In my first post I wrote about the business goals. Today I will focus on the product description.

Usually you could talk hours and hours about your “baby”, but if you write about it follow the rule: As short as possible, as detailed as necessary! I tried to keep that in mind while writing about CoboCards. Of course, this is not very easy. My approach was to write as much as possible at the beginning and then to shorten to what is necessary to understand.

Avoid redundancies! If a functionality, a procedure is described in various chapters try to eliminate those which you don’t really need.

Pictures appeal to the eye. If you have a prototype, a draft or something similar put it into the business plan. Images help to understand what you read. That doesn’t mean you should overload your paper with screenshots. Don’t go into the depth. If you think more images would help, use the annex. If you should already have a webpage, just mention it. Our reviewers checked out our page and tested our tool.

Regarding images: After each chapter I added a table or an image to summarise the chapter. I think it’s quite useful.

Use cases and examples always help to understand the product’s intention. Describe the disadvantages of existing systems and the advantages of your system. In our case: paper flashcards wear out, cannot be edited as often as you need and are not appropriate in our generation. Furthermore underline the benefits for the users: flexibility, independence on the location, collaborative learning etc.

Cu next time. Keep writin’!

Another barcamp completed and – again – a lot of positive impressions for us.

As usual we offered a couple of sessions. Below a picture of our session about “microlearing in business environments”.

Our evaluation of the two days briefly:

Location: very good, catering: extraordinary, organisation: unbeatable, sessions: interesting, but with 30 mins presentation and 15 mins discussion a bit too long. Because you never discuss just 15 mins so at the end you have a 60-minutes-session.

Many many thanks to Martin, Anja, Nadine, Kerstin, Franziska, Jürgen and Ute who have organised this barcamp. Would be a pleasure to participate at Bildungscamp #2.

A couple of weeks ago we started to write our brand with two capital “C’s”.

What for?

We recognised that some of you (and others, too) prefer to write CoboCards instead of Cobocards. At the beginning it was a bit strange for us. Later we asked ourselves if it is easier to remember the brand in that way and started surveys. Indeed, the most of the people prefer CoboCards. And we also started to like it.

We think it’s cooler now. What do you think?

Just compare again:

Previous version:

Current version:

There might be areas where you still see the old version. If you should see it, just give us a shout: info@cobocards.com

There is a barcamp concerning education in Cologne this weekend (October, 24 + 25)  and we will be on stage.

We support such kind of events. It’s important to discuss about education. Therefore we are one the sponsors of the Bildungscamp.

For sure, there will be interesting sessions and discussions. And we also want to participate with sessions on both days. A barcamp was always beneficial for us, because you get new ideas and can network. Next month we are on the Educamp in Austria (but later more).

For all those you can not participate we will have a short summary here.

After winning the business plan competition start2grow in September we were asked about our business plan several times and if we could give some hints and tips. Here we go!

First of all: We’ve written it ourselves. No external supports or checks. And: It’s really hard work!

Of course, there is no universal cure-all advice. Indeed, we concentrated ourselves on it. We are no experts though. Hence, we can just tell you what lead to success in our case. No guarantee at all!

I will start with the goals of your business. Everyone knows them in high-level: To build it up successfully and earn a lot of money. Great, but not enough to convince a jury. My suggestion is:

Specify your goals by:

• what kind of goals you have and
• when you aim to reach them

For the first one I recommend:

• Operational goals
• Strategic goals and
• Financial goals

The periods could be short term, middle-term and long term. The result is a matrix. But, what is the matrix? It’s a table consisting of 3 colums and 3 rows.

It’s difficult for a lot people to define their goals even with this matrix. My recommendation is: Have a look at the goals of other companies. A lot of them communicate their operational or strategical goals on their websites. Try to get an impression of what goals they have and if you have similar ones.

The break-even, for instance, is the financial goal of every start-up. This is the point of time where you start earning money. Now you just have to decide when you want to reach this goal and put it into one cell of the table.

That’s all for now. Next time I will write about another chapter.

To search in the CoboCards Pool easily from everywhere, there is a new browser search plugin out there. In compliance with the OpenSearch standard.

The installation is very easy and can be executed in two ways:

1. Go to the CoboCards Pool or CoboCards.com. When you click on the dropdown arrow in the small searchwindow from the browser you will see a list with all current available search plugins. At the end of the list you will have the option to add the CoboCards Pool plugin.

2. Just click on the following link: Install CoboCards Pool search plugin!

That’s it. Tell us what you think. You know: We love your feedback.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating

The design and usability of our website does not just convince you but obviously the jury of the Strato Homepage Award 2009.

Hence, they have nominated us (alongside with 5 other pages) for the award. Well, nominated to get to the finals in the first step. However, smiling faces everywhere in the office )

Of course, you can support us by voting until Monday, 15 hours. Aaand win one of the prices.

How to do it?

1. Go to the Homepage Award page
2. Rate the homepages you see (1 star = poor, 5 = best)
3. Type in the two words you see on the CAPTCHA and click “Voten”
4. Enter your e-mail and click “Absenden”

That’s it. Of course, you can invite your community, your friends to participate at the voting. Please be fair to the other competitors.

Thanks to all who vote for us!

At around the same time with the launch of the Pool for everyone we did some slight changes on the homepage.

The most important one is – no doubts – the possibility to search for flashcards directly from the main page of CoboCards. Our always smiling face directs you to the search field.

It’s further worth mentioning that the login page was eliminated. Henceforward you can directly login from the main page using the possibility in the header. Until now the share button got in login button’s way. This will not happen anymore. We think this is a good solution. If you think the contrary, just give us a shout.

By the way, our twitter-birdie made a big step forward and can be found on the right-hand side now.

Our baby, the CoboCards-Pool, is now one month old. Until now only registered CoboCards-User were able to use the Pool. Now we open the gates for everyone. So everyone can search for flashcard sets in our Pool (even if he’s not registered yet), rate flashcard sets or send “thank you’s” to the author of the flashcard set.

Slowly we want to open the structure of CoboCards. Until now CoboCards was very closed off. But now you can share your work with the world. We want to help the CoboCards-Community grow slowly. The Pool is really in it’s early stages and we have to see how it evolves. It’s stll a baby As you know: Feedback is highly appreciated.

You can find our pictures on Flickr and our videos on YouTube.