of place to work.  No one wants to work in offices, which are formal and rarely conducive to teamwork or creativity, and few people – after the first few months of it, really – like working at home either. It’s lonely and it’s expensive to set up right. So-called “third places” are going to be the new place for work, and if you start building your franchise now you could be very rich. Particularly because coffee shops are extremely uncomfortable to work in and the co-working movement is desperately slow, disorganized and revolves too much on schedules, membership and other red tape.

Besides, being an entrepreneur, you’ll want to make money. So here is what I would include in this new kind of coffee shop  – something of a combination college library, hip office, and the corner coffee shop:

• Large monitors, ergonomic keyboards, and all the right cords, so that customers can just bring in their laptops and begin.
• Plugs and outlets that hang from the ceiling or are built into the table desks.
• Real table desks that don’t make it precarious to place a french soda next to a laptop, and ergonomic chairs.
• Copiers, faxes, printers, staplers, tape, paper, pens, and all the latest technology.
• Baristas that double as the Geek Squad if customers have IT issues.
• Private conference areas for companies to hold meetings in to impress clients and employees.
• Sofas, warmth, books and other comforts of home.
• Exposed brick walls and a library wall
• Really good food, wine, beer and all the regular coffee accouterments

Freelancers, designers and others will naturally make their way to your coffee shop because of the superior design. But you should also be the advocate for a new way of work and encourage stodgy companies to build new policies. The kind of policies that allow their employees to work at their company’s offices or in your coffee shop office which is going to be strategically placed within walking distance of all the young and established companies. The kind of policies that believe results are more important than physical presence. Where politics are kept to a minimum, and challenging work is the encouraged maximum.

Your coffee shop office should be the physical manifestation of how work can and should change. It should be more than a place, but a lifestyle for modern workers. None of these ideas are particuarly new or ingenious. But no one has executed on them and done it well. And no one has franchised the heck out of it. Maybe that could be you?

I like ideas. Others might say I need focus. So, here are some old ones cluttering my head. Ideas are free. Execution isn’t. Take my idea, let it live long and prosper in your capable hands. Tell me when you’ve brought it to fruition. I’ll be the first to promote it.

Productivity systems are incredibly personal. What works for one person might work for another… if only it was tweaked a bit. Create a platform that allows the user to pull together different modules to create their perfect to-do app.

Much in the same way bloggers add widgets to their sites, to-do app users could easily add modules like “Weekly Lists,” “Goals,” and “Next Week’s Tasks” in a proprietary editor to create their custom productivity app. One user might create an app as simple as Teux Deux or as intricate as Remember the Milk. You could allow users to share their designs and templates in a library for others as well.

Yeah? What do you think? I would totally use this. Someone create it for me, please. Right now I use a mash-up of Google Spreadsheets. It’s a clunker that works, but ain’t so pretty.  How do you list to-dos?