TeamCamp

First a recap of our journey thus far:
June 18th – The Brainstorm: Twegather – a Twitter-centric impromptu event organizer (i.e Tweet: We-Gather)
Summer 2009 – Project nights – Developing and testing a minimum viable product (MVP)
September 3rd First Major Milestone – Alpha Demo: fully functioning prototype

Now our progress since the last post:

October 19th – LiVE @ DemoCamp
Chris and the team presented an awesome show at DemoCampOttawa12. I really wish I could have been there but had a conflicting commitment and couldn’t attend in person. However, I did manage to tweet into the demo live and Chris (@chrisjschmitt) was kind enough to cut and paste my tweet into his blog post review. DemoCamp was great on a number of fronts; it generated some buzz around Twegather, helped to recruit some beta users, showcased the great stuff we are doing at TeamCamp and probably most important @map_maker agreed to join the team as community manager. All in all a very successful outing.

Apollo 11 lifts off

This is just too cool. Twegather is now a live app with real users, real events and real problems. I LOVE problems because “in every problem are the seeds of opportunity”. I think Chris has assembled a great team and their accomplishments are quite significant when you consider this is a part time, volunteer based project with $0 budget but plenty of passion.

Where from here?
Improve the app and make it bullet proof in terms of quality, simple/intuitive in terms of user interface and functionality. Be responsive to user feedback, adapt, evolve and improve. Engage and manage the user base with our most awesome community manager. Develop a “Kick Ass Product”. Keep thinking about monetization strategies and how to implement them. Always be looking and listening for opportunities.

Chris has chatted with a number of smart folks and we have decided to delay overhead until absolutely necessary to keep costs down and options open. In terms of the business plan, when you are riding a rocket and moving fast it is difficult to keep one up to date and relevant. I prefer to think of the web app business development process as; “Agile Business” that needs to be quick, nimble and adaptable based on realizing opportunities as they become available.

Keep that seat belt buckled … this promises to be an exciting ride!

- Teamcamper Ian

PS – The Twegather team is looking for early beta users – I you’re interested in helping to define the service sign up here.