Tag Archives: beanbag

Learn 2.0 start-ups

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Since I started at Beanbag I’ve been taking more of an interest in the other start-ups in the whole ‘learn 2.0′ space (yea I know – another effing 2.0 but I can’t think of another way to describe it – sorry!).  Anyway I thought I would just do a quick post about the sites I find most interesting.

[I guess a case could be made that these companies could be competitors to Beanbag but I just don't see it that way really but maybe thats my lack of a business killer instinct shining though!]

School of Everything – are a UK start-up based in London and have received funding from Channel 4.  They have a great team and a far reaching mission based around the idea that everybody could teach something.  Thus they have a whole host of categories for ‘teachers’ and are building building an audience pretty rapidly.  The site is built on the open source CMS Drupal and they wear their open web credentials on their sleeves.  They have won a couple of well deserved awards recently and all in all its an interesting, worthy and has a talented team so I think they’ll do well.

Teachstreet – is based in Seattle and currently also covers the Portland area as they go for a staged launch city by city in the US.  They have a very similar mission to School of Everything though the Teachstreet site has more in common with Beanbag as far as IA and technology go.  They have had some decent publicity in the tech blogs, secured some funding and look to have built an experienced and skilled team thanks to the presence of internet giants like Amazon being in the area.  I think the staged roll out is a good plan and their focus on SEO is clever and they have a wonderful homepage.

Grockit – is still in a private invite beta so I haven’t had a chance to check it out but the idea is very clever.  Creating an online game based on the MMORG that encourages peer to peer learning in a safe environment is a great concept and they have secured a first round of funding so they can obviously back up the big ideas and I’m really look forward to seeing how this works out (plus as someone who has read the entire Heinlein back catalogue I love the name of the company as well!)

Supercool School – is essentially a Facebook application that looks to pull together users with similar learning aims and then match them with a suitable teacher and then serve the class in an online environment.  I like lots about this idea – especially using Facebook as a platform and the idea that you get the students together first and they drive the direction of the study rather than the teacher.  Doesn’t seem to have been much take-up or coverage of this one but its still a cool idea I think.

There are a couple of other interesting companies I am watching: Babbel from Berlin and EduFire from the US but they are both focusing on languages at the moment so for now they are a little bit under my radar.

I’m sure there are loads of companies I am missing but I’m sure I’ll come across them in the coming months..

Crouch, touch, pause, engage!

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For those of you who aren’t glued to their TV screens during the Six Nations the title of this post is a reference to the instructions given by a referee in rugby before each and every scrum.  Why am I talking about rugby?  Well as a part of my job I find myself being introduced to all sorts of new ideas and the latest of these is using the Scrum methodology for running projects.

classic rugby scrum

classic rugby scrum

Scrum is an agile methodology that, at least in theory, looks like a god send for those of us more used to the forest destroying, will sapping, momentum stalling Prince2 system of running projects (and yes I know Prince doesn’t have to be like that but in my experience its how it always ends up!).  Scrum aims to empower the developers and also be flexible enough to realise that specifications change over time and creates a framework that can evolve with that but also regularly deliver solid outcomes.  It seems that I am going to take the role of Product Owner for Beanbag, which after some background reading seems to suit me fine.  As far as I can tell the role of the Product Owner is to act as the voice of the user/customer, set priorities for each ‘sprint’ (a short, in our case 3 week, period of work with deliverables at the end), make sure that the priorities are also supporting the business needs and then to get out of the way and let the developers do their work.  To maintain the rugby theme its kind of a scrum half role, pointing the guys who do the hard graft in the right direction but leaving them to do the nitty gritty then grab the glory at the end!

According to some of my reading it has quite a bit in common with the Product Manager role that alot of web and software companies have and this makes sense and this kind of role seems to be a bit part of what my job is settling down to become (with a chunk of what Tara Hunt used to call Pinko Marketing as well).

This week will be the first time I really get involved in this aspect and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it works out.  3 weeks in and the job is still pretty exiting as it evolves round me and the more time I spend on Beanbag the more sure I am of its potential and this Product Owner role will give me a real opportunity to start influencing the direction of things a bit which is something I have missed since leaving JISC.