FreshBrain

OpenSocial, Adobe goes online and more ...

2008-03-29T20:26:00.000-07:00

I am a bit behind with my blog entries. Got busy with FreshBrain and just didn't make the time. So I will do this entry to catch up a bit. Sooooo much is happening. Got to love it!

How about the announcement last week that Yahoo agrees to join with Google and MySpace around OpenSocial. Actually, what they did is create an OpenSocial Foundation! This is great. Developers need to be able to write applications that are targeted for social networks in such a way that they run in all of them without change (or in reality - at least with minimal change). That definitely is not the case today.

So why do we care. Well, freshbrain.org is build on a social networking platform - Drupal. I talked about this in the past. What we want is for developers to be able to write applications that can then run on our platform as well. We will need to support OpenSocial. But that is what we are all about - leveraging open source and standards as much as possible.

With Yahoo, OpenSocial gets closer to ubiquity. We of course still need Facebook. They are not excited about the idea as they are the leaders right now and they were pretty early with applications. I hope that this recent announcement will help push them to commit!

Second on my list is an announcement by Adobe that they are launching Adobe Photoshop Express - a limited online version of Adobe Photoshop. While I thought the last one was great, this one is more of ... about time. Adobe is releasing something that others already have. They are heading in the right direction, and they do have one nice feature - integration with flickr. But as I said, it is about time.

And third (last) on my list, an update on FreshBrain. We have been working hard. Lots of small things to mention (ok, some of these are not small to us).

Working during Beta to improve usability of freshbrain.org.

Improving search - really critical to the students.
Simplifying the concept of projects, how you view them, start one and join one.

Signing up partners. I will do a whole section on this soon.
Readying FreshBrain to hire our own employees (insurance, benefits, etc.).
Beginning to drive volume - launched our first contest on the new site!

We all feel both buried and jubilant. So much to do, but so much is going well.

Talk again to you soon.

Preparing for College

2008-02-23T13:01:00.000-08:00

Some of you know that I have two sons. One is in middle school and the other in high school. We just spent a week visiting colleges. It was of course primarily for my junior in high school who is really focused on grades, SAT scores and deciding where he will "spend four years of his life." It was also good for my younger son too.

We visited SDSU, UCSD, UCLA and UCI. We have already visited UCB and UCSB. We still have on our list another visit to UCB (we were there during a big football game and want to see what it is like on a regular day) and Stanford.

These are all good schools. I could go on and on about what is going through his mind right now, but that isn't the point of this blog entry. It is more about grades, SAT scores and extra curricular activities.

To get into any of these schools, you will need excellent grades. Anywhere from a 3.6 to well above a 4.0. And for your test scores you will need 1100 (not counting the writing section) to above 2200 (with writing) and good scores on the subject tests!

This in itself is tough. But there are LOTS of students who have these kinds of grades and test scores. What will make you different. It can be your extra curricular activities. These are clubs, sports, work and so on.

FreshBrain can be a part of this. Do a number of activities and projects in an area where you have interest, show a passion and progress and put it in your personal statement (a key part of your UC and private school application)!!

We Are BETA

2008-02-16T22:17:00.000-08:00

FreshBrain is very proud to announce that we have released Beta of freshbrain.org.

This is a huge moment (ok Thursday was a huge moment). The Beta release is the first time we are providing the complete set of capabilities to students. There is of course a LOT more to do, but this release has activities, projects, tools and training. It supports lots of social networking between users and it allows for Advisors to help the students with their projects.

Come by and take a look - freshbrain.org.

Days Away Now ...

2008-02-05T12:08:00.000-08:00

I feel like we are finally just days away from going live with the new website.

For those of you who have paid attention, we were suppose to be live by now. Our target was the end of January. I sometimes joked that it might be January 32nd since we needed all the time we could get. Well - it now looks like it might be January 45th:)

But we are really getting close. With the feedback from the Usability Test - we decided that we had to make some changes. Most were pretty simple, but a few were significant. And to insure that those changes integrate nicely into the site has required some real time and effort.

But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Stay tuned.

Interesting Random Topics

2008-01-30T07:46:00.001-08:00

I am overflowing with topics and have not spent the time to update my blog. So here is a very quick dump of the top four.

AMAZING software products and websites that are free!

I will not name them all, but here are a few that we have found that are pretty impressive.

Sketchup from Google. Simple to use 3D design software. Standard version is free.

Maya from AutoDesk. Very high end professional 3D modeling software. Personal learning edition is free.

Fotoflexer at fotoflexer.com. Online photo editor with great effects. Free.

Huge governmental focus on solving the education problems in the US ... but will it work?!

Listened to the state of the union. Touted no child left behind progress. This is good, but is it enough.

Met with the state government in Utah on an educational bill that was being submitted. Found that it was labeled with one of the governers favorite projects yet had nothing to do with it. Also found that districts had already written their requests prior to the bill even being submitted. All seems very backward.

We will work hard to find ways to engage in this. Looks like foundations are better for large infrastructure projects. But there are some opportunities with state and federal grants.

Incredible number of non-profit efforts, will they be any better?!

We (FreshBrain) have been talking to lots of non-profits. ALL of them are trying to do the right thing, but all are going after the same dollars to fund. And there is really no alignment across them.

There is also a huge challenge in finding enough time to work out a good partnership. Everyone is busy delivering on their mission!

Can we do it differently? I don't yet know, but we will try. Maybe through a joint grant request - we can find the common motivation and benefit.

Continued focus on online protection of minors.

Read a good article today in the San Jose Mercury News called "NY moves to protect kids from sex offenders online." This is excellent and we will use the information when it is available. Lets hope this happens and others follow.

This is a very important area for us. We will be doing background checks on Advisors and will put in place a large number of protections for the students!

On another topic, we are getting close to releasing the new freshbrain.org. Looks like in order to get all of the usability feedback in, it will now be the week of February 11.

Awesome Usability Test

2008-01-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

We ran a usability test of the new freshbrain.org on Friday at Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara, CA. We had 13 high school age students participate. The usability test ran for just over an hour. The structure was:

8 laptops in a conference room
One or mostly two to a laptop
Complete three scenarios

Explore

Create a predefined project, their own project and do an activity

Provide us feedback after each scenario
Provide us with written feedback at the end

The students were AWESOME!! They jumped right in, appeared to totally enjoy the experience and provided us with loads of verbal and non-verbal feedback.

It was amazing how spot on we were. The fact that we built freshbrain.org on a social networking platform was exactly the right choice. They were quick to take advantage of all of the capabilities to share with friends, work together on projects and so on. We also nailed it with the look and feel of the site, the types of technology areas, the types of activities and projects and how we intend to use Advisors.

We did walk away with a number of important enhancement requests. These are mostly building on what we have We will make a couple of changes for this release and the rest on the one planned for March.

Enhance search - it is how the students want to find everything.
Make tools easier to find and better connected to activities and projects.
Provide an internal system (as opposed to email used today) to make and accept friend requests, additions to projects, etc.
Improve usability of forums.
Extend capabilities of My FreshBrain to show more about friends, their activities, projects and forum entries.
Look at adding more non-techie options maybe under Lifestyles (eg. cooking, writing).
Provide a more in depth set of steps for projects.

This was all very validating :)

OLPC Bickering

2008-01-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

I am shocked by the bickering that is going on around One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). This all seems more like a political and commercial battle rather than a focus on the kids.

Backing up. OLPC is about trying to provide kids in developing countries with the technology that we all live with every day. It is attempting to level the playing field, give kids in these countries with the tools to learn. To develop. And to hopefully bring along with their generation new opportunity. All a very noble goal.

My fundamental problem with it (separate from whether they picked the right technology - laptop vs cell phone) is that it feels more like a big PR and marketing effort rather than a genuine effort to solve the problem. People that are trying to do something good are not out to make a name for themselves. Not out to get as much press as possible. And not out to win with "their" technological solution. They instead work behind the scenes to make something happen. They lead with solutions and grow it from there. They don't lead with promises.

I have just spent a few minutes and read what is going on with Intel. I have read the comments from Bill Gates on how Microsoft sees it. It looks like what could have been a good thing is coming tumbling down!

Thanks to All - Winners Soon

2008-01-08T06:54:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who either participated or visited freshbrain.org during the Video Contest. As you know if you have followed my blog - this is a step along the path to delivering the full site planned for the end of the month.

We have learned a lot with the Graphics and Video Contests.

The best way to reach folks is in the communities where they spend their time. This is far better than purchasing advertisements on sites such as facebook.
google analytics is an excellent tool for monitoring the anonymous activity on your site down to where people come from (physical and virtual), how many pages they look at and how long they stay.
Drupal was the right choice for our platform, as was Solaris and Network.com
There is a LOT of creativity out there looking for a venue to share it!
And there is an amazing amount of interest in enhancing the education that our kids get in the area of technology - schools are just not providing enough

We will be announcing the winners of the contest shortly. And we are very busy finishing up the work on the new site!!

Down to the Wire - Video Contest!

2008-01-03T21:32:00.001-08:00

Ok, we are down to the wire with our FreshBrain Video Contest. We have a few good submissions but need some more. You have until 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time on Sunday 1/6.

Lets see some creativity!!!

freshbrain.org

Twas Three Days after Christmas

2007-12-27T21:59:00.000-08:00

Just checking my watch and it is three days after Christmas ... for those who celebrate such things. For the rest, maybe back to work or more than a week to go of vacation before school starts back up. In any case, I have been working on our next release and thinking about the new year.

This will be a very exciting year for FreshBrain. We will be making our Beta release in late January. As I have already said, lots to do to get ready. But the work is pretty fun. The new website is coming together. We get to see an update every couple of days. The activities, projects, tools and training are starting to come together. We WILL go live with at least three technology areas and hopefully four or five!!

But that is the immediate future. What about the rest of the year. Well - let me preview a blog posting that I will make in a few days. It will be my FreshBrain new years resolutions. Or maybe better the big things that we plan to do next year. I will then see how we did at the end of the year, kind of the year in review. Here are some first thoughts:

Release a Beta update on March
General availability in maybe June
Something significant that ties freshbrain.org to schools and afterschool programs late in the year
Surpass what, maybe 50,000 visitors for the year?!?!
And how about five or six interesting partners!!

Ok, let me work more on this.

Contest and Next Release!

2007-12-18T12:09:00.000-08:00

We have been really busy over the last couple of weeks - and the next month will be even more so ...

We updated the freshbrain.org PREVIEW site with a new video contest. This is pretty cool. We are giving away an AWESOME video camera. High quality, high definition memory stick based Sony Handycam HDR-CX7. We are just now starting to see the first submission. I expect that we will see a large number of them over the holiday break.

And we are working our tails off on the BETA release. The target for this is January. It will be late in the month, but it is really coming together. We are continuing to work with our partner Image X Media. Here is what we have completed thus far.

Defined the scope
Created wireframes (simple visual descriptions of the website pages)
Created the mockups (nonfunctional graphical versions of the website pages)
Development started (on the BETA release of the website0
First snapshots available (work in progress)
First versions of website content (activities, projects, tools and training)

Lots left to do, but this is getting pretty exciting!

Video Contest - Join In!!

2007-12-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

We are LIVE with our Video Contest.

This contest is to create the best "Day in the Life of a FreshBrain." What we would like to see is some creativity applied to explaining the kinds of things that a FreshBrain might do ... using freshbrain.org to do an activity, enter a contest or maybe work with some friends on a project. All of this in between 30 seconds and 2 minutes!

First prize is an AMAZING video camera - a Sony Handycam HDR-CX7. This thing can do high definition recording and uses a memory stick so that you don't have to mess with tapes or DVDs. There are two second prizes - pretty cool Flip Video Ultra 60-minute Camcorders.

If you like the idea, please enter. If you know of someone who might be interested, please let them know. The contest runs through 1/6/08.

freshbrain.org

Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday

2007-11-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone got a chance to enjoy Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Whether it be eating a lot, watching the football games, hanging out with family, enjoying a good book, or working on your entry into the FreshBrain Button & Icon contest:)

We are down to the last couple of days. The contest ends at midnight on Sunday November 24. Get your entries in!!

Site Design Feedback

2007-11-20T19:51:00.000-08:00

We are in the process of designing the next release of freshbrain.org targeted for January.

This will be the first "real" release as it will have all of the capabilities described under About - How it Works. It will support activities and projects that can be completed in a number of different areas including: Web; Graphic Design; Music; Video / Movies; Gaming; Eco/Green; and Developer.

The site will provide a number of collaboration tools to help complete these activities and projects. There will be a community to ask questions of and bounce ideas off. And there will be advisors available if needed to help.

Now back to the real question. Here is a snapshot of the existing site (top) and a very early mock up of the front page of the new site (bottom). Please leave a comment to let us know what you think of the new design.

What are your first impressions of the site? What do you like and what do you not like?
Do you like the overall look and feel of this site better or worse than the existing site?
Are there any things on the page that just don't make sense?
Are there any things on the page that you think are really cool?
If you got to design the front page, what would you do differently?

Thanks - all of your feedback will go back into the designers to consider for the next mock up.

Oops - Site Outage!

2007-11-19T19:53:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have noticed that the freshbrain.org site was down for quite a while this weekend. More than 12 hours. We are very sorry if you were impacted by this outage.

Let me quickly fill you in on what happened.

The network.com team applied a simple firmware update to a switching system. This update was suppose to have done nothing to the environment. It was not suppose to impact any of the systems within the datacenter.

Well - turns out that it did.

The update caused some of the systems in the datacenter to be unreachable. The challenge the support team faced were twofold. One, they didn't didn't know the update was applied so they didn't think to check there first. And two, some but not all of the systems were unreachable. Therefore they believed the problem was elsewhere.

To make a long story short - this was a great learning experience for us. This is a part of why you do a Preview Release. It is about learning so that you don't have these kinds of problems with the real release.

Again, we are very sorry and will take action to insure that this does not happen again.

Down the Home Stretch

2007-11-16T17:26:00.000-08:00

We are heading down the home stretch with the Button & Icon Contest on freshbrain.org. Just over a week to go (contest ends 11/25).

There are some amazing ideas. I love the creativity. It will be a challenge to pick the winners!! But don't let that keep you from entering. It isn't about how perfect the graphic is - it is about how creative but rather how well it will it aligns with the technology areas that will be a part of the site, how appropriate it is to the audience, how creative and unique it is, and so on.

Here are the judging criteria from the rules ...

Design alignment of the Submission with one or more of the following technology areas: Gaming, Video, Music, Eco/Green Science, Web and Graphics (20%);
Appropriateness of the Submission for the 13–18 age group (20%);
Creativity (15%);
Uniqueness (15%);
Contemporary style qualities of the Submission (15%);
Scalability of the Submission for use as an icon or button on a website (10%); and
Use of the FreshBrain Marks (defined below) subject to the section below titled “Trademark Information” (5%). (Please note: It is not a requirement that a Submission contain the FreshBrain Marks, but doing so is a consideration in the judging.)

So what are you waiting for? Don't know how to edit graphics or pictures ... check out the tools and tutorials we have made available. Not sure what to do, check out the contest entries.

Give it a shot!

Big Jump in Site Traffic

2007-11-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

What just happened??? Yesterday we had a huge jump in traffic for freshbrain.org!!!

We have been doing some "advertising" to attract visitors to the site. This advertising has taken the form:

email to our friends
Blog postings in related communities
Forum postings also in related communities
Facebook flyers
Press release

This has resulted in a nice flow of visitors. Many of them have been new to the site. This is exactly what we have been hoping for.

But yesterday things went a bit wild. We didn't launch any new advertising yet we had TRIPLE the number of visitors - all because the site is being picked up more broadly by consolidator sites.

PRETTY AMAZING!

Social Networking - So Misunderstood

2007-11-08T12:55:00.000-08:00

I continue to be surprised by the reaction that some have to new technologies. This reaction comes as a result of either not understanding or just not wanting things to change. It is not new. We have seen it in the past with cars, TVs and computers. Today's is social networking.

Take a look at the article " Social Networks: Plenty of Companies Just Don't Like Em." And compare it to "Now, Social Networking Fridays" (you have to scroll down to find this one).

Is social networking bad. No. Can you use it in the wrong ways or can you spend or waste a lot of time doing it. Sure. But one thing is guaranteed. Change Happens.

We have a choice ...

Close our eyes, plug our ears and cover mouths.
Embrace it. Look for ways to use new technology.

That is a big part of what we are trying to do at FreshBrain!!

Socal Networking is on FIRE

2007-11-07T17:23:00.000-08:00

What is going on here. Social networking is out of control. The battle is on. Do you think us users will be better off?

Over the last few weeks, there have been a bunch of interesting announcements (and resulting articles and discussions) lately around social networking. Here is what I see as the big ones.

Microsoft invests in Facebook, gets to sell advertisements.

Facebook announces "Facebook Ads".

mySpace announces the "self service advertising service."

mySpace joins Google's social networking platform.

There are two huge battles going on here. One is ... which social network will grow and retain the most users. This in some ways is the battle of the application. Facebook with their applications and now mySpace with their Google wigits.

The other is around revenue generation. With this many users, how can the companies generate the kinds of revenue that Google has managed to generate (and the resulting company valuation) with their advertisements.

But back to my original question. Will we be better off as a result?

I think not.

Thanks!!!

2007-11-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

It is great to see the activity, number of submissions and the creativity of those submissions for our Icon and Button Contest. Thanks and please keep them coming!!

freshbrain.org

It's a Contest Weekend

2007-11-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

Lets See More Contest Entries!!!

This is the first weekend since we launched the Preview Release of freshbrain.org - and the Button and Icon Contest. We have seen GREAT activity on the site. Lots of people coming to check it out. Lots of registered users.

We have some really nice submissions thus far. Lets see what you can do with a couple of days off. Show us your creativity. Think differently. Submit pictures and animations. Not everything has to use the brain.

Come on ... I know you have some great ideas ... make it hard on us judges!!

Entries and Visitors

2007-10-31T07:53:00.000-07:00

It is officially Day 2 for the Preview Release of freshbrain.org. Very exciting!

Here is a quick update of the happenings as we launched.

Visitors arrived, then more, then even more. We are using Google Analytics which provides you with a snapshot of what is happening on the site. We have already had hundreds of unique users from all over who have visited just about every page on the site!
Contest entries have been submitted! We had expected this to take a while since there is some design work required to create an entry that is relevant to FreshBrain. But to our surprise, we already have a couple of really good submissions!!
Our very early marketing is generating traffic. Marketing is all about letting people know that we are up and running. We have started small. Today we try out facebook:)
Visitors are registering and viewing all of freshbrain.org. It is just cool to see this come to life. Try out forums, read news, etc. We are learning what works and what is interesting as we watch what visitors do.
We made our first press release. Another way to let folks know who we are and what we are doing.
We ran into a couple of problems. We were surprised by a problem with AOL spam filtering that we are fixing. And we had a certificate problem as well that popped up a warning message that was not very friendly. It has now been taken care of.

Thanks to everyone who has visited so far, and especially those who have submitted a contest entry!! I will report back in a few days.

The Contest is HERE!!

2007-10-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

The Preview Release of FreshBrain is up and running!!

We did it. We have released the first version of our website - freshbrain.org. Please come and check it out!!

The preview release is there for two reasons.

Contest site - enter to win one of 5 iPod Touches.

FreshBrain information - students, parents, partners, volunteers and so on can find out more about FreshBrain.

Seems simple enough. But a lot went into it.

Great teamwork between FreshBrain and Image X Media. Image X Media is our website development partner. Their whole team has been great, especially Glenn their CEO and Rick their head of sales and our project lead.

Built on Drupal! We decided to use Drupal a while back and because of its use, there is a lot more to the site than we had originally expected. And the results are pretty awesome. Good content management and the begnnings of community capabilities!

Successful deployment on Network.com from Sun Microsystems. The network.com team has been absolutely awesome to work with and delivered us the capabilities well ahead of schedule - our original plan was to go live on network.com for the Beta release in January. This means we are up and running on Sun Systems and Solaris! Big thanks to Jim who is the Sun VP responsible.

Incredible support from Fenwick & West. They provided us with guidance as well as our Privacy Policy, Copyright & IP Policy, Contest Rules and Website Terms and Consitions. Big thanks to Julie who is our probono contact, Tracy the awesome lawyer who has been working directly with us and Mitchell the partner responsible for this area.

And of course big thanks goes to my team. Todd, CT and Stan have been incredible. Everyone is in a new and different job. Everyone is something every day!

The point of all of this of course is the students. We are on a mission to enhance the educational system by providing them with the opportunity to real world hands on experience in with technology and business. This preview release is the first step. I couldn't be more excited.

Come check it out!!

The contest is coming ...

2007-10-18T18:43:00.001-07:00

All right - here is a sneak peak of the front page of the website. This is for the contest but also provides lots of good information about FreshBrain, how it all works, our management team, board, etc.

I am not sure that this is final, but here you go anyway ... don't tell anyone:)

What do you think????

Fenwick & West Providing Pro Bono Legal Support!!

2007-10-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

I have been dying to talk about an evolving partnership that we have been working on that has just hit its first milestone. Fenwick & West LLP has signed on to provide us with pro bono legal support!!!!

This is a big deal for us. We have a number of major challenges that will require significant legal support. These include:

Protection of the students. Most are underage. We need to do a great job protecting them from the risks that the Internet introduces. We need to make sure that their parents are comfortable with what they are doing. We will likely need their parents to approve of them doing projects.
Intellectual Property (IP) ownership and protection. As students do projects, they may come with or create IP. We need to be very careful with how we protect this. We want to insure that they have the ability do with this IP as they choose.
Legality. We of course need to make sure that everything that the students as well as FreshBrain do is legal:) This is very broad and includes things like use of source code, copyright and business models.

Fenwick & West hass signed up to provide us with support for our Preview Release!! If you don't know them - they are an impressive legal firm. They are very strong in IP and M&A, very well known in the Silicon valley and beyond! Here is an excerpt from their website.

Fenwick & West provides comprehensive legal services to technology and life sciences clients of national and international prominence. We have over 250 attorneys, with offices in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, California.

We could not be happier to be embarking on a partnership that I hope is beneficial to both FreshBrain and Fenwick & West, and one that enables us to do what we have set out to do and give the students an excellent learning experience!

Check out the New Look!

2007-10-04T21:35:00.000-07:00

We have been busy working on the first version of our website - the one that I described last time in some detail. After looking at how cool it looks, I decided that it was time to update the look of my blog.

So thanks to our contractor Maria - HERE IT IS. Pretty cool!

Preparing for our First Contest

2007-10-02T16:11:00.001-07:00

We are preparing for our first FreshBrain contest. It will be to submit graphic designs for the different technology areas that will be a part of FreshBrain. The areas include:

Gaming
Eco / Green
Video / Movies
Graphics
Music
Web

The five winners will get an iPod Touch. Very cool!!

Our goal in having the contest is three fold.

Start to make some noise about FreshBrain. We hope that a lot of folks come to the site, learn a bit about FreshBrain, check out the contest and of course enter.
Determine which marketing approaches generate the most interest. We will be marketing on websites, social networks and communities. We will be able to determine which of these lead to visits to our website. And as a result, we will get our first glimpse into the success rate of Internet marketing.
Get some good graphics that we may end up using on our website:) We are of course not the demographic. We hope that students see this, get pretty excited and creative, and provide us with some awesome graphics.

So to do this - we need our first real version of freshbrain.org. Check out the current mockup. It is getting there!! This was created by our partner Image X Media.

A Week in the Life

2007-10-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

Last week was another excellent example of the diversity of activities that we face as a startup. Here are some of my highlights.

Monday - spent an hour with a communications manager for Sun talking about how and when to make more noise around FreshBrain. The big idea that came out of this was the possibility of a FreshBrain sponsored JavaOne (or Community One) day for high school students. Imagine that - the most appropriate content from JavaOne presented the Sunday before the real event, provided to high school students free!!! We will see if we can make this happen.

Tuesday - in Utah for two days. First we met with an amazing group at the Jordan Campus of Salt Lake Community College. In this one location they have a charter school, an applied technology high school, a biotech lab and the college itself. We were there to determine if there is some kind of linkage between the applied technology high school and FreshBrain. I believe there is in two ways. One in terms of their using FreshBrain for the areas of technology that they are currently not providing. And the other is their using FreshBrain in connection with their hands on labs - as a project and activity platform. These are both very interesting as we plan out how we expand and tie in high schools moving forward.

Wednesday - met with the USTAR executive team. USTAR is chartered with driving strategic investment in Utah Universities in order to drive applied research from invention to implementation by industry. They are very interested in driving innovation widely as part of this charter - all the way back into high schools. That is where we come in. They are interested in partnering with FreshBrain in some manner. We are excited and interested in this as we see USTAR as similar to initiatives in other cities and states where developing our youth in the areas of business and technology is a priority.

Thursday - back in CA, focused on caching up. We spend time discussing the difference between program, admin and fundraising expense and working on our budget submission as part of our 1023 (to add tax exempt to our nonprofit status). Also worked a bit on a better "Golden Pitch" about FreshBrain. I am starting to present more formally and need some slides to more succinctly tell the story.

Friday - meeting with SRI in an effort to build a strong tie and establish them as a partner. Good progress ... Also worked on the early testing plan with a volunteer who has offered to take this on.

So there you have it ... a typical week these days:)

Viral Marketing

2007-09-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

I spend most of my time talking about technology and partners. I don't spend much time talking about marketing. So here is a snipit about the approach that Todd is driving and we will be taking.

Before jumping into that, just to back up. We are interested in motivating high school age students to explore and create. To find their passion. To learn by doing. To blow us away with the ideas that they have!

We think we will be able to help them to do this by providing a site that allows them to investigate and explore. When they find something interesting, they will participate in the relevant community or communities and do a project or activity. Out job is to insure that have what is required to make this a good experience.

So with all of that being said - how do we find the students. How do we get them to check us out? That is where Marketing comes in. We will market FreshBrain to the students using a number of different means. Some are fairly traditional but others are very web2.0:). Here are some examples.

Flyers on Facebook, advertisements on other community sites. The cost is low and Facebook for example provides a way to target these flyers at kids in the 14-18 year old range.

Blog and forum (is that a verb????) in the relevant communities. This will not just be us doing the blogging or interacting with folks in these communities. We will recruit folks who are active and leaders in these communities to do it for us!!

Market the concept to organizations that support home school, charter schools and traditional school districts. Huge opportunities to leverage these as it will not be FreshBrain creating the curriculum but instead providing a project and activity platform in support of the curriculum created. As we become an option, the home school parents as well as the charter schools will come to us.

Raise awareness with parents through sites and communities where they participate. In a manner similar to that described above for the students - connect with parents and help them to understand the benefits so that FreshBrain is an extra curricular activity that the parents support or promote.

Introduce the site by invitation only. Rather than open it up and see if they will come, target an active initial student population through invitations. Give invitations out on a limited basis. Give students who complete projects or activities their own invitations to give out.

Hope that was interesting. Just a quick peak into some of the approaches that we will be pursuing!

Projects and Activities

2007-09-22T07:55:00.000-07:00

At the core of FreshBrain are Projects and Activities. As I share the FreshBrain concept with more and more people, I have realized that it is important to carefully explain these. We have done that for the Technology Area Community Managers that I described in an earlier post, but I have not shared that definition on my blog. So here goes ...

Project - an extensive task undertaken by student(s) to take an idea and turn it into something substantial. A project can range from something that one person completes in a number of weeks to that which a team completes in a number of months. It will typically follow a fairly standard creation process which includes a number of phases. The complete experience usually involves going through a systematic process to simulate real business scenarios where projects are justified through some quantifiable metrics, including preparing a business plan and building the technical 'end product'.

Activity - a reasonably simple, pre-designed task undertaken typically by a number of students independently to take an idea and create something useful. An activity would often be completed in a number of days to weeks. There are two categories of activities: Open and Sponsored. Open activities are always available to the students to complete. There are no deadlines and no rewards associated with their completion (other than maybe a certificate or similar). Sponsored activities are available for a limited duration with a deadline and rewards. They are most often sponsored by another company but can be sponsored by FreshBrain as well.

Students will likely go through a number of steps before they start a project or activity. Here is the complete flow. Some students will start at the top, others will enter further down, especially if they already know where their passion lies and may have an idea of what they want to do.

Interest
Explore
Investigate
Engage
Participate
Project / Activity

And of course the real learning takes place when they do one of these projects or activities, work through the process, use the tools and technologies and see their idea come to life!

We are the Same and Different

2007-09-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

Explaining what FreshBrain is all about is sometimes simple and other times hard. Might be bacause I am an engineer at my core and want to explain it all in great detail. Or it might be based on the background and experience of the individual(s) that I am explaining it to.

An article in the San Jose Mercury News might make it more clear. So here goes.

The article is "Summer camps offer kids fun, games, programming." This talks about what appear to be excellent camps run by iD Tech Computer Camps. These camps are held at universities across the US (and in Spain). In these camps kids age 7 - 17 mix fun activities that are location dependent (surfing in Santa Cruz) with providing them the opportunity to do very cool things with technology.

In many ways, this is what we are doing. But it is focused on the right hand side of the normal distribution of kids. That is, those kids that have the money to pay for a camp, recognize the importance of this kind of additional learning, and/or have parents who are involved in one of these industries.
It really doesn't hit the larger number of kids that are in the middle of that same normal distribution. That is where we come in!! We will provide an opportunity for any high school age student to investigate, engage, participate and create. At no cost. With advisors and a large community to support them (better than the 6:1 ratio iD Tech Computer Camps provides). On the latest technology platform. And when they are done, they will end up with a certificate of completion and potentially letters of recommendation as well as scholarships.

We are not like iD Tech Computer Camps, Cybercamps, Bay Area Video Coalition, or any of the other hands-on nonprofits or companies in the technology space. What they do is truly excellent and needed - I hope they grow and prosper. What I want to do is partner with all of them!!

It is not about competition for us. It is about the kids.

Crazy crazy crazy

2007-09-19T17:24:00.000-07:00

Having never been in a startup, maybe this is just what life will be like running FreshBrain. It is energizing, exciting, interesting, fast paced, always something new, both deep and broad, a bit scary and just crazy.

Here are a hand full of the things that are going on this week.

I get a call from a law firm who wants to be our SOLE provider of pro bono legal services. I am dieing to tell you who it is, but can't yet. Maybe in a week or so. But this is huge!

Todd calls me to tell me about a meeting he had with a leader in Utah who is going to personally introduce us to the right people at the top 10 of the more than 250 companies that he worked very closely with. Personally introduce us. Even fly out and make the introduction(s) in some cases.

Stan and CT are spending the better part of the week working with our interns (2) and consultant. Getting them up to speed on Drupal, AJAX, PHP, and what we intend to do with the website. Note that this is three more people added to our team of one (Stan). What is that, a 300% increase! I wandered in and by a couple of times.

I met with our team of technology area community managers (volunteers). They are coming up to speed in their role and will begin to define the content, communities and structure necessary to involve and motivate the students. These are very smart and motivated folks!

I met with Adobe. Specifically a former EVP at Sun and now SVP of the Creative Solutions Business Unit at Adobe, John Loiacono. I also met with the Michelle Mann who is a Senior Group Manager for Corporate Affairs. I am very hopeful that we will find ways to partner in order to provide students with content and tool from Adobe.

I went to City Hall in San Francisco to meet with a high school buddy of mine Chris Iglesias. Chris is now the Director of CityBuild, an economic and workforce development program under Mayor Gavin Newsom (check out the video). And with Marc Majors a Workforce Development Manager there as well. We talked about how FreshBrain might support the programs that they have in place. There appear to be a number of promising opportunities!

Met with another volunteer who signed up to help us evaluate productivity software to provide to the students. The first area he will focus is in web conferencing!

We signed up a partner to help us with the first version of the website - to go live in a few weeks. They are ImageX Media located in Canada. We selected them based on their deep expertise around Drupal. They will create the wireframes, cascading style sheets and all other aspects of the user interface. The first version of our website will be primarily focused on allowing us to run a couple of contests, but will also serve as a place where students, parents, and others can go to learn more about FreshBrain.

I did a bunch of administrivia. Filled out a questionnaire in preparation for a meeting to discuss insurance. Started the paperwork to enable the cash donation from Sun to FreshBrain. Prepared for the end of the quarter with finance. And ordered a few more systems for our developers.

I am sure I missed a few things. Quite a week and it is only Wednesday:)

Starting to Reach Out to Nonprofit Parthers

2007-09-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

I thought I would do something different with my blog this time. I want to see if I can get any good feedback and recommendations.

One of our goals as an organization is to insure that we are partnering where ever possible. We don't and will never have the resources to do it all ourselves. And even if we did, it would be a huge mistake to try. It makes a lot more sense to partner with organizations doing similar or complementary things.

We have the beginnings of the list of nonprofits that we have contacted or intend to contact shortly. Here is the list that we have today ...

Junior Achievement
Boys and Girls Club
CityYear
NSTA (National Science Teachers Association)
All Kinds of Minds
Girls Inc.
Girl Scouts
Boy Scouts
Big Brothers and Sisters

So you can see that this is a good start, but we need a better list. Please add your thoughts on who we should be partnering in the comments section, or if you are more comfortable sending it to me in email, please do to dale.ferrario@freshbrain.org. I would love any thoughts you have, and if you know someone in the organization, please include that as well. Thanks!

Interns on the way, working on first contest and other stuff

2007-09-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

I am feeling the pressure of a January release and it is only September!!

Lots of interesting things going on this week. Let me hit on a couple of big ones.

The Interns are coming. We have three interns starting next week. Two will be working on the website and one on marketing. And we have a contractor starting next week who will also be working on the site. This is a HUGE increase in resources. It is no longer just Stan:) We had to take care of lots of details to get them on board.
We are preparing for our first contest. This is a major milestone - to hold our first student contest. We will need a basic website up and running, a cool idea for a contest, all the legal mumbo jumbo to hold the contest and advertising on a number of sites to attract students to participate. Lots left to do, but good progress on all fronts!
Bringing on volunteers and providing some training. I have been working hard to sign up volunteers who let me know in the past that they were interested in helping. Those who are on board at this point are filling critical roles. And we still need more. This week was also about providing them with training on our mission, goals, roadmap, technology and so on.
Continuing to progress with the platform. This week was about contacting a couple of design companies that will help us, researching user interface frameworks and digging through the many third party components. I am more and more convinced each day that Drupal was the right choice.
And doing some nonprofit company stuff. We are a nonprofit but have not yet been approved as tax exempt. We spent some time understanding what is left to do. We also worked on the machine and business software and started researching insurance.

All in all, good progress. Still pretty nervous. Think that will be a constant for a while:)

Technology Decision

2007-09-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my post titled Planning - for announcement and launch about a week ago that "We made (mostly) our decision on platform technology." The remaining decision was around user interface technology. Well - we have now nailed this one. We will go with AJAX / PHP.

Note for my non technical readers - this is not Ajax the detergent:)

Stan Santiago will get into the details of all of this when he finally gets to writing his blog. But in short, we wanted to base our decision on open standards, with the largest and most active community, the most developers available and being trained, and which works best with Drupal.

We do have some work left to do. We need to decide which AJAX / PHP toolkit to use. There are lots of choices. There are of course differences in the capabilities provided and their tooling support, but the decision will not be a difficult one. We will make this quickly and move forward.

I am VERY VERY happy with this decision (as I am with our decision to go with Drupal)!!

Signing Up Volunteers

2007-09-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest challenges that we have faced thus far is determining how to use the help of the many folks who have offered their time. This concept is completely foreign to what I have been doing for most of the last 20 years. But with nonprofits, it is. And with something as exciting and motivating as FreshBrain, the number of people who have offered their help has been awesome.

So the challenge has been what to do with them. We know that once FreshBrain is truly up and running and students are doing projects, we will need lots of volunteers to act as advisors. But outside of that - I hadn't spent any time thinking about what we could have volunteers do.

That all changed following the planning meetings that we had last week where we created the detailed schedule to get us to go live in January. It became very clear that we needed help to be successful. The most important roles that we need filled are community owners for the various technology areas.

The definition that I am using for a Technology Community is:

The set of people, content, projects, activities and training material that are tied together by a common interest or technology. There are a number of other communities that are a part of FreshBrain including unregistered users, registered users, parents, advisors, students, etc.. A technology community will include members from this larger set of communities.

The technology areas include:

Gaming - all things related to video or computer games (single or multi player, first person, etc.), platforms that they run on (handset, pc, console, etc.) and technologies used to create them (flash, Java, etc.).
Video / Movies - everything that you can do with video including creation, editing, merging / mashing, injection of ads or content and publishing
Web (Community?, Ecommerce?) - the large set of things that you might do online including creating a website, social network, store, etc.
Graphics (Design) - all things related to creating, editing, modifying and publishing of graphics (need to determine if this also includes pictures)
Music - all things related to audio including creation, editing, merging / mashing, injection of ads or content and publishing
Eco / Green - all things related to eco or green technology

This may all be a bit confusing, so let me try to explain it another way. As students peruse freshbrain.org exploring various technology areas, much of what they will see initially is information about that area, its different aspects, the kinds of technologies used and so on. As they get more and more interested, they will begin to participate in the community asking questions, reading blogs, looking at the kinds of projects that others are doing, and so on. And at some point they will decide to jump in and do something themselves.

This progression, the information that is available, the people that participate in the community, the projects and activities that they can complete and the technology that they will use will be defined and managed by the Technology Community owner.

I was successful in finding a number of technology community owners. I have Video / Movies, Web and Eco / Green covered. And I have good leads on Gaming and Graphics. That will be more than enough to get us to January.

I also found someone who is interested in helping us to run early testing with student groups. She has good technology experience, is a process person and is very passionate about the whole FreshBrain concept!!

We made good progress in a number of other areas. I will save them for another blog update:)

Planning - for announcement and launch

2007-08-31T16:07:00.000-07:00

We spent two full days last week working the details of our schedules in order to go live in January. There is a LOT to do from every aspect of the business. But we are making excellent progress and I believe we have narrowed things down sufficiently so that we can be successful.

We also have a couple of interns coming on to help us. We found two engineers that will help with the platform and website development. They should be on board in the next week or so. We have also identified a marketing intern that should be on in maybe two weeks. Together these folks increase our capacity and hopefully add some new ideas and creativity!

Todd has said that I am pretty into bullet lists - so in sticking with that theme, here are some of the big things that we decided in putting together our plans.

We made (mostly) our decision on platform technology. There are two important pieces of this. First, we will use Drupal. Lots of reasons why. Biggest are that it is open source, has a large community around it, it has content management at its core, and it is based on PHP. We do have a bit more discussion around user interface technology and should have that nailed next week.

We determined the scope of what we are calling V1.0 of the site. There will be at least three technology areas represented: Gaming; Video; and Graphics. Within each of these - we will have projects and activities supported by technology and training. The details of all of this are still to be worked!

We have a pretty solid initial donor plan. We are not going for a large number prior to go live. We are hoping to sign up a couple to strengthen our announcement and to better prepare us for the students when they arrive.

We have a pretty solid plan for marketing. We will be doing some experimenting, but we have a good idea of what we need to do and how we have to balance getting students to visit the site and do something with the volunteers that we need to support them.

We have a good idea where to assign our first set of volunteers. This seems pretty trivial, but it takes real effort to first define a volunteer role and then to spend the time with them to insure that they can be successful. It is a balance that will take some time to "perfect."

This week (less some of Monday as it is a holiday) will be all about finalizing the detailed plan as well as the high level plan that we will use to insure that the different areas stay in sync, getting the volunteers on board and up to speed and to get moving on the donors.

It is all about the communities ...

2007-08-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

This has been quite a day (actually quite a week and it is only Tuesday!) I will have a lot more to share by the weekend as we will have our detailed plans for V1.0 - the release that we will make in January as we go live!!

But for now - communities.

The key to our success is building and leveraging communities. Students who want to do a project or activity will likely not come to FreshBrain with that idea already flushed out and ready to go. They will more likely explore areas of interest through communities.

As an example, take gaming. We will not initially show the students the tools and technologies required to write a game. We will instead help them to understand what gaming is all about, the platforms that games can run on (games for a handset, PC, console, ...), the types of games that exist (sports, first person, multiplayer, etc.).

As they explore, they will interact with a gaming community. They will see projects that are being completed by others, the kinds of activities that are available and read the discussions that are taking place. They may chose to jump in and ask questions or comment on a discussions thread. They will have access to example projects and will be able to use the community to flush out what their ideas.

Once they jump in and start up a project, the community will continue to be there for input and advice. It can help them find similar games, answer technical questions or provide feedback in storyboarding their game. They will of course have an advisor that is there to help them - who is also a part of the community.

I could go on and on. But I hope that you can see how important and core to FreshBrain community is. And this is only one type of community, and one aspect to how that community will operate. Here are a couple of others.

Communities can document and evolve best practices so that advisors have a big jump start in helping the students with their projects (wikipedia like repository ...)

Communities of parents will provide valuable input into what they would like to see added or improved

A community of educators will help us to understand how to best involve schools or motivate students

This is a very powerful concept. Communities together with our approach to allowing students to explore first and then use technology second makes FreshBrain unique.

If you have not read Wikinomics by Don Trapscott and Anthony D. Williams, I strongly recommend it. They were not the inspiration for FreshBrain, but they hit the nail on the head as to how business is being and will be done in the future.

The logo ...

2007-08-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

Checked in with legal and they have given me the go ahead to post the new logo. We will be trademarking it and copyrighting the graphic of the brain itself. That process will take a couple of weeks. In the meantime, we will start using the new logo ...

What finally pushed us over the edge on this logo as opposed to the others that I shared in an earlier post is how clean it is and how well it conveys creativity tied to technology.

We have decided on two versions. The one above with the words on both sides of the graphic. And another with the words below the graphic. That version is still under construction!

Last thing on this. We decided that we really like the green color. It feels pretty current. Hope you like it!

Our logo ...

2007-08-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

Oh - and by way of a tease ... we have selected our logo!! Once we register it, you will be the first to see it here on my blog.

Which way do we go ... first!

2007-08-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

Next week is a big week for us. We need to nail down the plans for the first release of freshbrain.org - and in doing so, nail down the content that we will provide for the students and the marketing programs that we will pursue in letting them know that we exist!!

But before getting into that, just a quick mention of a couple of pre-launch programs that we plan to embark on. We would like to do a couple of things with these programs.

Start to spread the word about FreshBrain
Get some input from our target audience

We are looking at maybe two programs or contests. One would be around creating the best short video advertisement for FreshBrain. We would provide a bit of background on FreshBrain and then let them at it ... to show their creativity in explaining why it is cool, something students would want to do, all in short video form. How great would it be to see how they explain it. The results would at a minimum make our messaging. And maybe we will end up with videos that we will use directly:)

The other would be to create graphics that best communicate the areas of technology that the students can explore with FreshBrain. Some examples of these include gaming, video, graphics and website creation. We have been struggling with the best way to communicate these as graphics that we place on the website. I bet that the students that participate in this contest will come up with some great ideas ...

In both cases, the winners will get prizes. And we will get registrations from everyone who participates!!

So back on next week and the content that we will provide. There are a lot of choices to be made both in terms of how many different technology areas we start with and the depth within each of these areas. The site will provide students with areas of technology that they might be interested in. I mentioned a few of these above - gaming, video, graphics, website creation.

Then within each of these, we will look to break them down further. Using gaming as an example, there are wireless games (for a cell phone for example), games for your PC, game console games, etc. Each of these then will likely require different technologies, tutorials, training, samples and so on.

So we have to decide how many we can support and how deep we go with each. And since we will not be the content creators for these technologies, we will need to find partners that have the required content, get it from them and include it in a form that is easy for students to use.

And while doing this, we will need to put in place the project and activity structures so that we support the students completing projects and activities in the technology areas that interest them ...

Lots to do. Very exciting. Feel free to leave comments!!

More time with our board ...

2007-08-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

Last week was a bit of catching up with some of the members of our board. I suppose you can view a board in a number of different ways. I view them as key and critical to our success. They are checks and balances to us running the operation, they are broad in their experience and offer great input and feedback, they are there to help us with fundraising and basically they are my boss!

So last week was the first time post our initial board meeting that we got to hear from them. And the input, feedback and support is was awesome. We had Mike pointing out that we are not crisp in our messages, that we need to focus on insuring that the students get that great experience and that we should be careful not to go too broad as opposed to deep initially.
Curt and Lewis wanted to make sure that we have a clear and motivating vision and mission, and that our fundraising gets off to a good start.

How much better is it than a board who are willing to spend hours working on all of this with us. I am not only pleased, but I wouldn't want it any other way!

Partnering ...

2007-08-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

This new gig is absolutely fascinating!!

I met a number of months ago with Barry Posner, the dean of the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. This was kind of a cold call for me. While I graduated with my MBA from Santa Clara, I really never got to know Barry. How I met him is a long story. Lets just say networking:)

Anyway, Barry gave me some very good advice. He said the one thing that is frustrating to him is that there are soooo many different groups and individuals trying to help address the educational gap that we have in the US, but he doesn't see them working together. They all seem to focus on their vision / mission. As a result, we are getting less benefit than we would otherwise.

So I took this to heart. I am committed to finding ways to partner everywhere possible. Very high on my list is Junior Achievement (JA). I had my second meeting with them today. What a great experience. I met with the Elaine Curran the president of Silicon Valley and Monterey Bay chapter of JA and Mark Linsky who is on their board. We spent a couple of hours talking about FreshBrain and looking for ways to work together. I believe the opportunities are there and it is just a matter of working together to find them.

Why was this a great experience - simply because there is such passion with the people that I talk to. Elaine and Mark are great examples. I now get a couple of emails A DAY from individuals who are either personally offering to help out or pointing me in the direction of an organization that I should be working with.

We will make this a priority. I believe we will find amazing leverage with JA and/or City Year and/or Boys and Girls Club and/or ... the list goes on.

They are talking about us within Sun ...

2007-08-13T12:38:00.000-07:00

An article was posted within Sun about FreshBrain - on the front page of our internal portal. This is the place where Sun employees go to get the latest on what is happening both inside and outside of Sun. It is where you search for the tools to do 401k or expense reports. It is the hub of all intranet web activity. How cool is that!!

I will not bore you with the whole article. But here are some snipits.

"Sun Partners with New Nonprofit August 13, 2007 - Software VP Dale Ferrario is starting a new company -- a nonprofit called FreshBrain -- to give high school kids the chance to work together using the latest technology."

"FreshBrain is being created to enhance and extend the existing educational system. It will give students a change to work with the latest technology in a supportive environment where they can explore and create, where they can take an idea and turn it into something real."

"FreshBrain was one of about 100 names to come out of multiple brainstorming parties and it eventually beat out Student Technopreneur."

"By creating a website powered by Sun's network.com and enlisting the aid of volunteer advisors, FreshBrain intends to create an online world in which students can work together on stimulating projects and activities. "

"Sun has offered a bunch of things. One is the in-kind donation of my time. The other is any technology we want to use. Access to anybody, basically. We will host the site on network.com, which for a startup nonprofit is great. I don't have to buy a computer and I sort of get infinite scale. As I need more, I go to the guys at network.com and I just ask them, 'Can you give me more capacity?' That will be another way to show the kinds of things Sun is doing. We'll make it visible that this is powered by Sun"

"One of the things people always say to me is, 'How are you going to let the kids know? You've got to go to all the schools and let them know.' My response to that is, 'I don't think MySpace went to all the schools to let them know it existed.' They didn't. So if you think about how do you create that kind of community and that kind of a phenomenon ... we've got to find a way to do that."

I sure appreciate the support that we are getting from Sun!!

Now What ...

2007-08-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Before I jump into some of the things that we are working on, how about a couple of interesting tidbits ...

According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley - the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.
In the next 10 years, Infoworld says 43 percent of the workforce will be eligible for retirement, while the next two generations are about 15 percent smaller. According to Taleo, a talent management consultancy, the United States will have a 10 million worker shortfall by 2010.
The SJ Mercury News business section today leads with - Penny-pinching entrepreneurs like these guys are changing the world of venture capital.

This is a time like no other. We are creating an opportunity like we have only seen a few times in the past. Our kids will see a very different world, with what appears to me to be unlimited opportunity. We need to help prepare them for this.

FreshBrain wants to play a role. We hope a significant one ...

So back to reality. What are we doing this week to keep us moving along.

Submit the remainder of our nonprofit paperwork (1023)

Work closely with the board to finalize vision, mission, objectives, goals and metrics.

Work to fill some holes in the company, specifically finance, legal and some interns to work on the website, marketing and fundraising.

Make progress on the engineering plan, or what is in release 1!

Begin to build up our communities (technical, business, content, partners, etc.).

Finalize on the corporate brand and logo.

More of an update on this later in the week.

A few more happenings

2007-08-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

My last blog entry was all about the board meeting. But that is not all that went on. Here are a few pictures to liven this entry up. We have been working with Skona on our corporate look and feel. I included a few pictures last time on the website design. Here are a few on possible logos.

These are our top choices after reviewing them, discussing with some of our board members and after a small student focus group.

I believe we are a couple of weeks away from finalizing. We will be combining these together with a dark background or website look and trying some different colors and styles. We are toying with some combination of what we have here, the approach that Mtv has taken in allowing their logo to change look regularly (just refresh the page and see what happens) and Apple's website (with its black and white contrast and great photos / graphics).

And just for more color ... here are some pictures from our board member and partner dinner. Todd was the chef and the food was awesome. Julie was the sous chef (assistant). The two of them did a great job of buying the food, making it and insuring that the presentation and the ambiance was spectacular.

Our first board meeting ... we are on our way!

2007-08-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

Well - we have hit our first MAJOR milestone. We have completed our first board meeting!!

First by way of introduction, here is the makeup of our board. I couldn't share this until today as we had nominated our board but they had not accepted their positions. They did that as one of the first actions. They are:

Rich Green - EVP of Software at Sun Microsystems
Lewis Gale - Dean of Goddard School of Business at Weber State University
Mike LaFave - Head of Sales for Consolidated Printing
Curt Roberts - Executive at Youth Star and Former VP Marketing for Nike
Dale Ferrario - President of FreshBrain and VP Software Sun Microsystems

The employees and volunteers of FreshBrain have been heads down working toward our first board meeting. We prepared a number of version 1.0 documents, a website prototype and a board presentation. Here is the complete list:

Agenda
Board Presentation
Objectives, Goals and Metrics Document
Engineering Plan
Marketing Plan
Fund Raising Plan
Student Scenarios
Nonprofit Documents (By Laws, etc.)
Partner Two Page Overview
Website Prototype

Prior to the meeting we held an informal technology discussion lead by Stan. He walked everyone through the platform that we will be building, the technologies that we are evaluating and a bit about how this will be deployed and supported in production.

Then we got into the board meeting. For me, it a first. Not only attending a board meeting but running it. What a great experience! Here is a summary of what we did.

Called the meeting to order
Discussed nonprofit status
Agreed to board roles and member terms
Reviewed FreshBrain vision, mission, objectives, goals, measures, roadmap and financials
Demo'd the BreshBrain.org prototype
Reviewed marketing approach and plan
Reviewed fundraising approach and plan
Voted
Closed the meeting

This was a LOT of stuff. We had provided the document prior to the meeting, but there was still too much information to fit into the two hour slot we had allocated. But the discussion was excellent and we accomplished much of what we had hoped to accomplish. As a result, we are able to now function to the budget proposed and the roadmap presented.

We will be scheduling our next meeting with the board in roughly a month. This will be an opportunity to finalize on two remaining items. The first is the goals and measures. We have a good first pass but it needs some additional discussion and review before the board is comfortable approving. And second, we need to spend more time discussing and reviewing our fundraising strategy, target founding partners, timing and approach.

We had a very nice dinner following the board meeting. We had almost all of our board, the employees of FreshBrain and our partners Skona. We had this in my backyard. It was a nice culmination to the day and a chance to mingle and interact outside of the work environment.

Wow - great progress thus far. I am soooo excited to really get moving. The amount of work is a bit daunting, but the opportunity to make a difference is awesome and we are now truly on our way!!

Doing it for REAL

2007-07-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

This is all getting VERY exciting and just a bit scary. There are now (as of Monday) three full time folks involved in FreshBrain. Me, Todd and Stan. Here is what we have been up to and what is coming.

Creating a prototype of the website. We, well mostly Stan, have been hard at work creating a prototype of the website. There are really three purposes for this. First, we will use it for the board meeting, second, it is helping us to flush out the usage scenarios and third, it is allowing us to try out some different technologies.

Completing our plans. We have been working on a number of different plans. Todd has the lead on the marketing and fund raising plans. Due to the nature of our nonprofit, it is hard to separate out a marketing plan from a partner or fund raising plan. So Todd is creating one that covers all of this. We are also doing an engineering plan, a roadmap, a budget and so on. The first draft of these will be complete for the board meeting.

Evaluating technology. Being a startup, it is a greenfield for us in terms of what technology to use. And given that we are really small, we need to leverage as much as possible, pick lightweight platforms and insure that what we create is very supportable (so that we don't need a lot of support folks!). Stan will put be creating a technology based blog that will go into more detail here. At a very high level, we started out looking at using a portal for our site. We did some prototyping with LifeRay. Pretty nice product, light weight and comes with lots of nice portlets. But after working through the scenarios a bit, it seems that it is more important to base our site on a social networking platform. We are now evaluating Jive Software. We will see how that goes ...

Searching out partners and donors. We of course have Sun as a technology provider and donor. And we have Skona also as a donor. They are providing us with the corporate look and feel and help with advertising. There is a lot more that we need. The top two on our list (outside of the technology described above) is legal help and a CRM system to tracking all of the contacts including students, volunteers and so on. We are making progress on these and on others as well!

Preparing for our first board meeting. This is the biggest thing that we are focused on right now. We have five members of our board - a very good start, but not the full board that we will require moving forward. Never the less, we will be walking through a demo of the prototype website with them, will review all of our plans and ask for approval to move forward. Lots of work, but none of it is a waste!

Just for fun - here are a couple of early graphics from Skona. We will be testing these out next week with some students to see what they think!

So that is it for now. I hope to be updating this on a more regular, at least weekly basis moving forward. The next one should be following the board meeting where I will share how that went and some of our objectives and goals for the first year.

More Progress

2007-06-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

While this is still a part time after hours thing, we are continuing to make good progress. The big step for me is taking place THIS WEEK. My group is being merged into another group under a peer VP at Sun. As a result, my time is beginning to free up and for the first time, real hours are being spent on FreshBrain!!

Here are some highlights.

Creating Our Board. We have found the first three members of our board. I will wait to name these folks in a later blog entry. But we have one member from higher education. We have another with an amazing marketing background. And the third with a good number of years of selling. We may add a couple more members as part of the interim board. One who is a leader in technology from Sun Microsystems our initial donor and technology provider. And one from a small company who has experience on the board of another nonprofit. These folks together with me will be sufficient to help us get things going. A few others with experience in finance and legal will be added in the future.

Evaluated Technology. We have been scouring the planet for open source technology on which to build our business. It is absolutely amazing what is out there. We have found everything that we need, and in some cases multiple options. Specifically, we have found community, learning, collaboration and presentation software that is impressive. We have visited Sunlabs in search of the next generation of technology and found some interesting 3D collaboration software that may be available as well in our timeframe. And we have started to evaluate CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software as the first business system that we need to use - for all of the contacts that we are beginning to make! More on all of these as well in a later blog entry.

Making Contacts. We are reaching out to everyone who shows an interest at this point. We met with folks from JA (Junior Achievement), CityYear and FIRST. We are taking to everyone who has an interest and wants to help. There are simplified java development activities like Greenfoot. Folks interested in helping us with legal issues (pro bono), book keeping, visiting schools, being advisors and so on. It is truly inspiring!!

Rounding Out Core Team. And we have been working on rounding out the core or management team. As of TODAY, Todd Ferrario (yea, my brother) has let his staff know that he will be moving on to be a part of this startup / nonprofit. He will be freed up on a few weeks and will "officially" start in early July. Our third will still remain unnamed as he has not told his boss and company yet. Our fourth has said yes (as I predicted). He will have to remain unnamed as well, but start at the beginning of July as well. And we have found our fifth. He will be on our board initially and will ultimately become a part of the nonprofit - as soon as we can afford him!!
So things are moving along. I will be taking a bunch of vacation, but things will continue to move forward at an accelerated rate with the nonprofit fully up and running in August.

Welcome ...

2007-05-20T15:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome friends to FreshBrain!

Since you are here, you likely already know what we are all about. But just in case, here is our simple vision.

FreshBrain is a nonprofit focused on enhancing the development of our youth in the areas of business and technology by providing hands-on real world experience.

We are brand new - just starting up. Our initial coming out party will be in August and we will go big later in the year. Sun Microsystems has been awesome in offering to be an initial donor and technology provider, which is really going to help!!

Here is what we have been up to thus far.

Came up with a name. Seems pretty simple, but believe me, it is not. First you have to come up with the options, then you have to see if they are available, have to test them on folks (including kids!) and finally you have to live with and say them for a while. I am TOTALLY happy with the one that we picked. Fitting, new and pretty cool.
Created the core team. I can't actually give you the list right now since some of them are still working elsewhere:) But I have a outward sales / marketing / business guy an IT / Engineering guy and we just found our senior engineering (he hasn't actually said yes, but will in the next couple of days).
Met with TONS of energized, motivated and inspirational people. I don't have room to list them all, but this has been amazing and likely numbering 30-40. We have met with deans of business schools, founders and CEOs of nonprofits and experts in a broad range of business and technical areas. The willingness to help and the passion that we have found is truly amazing.
Met with Sun engineering folks on technology. There are some excellent technologies available, and some pieces that are missing. What is there will give us a big leg up (as soon as we can get going and bring in some interns to help:)).
Began the creation of the 5013c, including the board. Hired the lawyer to put the 5013c together. And have the first four of at least five initial board members.

Not bad progress as a part time after hours thing. Can't wait until this is really our jobs:)