October looks set to be a busy month at Jiva Tech, with no less than three new sites set to be launched in the early days of autumn. Tutorhub, Stuckspace and HomeworkExtra are ‘in-house’ applications of our social web tools (of which more in a few weeks), but we’ve also seen a surge in interest for white label versions of those same tools from companies looking to build awareness and raise customer service in the many different markets for professional advice.
P.S. Not so hot off the press: wuzlr.com is now open to all. If you’re a fan or you know a fan of table football/babyfoot/wuzlr, feel free to join the throng on wuzlr.com.
In a modern twist on the concept of the ‘busman’s holiday’, I’m pleased to report that those hardy souls in the Jiva Engineering Team have found a novel way to spend their spare time … more engineering. I’m not complaining, as the results of their visit to Rails Rumble 2009, where coders spend their spare time er, coding, are truly spectacular. See for yourself at www.wuzlr.com. It will be of particular interest if you’re a fan of table football, also known as babyfoot in France and wuzlr in Austria,. Not sure about the last one, but Theo seems convinced. It sounds dangerously like a legendary West Country to me. Anyway, we all love wuzlring here at Jiva; so Theo and Jamie, consider it spare time well spent. If you like a bit of competitive table football, maybe you can drop by the office or send us a request and we’ll open up Wuzlr to other fans sign up. Given that a Bristolian was recently crowned world champion at table football, consider it serious local sport.
Aside from hiring the best people you can get, one of the biggest issues you face in building a company like Jiva Technology is the need to find and work with great partner companies. Few things of any importance are built in isolation by a single company or organisation, so if you can’t get by without help from your friends, you want to make sure that they’re GOOD friends. As with people, companies are judged by the company they keep.
We’re lucky. From the start, we wanted to work both with companies that could help us fulfil our product vision and also with organisations that could help us generate interesting new ideas and improve our skills just by working with them. Many companies overlook the fact that just getting out there and working with other top-notch organisations can impact your perspective on a problem. We’re working with great organisations like Futurelab on Greater Expectations, Knowle West Media Centre on the South Bristol Digital Network Project and the Watershed in mentoring. What’s more interesting is that all of these organisations share our passion for breaking down the barriers that inhibit the flow of knowledge. Which, of course, is what our core product, specializein.com, is all about….
Reason 4,328,764 that you can’t outsource your kids’ online safety to spyware companies: http://tinyurl.com/n934fh (via @doctorow)