Retrospective

I just posted a retrospective on my personal site at http://www.jacobrothstein.com/entries/rails-rumble-retrospective.

It has ended.

But why do I think that it’s not over?

Well, ShareLocally works pretty damn good!  There are a couple of things we wanted to add that didn’t make the deadline, unfortunately.  Lending and borrowing karma, network of known and approved acquaintances — to name the two biggest.  jbr’s a little down about it, but I think it’s a neat tool that he built.  I’m sure he’ll tweak it in the weeks to come until he is happy.

The core functionality’s there and super easy to use to boot.  I find it fun to play with.  Now if we can just spread the word around the neighborhood!

There were some really impressive web sites built this year.  Once I’ve rested up I’m certainly going to have fun playing with them.  Congrats to all — great, well executed ideas paired with brochure pages that make me cry regretfully at our lack of a proper  designer.  Guess what I’ll be learning in time for next year?

Thanks to everyone who helped out, adding and ranking ideas in Stormweight and playing with ShareLocally as jbr built it.  The systems are both anonymous or we would thank you all personally!  You know who you are.

All right.  It’s time for some well earned indolent lounging.

Almost almost!

Three and a half hours left!  Sharelocally is quite useable, even close to fully functional.  jbr and his computer have melded into a electronic logic biomachine fueled by caffiene.  I’ve just finished drawing the last of the little buttons styled to match the logo.  It took forever to do something so simple.  Carefully executed whimsical rusticity, not easy to execute.

I haven’t been able to blog as much as I wanted.  Too much to do, and I confess I took a good four hours of sleep in the wee hours.  jbr made it through the night.  It’s been a lot like being back in school.  Ah, nostalgia.

Well, I go to tighten up the copy and tranform the remaining paper and ink buttons into little pixelated icons.  Off to generate some meaningful blog content!

Weeping, Summer Time River, and Bones

Ah, well rested and in full swing!  jbr’s making email work which makes him cry.  I’m writing copy which makes me cry.  Well, copy for share locally was much easier than copy for Stormweight.  “Share stuff with your friends” slides so nicely into plain English compared to “preferential ranking.”

We’re continuing to use Stormweight as a consensus based project manager.  The list of tasks is long but well organized.  After enabling email?  User profiles.  That’ll be a five minute reprieve.

We’ve also voted on a color scheme.  It’s Not Fair beat out Guava Trees and Luck Be a Lady Tonight.  Fanciful.  Looks like a muddy river bank in summer time.

Design is neither of our strengths, so Sharelocally will stay simple.  Last night we talked about rough, grease stick style to match the logo.  I’d been thinking blocks of color.  Who knows?  That’s awhile off yet.

Heh, as I’ve written this, jbr’s got the barest bones of the site working.  I’m off to poke it and make sure it holds together!

It has begun.

Well, ok, it’s been going on for a couple of hours now.  jbr is furiously coding Sharelocally for Rails Rumble.  I, on the other hand, have just begun recording his effort.  (^_^)/  Hi, I’m oakese, cofounder of Stormweight Systems.

Sharelocally has been percolating for awhile.  I’ll confess, we’re both slightly crunchy, very thrifty, and totally averse to waste.  Spurred by the recession, Sharelocally sprung out of those tendencies.  It’s a site where you can list items you’re willing to lend, and view items that others within a certain radius from your location are lending.  Anonymity is preserved until both parties have approved information sharing, though you’ll also be able to share with friends on the site, people in your network who’s profiles you can see.  Sharelocally tracks who has what, and takes care of return notifications so you don’t have to feel like you’re nagging anyone.  Users accrue lending karma and borrowing karma, scores that let others know how responsible they’ve been — sort of like a buyer/seller’s rating.

I’m excited about this app because its usefulness is so immediately appealing.  For instance, my house has about 25 ft^2 of carpet, not really enough to justify buying a vacuum.  Still, it needs to be cleaned occasionally.  I know someone in the neighborhood has got a vacuum.  And I’m neck deep in esoteric cooking implements and appliances that I only use every once in awhile.  Handheld electric blender, anyone?  Cake pan shaped like a trout?

We picked Sharelocally from amongst a pile of ideas that have been accruing over the past six months.  jbr’s been busy hacking away at Stormweight, our startup, a web app that facilitates group decision making through collaborative brainstorming and preferential ranking.  Essentially groups pour a bunch of ideas in to Stormweight, each person ranks them as they like them, and the app gives back an ordered list of the groups favorites.

Fortunately, we designed Stormweight for projects just like Rails Rumble.  jbr dumped all of his ideas into a Stormweight list and invited the usual suspects.  A few of us chimed in with our own ideas, we had a heated debate about their respective merits, we ranked, and Sharelocally came out on top.  jbr will use Stormweight throughout the weekend to gather advice, help, and constructive criticism from his far flung posse of collaborators.

I’ll be blogging over the weekend with updates on how Sharelocally is shaping up, so please come back and check out our progress.  You can also follow developments live on twitter.  We’ll both be tweeting as @sharelocally.