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Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

uk.techcrunch.com

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Re: Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

#41

Post by stcredzero »

cunard-n wrote: post #38

I have a comment. I have been urging my confreres to use basecamp and actively looking for other collaborative tools. To little or no avail. Old-school is real. I can say that much. But the questions old-school types ask is usually based not on price or speed, but on CYA and security. For CYA, once you upload something then everyone has it and they can criticize it. If there is a mistake somewhere it is visible to ev…

How about a mobile client with a limited browsing capability for AutoCAD? That way, the customer is never giving away the direct access to the file, and can even restrict users to see only parts of the design.

Re: Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

#42

Post by swombat »

cunard-n wrote: post #38

I have a comment. I have been urging my confreres to use basecamp and actively looking for other collaborative tools. To little or no avail. Old-school is real. I can say that much. But the questions old-school types ask is usually based not on price or speed, but on CYA and security. For CYA, once you upload something then everyone has it and they can criticize it. If there is a mistake somewhere it is visible to ev…

I think part of the way forward on this is to realise that you don't actually have that control, even today.

We touched on this in our Be2Camp North presentation: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1509410 (it's about 20 minutes long - there are a bunch of other presentations in the same stream, after ours).

When you send a file to someone, anyone, you are trusting that person with your file. They can send it on to anyone else they want. They can burn it to a CD. They can print it out and leave it lying around. They can show it to someone at the wrong time. Etc. When people need to send a file to someone, they will - no matter what barriers you put in their way. If you put barriers, they will always go around them some way, either by burning a CD, sending an email, or printing it out.

The more disorganised your modes of communications, the more likely that is to happen by mistake rather than intentionally. And the more disorganised and ad-hoc your communications the least visibility you have over all this.

To your colleagues, I would say, perhaps bluntly, that the control they feel they have is an illusion. There is no control, once you send a file to someone else - there is only trust. The nearest thing to control you might have is visibility - to be able to at least see who downloaded what when. And that, you can get through the Woobius audit log.

Does this help?

Re: Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

#43

Post by jfarmer »

joel_feather wrote: post #14

The pricing is too low. It's a niche market, people are prepared to pay more for things that work. However, you need to offer desktop clients to upload the files, because I would believe that architects work with pretty large files - uploading using a webform on a website is painful. Also, it's easier to sell an actual piece of software to old school companies than a pure web service. Throw together a 'POST' client i…

Do you have any experience in the construction industry? How would you know whether the price is too high, too low, or whatever else?

Re: Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

#44

Post by cunard-n »

swombat wrote: post #42
cunard-n wrote: post #38

I have a comment. I have been urging my confreres to use basecamp and actively looking for other collaborative tools. To little or no avail. Old-school is real. I can say that much. But the questions old-school types ask is usually based not on price or speed, but on CYA and security. For CYA, once you upload something then everyone has it and they can criticize it. If there is a mistake somewhere it is visible to ev…

I think part of the way forward on this is to realise that you don't actually have that control, even today. We touched on this in our Be2Camp North presentation: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1509410 (it's about 20 minutes long - there are a bunch of other presentations in the same stream, after ours). When you send a file to someone, anyone, you are trusting that person with your file. They can send it on to anyon…

Yes it does help. We're always bound under some kind of NDA...But you're right. It's something to think about.

Re: Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

#45

Post by Musashi »

swombat wrote: post #42
cunard-n wrote: post #38

I have a comment. I have been urging my confreres to use basecamp and actively looking for other collaborative tools. To little or no avail. Old-school is real. I can say that much. But the questions old-school types ask is usually based not on price or speed, but on CYA and security. For CYA, once you upload something then everyone has it and they can criticize it. If there is a mistake somewhere it is visible to ev…

I think part of the way forward on this is to realise that you don't actually have that control, even today. We touched on this in our Be2Camp North presentation: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1509410 (it's about 20 minutes long - there are a bunch of other presentations in the same stream, after ours). When you send a file to someone, anyone, you are trusting that person with your file. They can send it on to anyon…

You can develop an Access Management system (or integrate with a COTS). You can watermark the files with timestamp and username. Thus allowing you to track who let the documents go into the wild. Based on Meta data, you can restrict access to different files and restrict the client's ability to display those documents.

None of those tasks are trivial and all of them can be worked around. You aren't building a military grade secure system, so, perhaps what you are doing is good enough. I'd start with Access Management and add visibility controls on documents.

Re: Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

#46

Post by diN0bot »

cunard-n wrote: post #38

I have a comment. I have been urging my confreres to use basecamp and actively looking for other collaborative tools. To little or no avail. Old-school is real. I can say that much. But the questions old-school types ask is usually based not on price or speed, but on CYA and security. For CYA, once you upload something then everyone has it and they can criticize it. If there is a mistake somewhere it is visible to ev…

This is a great point. Personal comfort is a huge part of social processes and interactions. The internet has particular obstacles to overcome in this area.

Re: Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

#47

Post by access_denied »

joel_feather wrote: post #14

The pricing is too low. It's a niche market, people are prepared to pay more for things that work. However, you need to offer desktop clients to upload the files, because I would believe that architects work with pretty large files - uploading using a webform on a website is painful. Also, it's easier to sell an actual piece of software to old school companies than a pure web service. Throw together a 'POST' client i…

I think joel_feather has 2 points: uploading via web is painful and niche pricing will be accepted by woobius target market. (This is also just an opinion, but I honestly believe those 2 points merrit some consideration).

Re: Woobius introduces the construction industry to 21st century collaboration

#48

Post by edgarjph »

sho wrote: post #21
davidw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He actually can't downmod your original comment, because he submitted the story. I don't much care for the name either, but in the long run, I don't think it matters much. "Google" doesn't sound very serious, "Yahoo" speaks for itself. "Micro" "soft" has been the butt of jokes for a while. Unix is a pretty awful name in its own right. And so on and so forth...

"Unix" sounds freaking awesome compared to "Woobius". As do the others. Microsoft is a fantastic name, what are you talking about? I think more than a few founders here are in denial about their companies' ridiculous names, but whatever, it's not my fight. Hey guys, if modding down my (polite, reasonable) comments makes you feel better about naming your company something a 3-year-old would laugh at, have at it. [edit…

Unix --> eunuchs Microsoft --> small and soft
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