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Our mascot, the aardvark, is a popular animal. Recently, we discovered another software project using an aardvark mascot. That got Gordon and me thinking about applying for trademark protection. After all, we registered the domain name and signed up for Twitter and GetSatisfaction accounts. It makes sense to register our name and logo, too.
While trademark registration is more expensive than domain name registration, it’s still very reasonable for small businesses. Trademark registration costs vary depending on whether you do it yourself or have a lawyer file it for you. We opted to have a law firm file for us. It saved us some time and paperwork.
We submitted our application two weeks ago, but we didn’t use our original logo. Instead, we used our new and improved version.
As part of our UI redesign, Amy suggested that we make a few changes to our logo. Now we really like our logo, but we thought we’d entertain a few ideas. The new look of our application keeps many of the same colors, but is much brighter and bolder. Amy felt that we needed a friendlier, chunkier font for the logo, rather than the refined Avant Garde. Here’s the original logo:
We’d also noticed that people tended to misspell Infovark in all sorts of interesting ways. People often wrote our company name like “Info Vark” or “InfoVark” instead of as Infovark. I thought the two-tone color scheme used by the text might be at fault, so we decided to make the letters all one color.
Our original logo also implied a lowercase “i” for the company name, with the dot of the “i” being the Infovark’s head. We liked the friendly, unpretentious feel of the lowercase “i”, but after a few months of fighting automated spell check in email and documentation, we decided to go for the path of least resistance. (We are building an easy-to-use productivity tool, after all. having to mess around with funky capitalization ran counter to our mission.) That meant that we wanted the “I” in Infovark to appear in upper case. The easy fix was to make the critter all one color and the text a different color.
So after all these tweaks, our new and improved logo looks like this:
I’m really pleased with this version. It’s amazing what a dramatic improvement those little changes make.
Oh, and for my fellow type nerds, the new font is Whitney from Hoefler & Frere-Jones.
We’re in the process of registering a trademark on the new logo as well as on the Infovark name. That means that in 4-5 months, assuming we pass examination, we’ll be able to use the “circle R” ® symbol. For now, we can use the trademark symbol, ™.
It’s tedious and pedantic to use these symbols everywhere, so you won’t often see them on the site. But for the record: Infovark™.
I’m embarrassed. James Dellow asked how Gordon and I decide what to blog about back in October, and I just noticed today. Thanks for the ping, James, and here’s your belated answer.
When Gordon and I started Infovark, all we had was an early database schema, something we called “the spiderweb diagram”, and one investor. (His name is Warren, but I call him Dad.)
We immediately began blogging. In many ways it was — and is — a distraction from design and coding, but we were bursting with ideas that we couldn’t share at our old job.
We also wanted to test the waters a bit. Though we’d seen a lot of frustration with current information management and content management tools in our former roles as consultants, we wanted to make sure there really was a market there. And since we couldn’t talk about the solution yet — because we were still drafting it — we decided to talk about the problem instead.
It’s a strategy that’s worked really well for us. We’ve gotten a lot of great insights from folks leaving comments or reacting to our posts on their own blogs. It’s helped shape and narrow our focus.
The principal theme of this blog has been how traditional enterprise software overlooks (or impairs) individual productivity while meeting broader organizational imperatives. We talk a lot about top-down versus bottom-up implementation approaches, principles of emergent systems, and software design. Most of the topics come from our Twitter friends, our feed readers, and discussions amongst ourselves.
Over time, we’ve also added two sub-themes. One is about the challenges of running a software start-up and the other is about the product we’re building. (Expect us to starting post more frequently about these.) We’ve gotten good feedback on those topics, too. Ideas related to these subjects pop up naturally based on what we happen to be working on at the time.
Several months ago, we decided to split some of our more technical topics on to a separate blog, the Underground, specific to software development. We wanted to share tips and tricks with other programmers. We also wanted to publicize the books, frameworks and tools we find especially useful. We particularly wanted to highlight free and open source tools. We figure if we can’t pay them in cash, we can at least praise them in public.
I personally get most of my topics from the books I read and the RSS feeds I consume. I’m a voracious reader. My Google Reader tracks more than 180 blogs. I’ve organized them into broad categories: design, enterprise content management, Enterprise 2.0, personal productivity, programming, technology news, tools, and venture capital. I also track friends’ blogs, video/computer game blogs, and cartoons. I’m not all about work.
Once an idea strikes us, we draft an article on WordPress. Some posts just come together, others require more work. Between the two blogs, we probably have 50 drafts in various stages of completion.
Once we finally finish one, we mark it as pending review. Gordon edits my posts and I edit his. A former boss of mine — and a gifted writer — insists that “everyone needs an editor” and it’s advice I’ve taken to heart. Between the two of us, we try to maintain some semblance of coherence and quality.
And that’s how the magic happens.
So the “how to decide what to write about” meme may have languished a bit, but I’ll try to revive it. My apologies to anyone in the list below that might have been previously tagged.
I’m curious about how these bloggers decide what to write:
Over to you, folks…
Two recent articles reminded me of my days as an Enterprise Content Management consultant.
Gordon Ross discusses knowledge loss through attrition on the Thought Farmer blog. Due to the demographic bulge known as the Baby Boom, many industries will lose sizable portions of their workforce, many from upper levels in management. What happens when this group retires? How can organizations retain the knowledge these workers had?
I used to talk about this issue a lot when I worked for government clients. The U.S. government, particularly at the federal level, is one of the sectors that will be hardest hit by this event.
You’d think, with years to plan — and the government loves to plan — there would be more of a concerted effort to write important things down, put those things in an accessible place, and tell people about them. But this is a classic case of boiling the frog. The situation never seemed dire enough for most organizations to do anything about it.
At an individual scale, most workers don’t have the time to think about transition planning or succession issues. They already have enough work on their plate. And of course, “just writing stuff down” is an oversimplification. It takes time and thought to prepare training and instructional materials. Handing over a few hurriedly scribbled notes on the way out the door is not enough.
Would better tools help? Perhaps. But that brings me to the second article.
In Content as a Capital Asset the Big Men on Content lament that most businesses don’t give enough attention to — or budget for — content management tools. If companies started treating content as capital, they suggest, you’d see businesses doing a better job of cultivating and managing it.
Some industries do treat content as capital. Most newspapers and magazines have morgues, where old editions are preserved. Movie studios have film vaults and sound effect libraries. Artists and designers maintain portfolios.
But in most companies, information management is incidental. It’s something done in the course of business, not as an end in itself. It doesn’t directly impact the bottom line, which is often why calculating ROI is so hard.
We’ve seen, again and again, content management vendors and consultants try to stir up enthusiasm for managing internal company information. Forget the demographic issue, guys — if fear of Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA or product liability suits won’t get companies moving, nothing will.
Instead of trotting out bogeymen, focus on the positive. Give us stories of companies that manage information well and gain efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage from it. Inspire us, don’t scare us.
As Infovark moves into its third year, people often say to me, “Er, when are you going to ship something?” and “What is it you’re building, anyway?”
And you know, as much as I’d like to launch the product right now, I can’t. Infovark isn’t finished.
When Dean and I started in October 2007, we thought that we’d be able to get a public beta ready within about 6 months. We were really wrong. Here’s the link to the sad trombone.
In the absence of a product announcement, Dean and I have been talking a lot about the problems we’re trying to solve (in between furiously refactoring, debugging, re-bugging, etc.). And as we move into a new year — one that will definitely see the first public release of Infovark — I thought it might be prudent to re-visit exactly what it is we’re building, and why. So here’s a few of the questions that we’ve encountered over the last few years of running our start-up.
What is Infovark?
Infovark is a smart software agent that lives in your computer. It follows you while you work, remembers things, and learns a little bit about what you do, who you work with, and the documents and emails that you create and use. It then uses this information to build you a spiffy personal website that’s all about you, your work activity, and your stuff.
You can make your website available to your colleagues, so that they can browse your Infovark, leave comments, post updates, and access the information you choose to share with them.
Why would I want it?
Because you are busy, and you don’t have time to answer repeated requests for information, or spend ages digging around for answers. Infovark helps you find things that you work with, and share them with your colleagues. Infovark also provides you with insights based on your work patterns. For example, It will suggest related documents for an email you’re reading. It will help you determine which is the most recent version of a document. It’s very helpful.
If you’ve ever thought that you could benefit from having a personal assistant, or someone who took notes for you, then you will love having Infovark on hand.
Will it run on my computer?
If you’re running a version of Windows from the last 5 years, then chances are pretty good that it will.
How do I use Infovark?
Once you install Infovark, it asks you a few questions about what you do and don’t want it to include. (This process doesn’t usually take too long.) And then, you just get on with doing whatever it is you do.
When you get stuck, lose, or forget something, you can ask Infovark what it knows about it. If your friend at work also has an Infovark, you can browse to it instead of their Facebook page. (If you want to do work stuff, that is. Infovark doesn’t support throwing sheep.)
Does this mean that all my stuff is always shared?
No, only if you let it be shared. You can keep Infovark and all of your information to yourself if you like. You can also tell Infovark to ignore whole folders or files, so that it won’t consider these when making recommendations or suggestions.
Does this mean my Boss can spy on me?
The content that you choose to share will be available to your colleagues, including your boss. So, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t actually add any value to an organization, and likes to avoid doing things, then you probably shouldn’t install Infovark. It might make you look bad.
On the other hand, if you’re delivering awesome work, and you want other folks to know about it, then Infovark is a great way to get the word out. Sending an occasional reminder about your valuable contributions couldn’t hurt during the next annual performance review, could it?
I thought you guys were all about solving Enterprise Problems. How does this help?
Enterprise Software is unwieldy and complex because it abstracts all business processes into a single piece of software. It’s designed to solve management problems as seen from the executive level. But the real work happens on the front lines, at the individual level — where we all do our jobs.
With your permission, your Infovark will contact other Infovark agents within your organization, allowing you to share, search, and collaborate with your peers. In the process, Infovark builds up a realistic, organic representation of your organization’s knowledge and insight from the ground level. We think that enterprises are made of people, and genuinely useful enterprise software has to acknowledge that fact.
We also have future plans for an Infovark Team Server that will aggregate individual Infovarks and provide a more holistic and structured approach to information management.
That’s all well and good, but when can I have it?
Soon! We have one more private beta to go through, in Feburary this year — look for our public beta sometime in April. (Really, if we don’t get to share this with somebody soon, we will explode.)
Meanwhile, Dean and I will endeavor to keep posting our thoughts and ideas here as we go. You can also drop by our other Infovark blog, The Underground. The Underground shares our experiences as programmers — and contains some more technical details about our approach.
A big thanks to all our readers, and smart folk who’ve left comments for us over the last year. We love hearing from you. Happy 2009!
Here’s some interesting thoughts to begin the new year. The Epicenter blog at Wired just posted the Rules of the Garage, the shared vision of the founders of Hewlett Packard.
(Yes, HP actually began in a garage. It was the original Silican Valley start-up. It makes the Burrow look posh by comparison.)
To the list, the author John Abell adds six additional quotes, also worth pondering.