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Our Town BlueJean Time, a business perspective #why #cyberoffice #thinkbig #ourtown
Created by
Solomon Thompson Jr
Sat Nov 22 17:44:36 EST 2014
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<h1>Our Town - BlueJean Time, a business perspective</h1> <h2>History</h2> <p> <img style="float: left;" src="../wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SolEricPlane.png" alt="" width="200" height="200" /></p> <p>In the 90's, Sol and Eric spent a zillion hours on the plane during our IBM consulting life. We spent more time working out of offices than we did in offices (hotels, airports, on planes, weekends). We had to figure out how to be disconnected but get a result with each other and with client teams or we had zero time left for a life outside work. At first technology was crap (beepers, luggables, then crud-phones, then internet, then, VOILA search).</p> <p>As technology advanced, the Fortune 100's starting doing more distributed work, with each team in different environments.</p> <p>We were part of big outfits that leveraged zillions of dollars of IT investment but we realized that all of this was becoming nearly free (open source movement) so it was becoming possible that others (like small biz types) could use this kind of stuff if they knew how to (like wikis which emerged before facebook for example).</p> <p>Lots of other, similar age types figured all this out too and some of them came up with techniques like agile and platforms like Lotus Notes, Microsoft's Sharepoint etc etc but they were relatively expensive and only used by big business and involved cultural impediments (hierarchy, lack of transparency, silos...) at that time.</p> <p>We knew and know that cultural impediments don't exist with the facebook crowd or millenials but they don't know how to do business.</p> <p>A recent Mckinsey report said that "annual value that could be unlocked by social technologies" could be up to $1.3 trillion. but management challenges remain... so there are impediments at Fortune 100s to take advantage of the real ROI opportunities. This is consultant speak for "new employees are ready to use it but don't know how to in a business-context and old-managers don't understand it or know how to manage it". As Peter Drucker said, "Culture eats strategy for lunch...".</p> <p>Fertile ground now exists in wired-entrepreneurs and small biz. Eventually big outfits will follow. We see it happening slowly in our consulting engagements.</p> <p>We spent 14 years running a small consulting company testing these hyposthesis and building software and culture to work in this new way. We developed custom software for large organizations using the platform and did it in a way where no one was in the same room. Meetings were for customer relationship reasons alone, not to get work done. We know how to work this way and what type of software enables this kind of work. Hence the birth of BlueJean Time</p> <p> </p> <h2>Business Overview</h2> <p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="../wp-content/uploads/2014/11/OurTownPic.png" alt="" width="750" height="300" /></p> <p>BlueJean Time provides small businesses with a cloud which allows them to create private online workspaces (places) for free. These places are really cyber offices. In these places they can collaborate online and capture meeting minutes, do simple internal surveys for decision making, and simple task management with employees or stakeholders. These are activities done in any business by business owners, managers, team leaders etc.</p> <p>We sell apps which work within those online workspaces to improve productivity of the members of these cyber offices. We currently have Timekeeper which is a worker time tracking and project management solution. This app is targeted at business owners or individuals in small businesses that handles accounting for less than 30 employees.. This software integrates with Quickbooks and other accounting systems. As members request new apps, they can be quickly developed and will work within these online places due to the system design.</p> <p>BlueJean Time has a Member Store which sells Timekeeper and other business apps. What is distinctive about this store is that there is a 10% revenue $hare (trademarked) that goes to any member of the BlueJean Time community that causes a product to be sold. This enables a reseller network to emerge with no complicated contractual relationships needed, it's built into the platform and written in the terms of use. Making money is so simple that every member is provided a Pocket Money account App which lets them keep track of the money they make through revenue sharing.</p> <p>A quick analogy is that BlueJean Time is like a town which offers free office space to small business owners. The offices come with whiteboards for brainstorming, paper for creating documents, Planning boards to create and track work, and ballot boxes for anonymous surveys and voting. It also has file cabinets for storing important files. However over time, business owners may want printers and projectors. We will sell those apps in the Member Store at a much cheaper price than if they go outside of the community to shop. Additionally, if a member recommends a printer and it gets sold, that member makes 10% of the sale. Additionally, if a business owner has a popular office space (lets say they open a bar or a movie theater) that people are willing to pay to enter, then they can charge a fee. They make 60% of the fee, BlueJean Time collects 30% in taxes for infrastructure maintenance and if someone referred a member to the space then they get 10%. This is the big picture of what has been created. </p> <p>As the membership in the BlueJean Time ecosystem grows, we plan to build (and create simple api's to enable other developers to build) more vertically focused business apps on demand and disrupt those industries based upon price. Additionally, the user experience will be simplified and beautified so that members will have fun navigating the town called BlueJean Time and ask their colleagues to become a part of this utopia.</p> <p>Come on in, give us a try and make demands to make our community serve you better!</p> <div id="mcePasteBin" style="position: absolute; top: 124px; left: 0; background: red; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow: hidden;" contenteditable="false"> </div> <div id="mcePasteBin" style="position: absolute; top: 125px; left: 0; background: red; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow: hidden;" contenteditable="false"> </div>
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Solomon Thompson Jr
Jul 13, 2016 9:03 AM
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