Over at Capulet, we do a fair bit of business writing. It’s mostly for our technology clients, and usually white papers, web content and so forth. We regularly do case studies, which are short documents describing how our client’s customers happily used their products or services.
This involves interviewing our client’s customers, which is harder than it sounds. The customers are busy, and random interviews with service providers are often a low priority.
I was trying to think of a way to make the process simpler, and wondered if there would be a market for a site that facilitated interviews:
It might offer similar functionality to When Is Good, enabling the interviewer and interviewees to agree to a time.
There would be some kind of form-creation service, so that interviewers could create interview templates for interviewees to complete.
Interviewees could type in their answers, record an audio answer using their computer’s microphone, or maybe call a number where they’re asked each question by a creepy computer voice and their answers are recorded.
Maybe there’s a kind of sign-off or approval process which enables interviewees to review the final interview text.
Even as I write this it seems like nail in search of a hammer, but I’m curious what you think. Is this a stupid idea, or just marginally idiotic?
Here’s my useless idea of the day. What if we could watch live or recorded screencasts of a writer’s screen as they write? The writer–from Stephen King to your favourite local blogger–installs some software on their computer, and it broadcasts the activity in their word processor (or authoring tool of choice) in real time to the web.
Here’s a quick example of what I’m talking about, courtesy of Victor Hugo:
It kind of combines Webex and RobotReplay with the popular notion of radical transparency. It sounds banal, but so does Twitter, and people seem to like that.
The technology for this obviously already exists. There’d be a little work in building plugins for MS Word, NotePad,browser forms and whatever else people write in. But other than that it would be simple.
If you’re Stephen King, maybe you offer some kind of premium subscription that enables people to spy on your writing. Hardcore fans, knowing that King usually writes in the morning, would log in to watch him putter away on his latest novel.
Of course, no writer that I know would permit this. As the saying goes, “there are two things you never want to see made, sausage and legislation”. I’d add most forms of writing to that list.
Further to foreign inspiration, I saw a cool bag which could sell well to tourists in any urban market. Maybe they’re already in Canada, but I’ve never seen them.
It’s your basic cheap-and-cheerful, unisex black satchel bag. However, there’s a city map printed on the vinyl flap that covers the opening. There’s no branding, or cheesy writing that says “VIENNA” in Comic Sans. Just a straightforward map of the city centre.
It’s not only a cool aesthetic, but it’s downright practical. You’ve always got a map with you, and it never tears or gets soiled in the rain.
Plus, when you return home, you’ve got a non-tacky, practical souvenir on your shoulder that’s liable to start a few conversations.
Back in March, inspired by Tara Hunt, I wrote a post which, in part, imagined what Shakespeare’s Twitter account might look like. I thought it was marginally funny, but there was a germ of an idea there. I got to wondering…
What would God’s Twitter account look like?
I got to chatting with my friend Heather about the idea, and we started working on TwitterAllMighty.com. We’d skin a Drupal site so that it looked like a Twitter page, write a few funny tweets from famous people, and invite site visitors to submit their own.
Why is my first instinct to satirize new tech trends? More on this later, maybe.
We registered the URL and got to work, but we rapidly got really busy, sick, busy some more, moved to Malta, and so forth. The idea died on the vine.
Here’s what it might have looked like (click for larger version):
I have a fair number of random ideas like this. Some get started, a few get completed and the rest just float around in the ether. I was thinking about why I finish the projects I do, and came up with this graph (click for larger version):
Yes, my busyness and laziness have something to do with my success rate, but I think it’s mostly driven by the quality of the idea. If I think an idea is great–like GetaFirstLife.com–and friends respond really positively to me when I pitch it, then I’ve got a lot of inertia to get it done.
On the other hand, if I’m not overly excited by the idea, and it only gets a lukewarm reception from colleagues, then I’m far less motivated to get it done. That’s pretty much what happened with TwitterAllMighty.com (it’s about half done). It was a marginal idea, so I didn’t cross the threshold of completion. That said, I obviously think it’s good enough to share the skeleton of the idea with you kind folks.
