Fri, May 27 2011
What: A no holds barred question and answer session with Ben
When: Today, May 27, 2011 – 5pm EDT
Where: Quirky’s uStream Channel
What: A no holds barred question and answer session with Ben
When: Today, May 27, 2011 – 5pm EDT
Where: Quirky’s uStream Channel
This week has been an interesting one for me as it marks the beginning of my tenure as ‘the voice of Quirky’. In the seven months I’ve been with Quirky as a community ambassador I’ve been able to get incredible insight into both sides of the Quirky equation and I’m excited to take on this new role.
Without a doubt, one of the biggest issues we have to address is communication between Quirky staff and the Quirky community. We dropped the ball and the absence of reliable communication has created tension and trust issues. You guys are what make Quirky special, and without you we wouldn’t have gotten to where we are right now. I know that. Ben knows that. Everyone at Quirky knows that. In order to keep this relationship healthy, both sides are going to have to work on how we communicate with each other.
Here’s what you can expect from us.
We’re going to continue to hold quarterly town meetings. The last one took place in January (Q1). The meeting that was originally scheduled for May 17th will take place at some point in June, which, although slightly delayed, is still on track for taking place in Q2. The remaining two meetings for 2011 will likely take place towards the end of Q3 and Q4, meaning September and December respectively.
In addition to town meetings, we’re going to start providing you with monthly updates from different departments within Quirky. As part of this initiative we’re going to be bringing back production reports as well as introducing sales reports from Chad, change logs from our tech team, and a monthly Q&A with Ben.
On a day to day basis, Shirley is going to continue to rock Get Satisfaction, our support forum, which we will be discussing in further detail in another blog post as there seems to be a good deal of confusion within the community as to why it exists. As always, any questions, complaints, concerns, compliments or other nouns that start with C (preferably cake) can be sent to questions@quirky.com.
One thing that we won’t be doing is replying to service related questions in the forum. The forum is a venue for community chatter, talking about Quirky behind its back and general irreverence. While we might occasionally partake in the aforementioned irreverence, that’s as far as our involvement with the forum will get.
Now, here’s the fun part… well, for me at least.
As I mentioned, this change has to come from both sides. Here’s what needs to change in the community.
Moving forward, all information from within Quirky is going to be provided to, and disseminated by the community team. The same has to go for information coming from the community. We’re called ‘community ambassadors’ for a reason. It’s our responsibility to represent you and your interests to the rest of Quirky. Regardless of whether you have a sales question, a design question, a manufacturing question, etc. it has to go through us. When you send an email to another member of the staff, all they do is forward it to questions@quirky.com and then we handle it as we would with any other request. Just email questions@quirky.com directly and it will make all our lives easier.
Finally, there’s been a lot of abject negativity and nastiness going around lately, not only toward Quirky, but toward each other. This site is open to the public. Anyone on Earth (over the age of 18) is welcome to join this community, and when newbies come in and see these ugly interactions, whether it be on the forum, or even worse, on idea submissions, it doesn’t make them want to stick around and it makes everyone involved look bad. This needs to stop. There are an infinite number of places on the internet where you can be an asshole. Starting today, this isn’t one of them.
That all being said, believe it or not, I actually do love you guys. The things that we’ve done together so far are disruptive and amazing and there’s no end in sight.
Now let’s get to work.
Hey Quirks, the Town Meeting scheduled for May 17th has been postponed. We don’t have a new date yet, but it will be announced as soon we have one.
Have a great weekend and keep rockin’ it!
May 17th, we’ll be streaming news, updates, and exciting announcements direct from Quirky HQ, including an update on the results from our Presale and Product Evaluation Task Forces. More details to come, but clear your schedules now.
A ginormous THANK YOU to everyone who stopped by our lil’ shindig last night. We stayed past 2am wrapping thousands upon thousands of Wrapsters, and as a result, we’ll be able to fulfill our March orders without the additional packaging expense. A fun video (and better photos) of the festivities is on the way, but we didn’t want to delay telling you that you seriously, seriously rock. Like, big-time.
Love, The Quirky Team
A few weeks ago, during a Community Q&A, I addressed our plans for scaling the business and improving some of our existing processes.
Two of the most crucial processes we have in place at Quirky are Product Evaluation and Presale.
Both of these processes together have delivered us amazing new products and inventors over the course of the past year and a half… but we agree… the process could be more fun, more collaborative, and deliver better results.
It’s time we take a holistic view at improving both of them. We’ve assembled an amazing group of people to help us make Quirky a better place.
Each task force is made up of relevant community members and Quirky staff.
I won’t be participating in the task forces, because I want to make sure that the groups have full creative control to imagine crazy things and define what the different options might be. I’ll jump in towards the end and help narrow things down.
I’m really excited to see where this goes. Below are the presentations that will kick off the process.
All of our task force members will be briefed and invited into a project management app in the next few hours.
Pumped!
Ben will be hopping on Quirky’s uStream channel tomorrow (Thursday) at 6pm ET for a live Q&A session with a special community guest. Now’s your chance to ask all the questions you’ve been dying to have answered… and if you know Ben, you know that everything’s fair game.
To recap:
What: Ben answering all your deepest, darkest questions
When: Tomorrow, 6pm ET
Where: Quirky’s uStream channel
See you then!
Don’t forget, everyone: Town Meeting tomorrow. Be there or be cuadrado.
Tuesday, January 25 | 7pm | Quirky’s uStream Channel
Got questions for Ben and the team? Post ‘em in the forum.
The newest addition to Quirky’s Community Team is Glen Gerbush, a college senior who will be interning with us for the month of January. Since this week’s Quirky Brief focuses on dorm security, we decided to pick his brain on the subject. Here’s what he said.
PHOTO CREDIT: David Freiman.
School/year: Oberlin ‘11
Major: Latin Language and Literature
Generally, how old are people who live in dorms?
18-21, but can definitely vary, especially if RA’s, TA’s, or professors can live in the dorms.
What are some standard dorm room setups?
Singles — One person rooms
Open Doubles — Two person rooms
Divided Doubles — Two singles divided by a door, usually without a lock
Quad — Two open doubles sharing a main space, or four singles
What furniture does a dorm room typically come with? What do you typically bring from home?
Usually the furniture for one person would be a bed-frame with a mattress, a desk and chair, and dresser. Some students bring some sort of boxes, drawers or shelving that might be collapsible.
PHOTO CREDIT: The Chronicle-Telegram.
What security measures are typically in place?
In terms of physical security, the doors to each dorm rooms have locks and some students lock their laptops to their desks if possible. If you have any electronics with Wi-Fi you can write down the IP address and it can be tracked if they are powered on, and on the school’s network.
What are the most stolen items? Who takes this stuff? What do they do with it when they take it (sell/keep)?
Laptops, iPods, cell phones, video game systems, jewelry, credit/debit cards, and cash are stolen most often. Both townies and students steal from dorm rooms. Sometimes things are kept, but again if it can be tracked there is a high risk involved.
Are items most typically stolen from rooms, bathrooms, classrooms, cafes?
Things are often stolen from unlocked dorm rooms or unattended backpacks in public areas such as a library.
New year, new commitment to getting our product evaluation process right!
Starting with this week’s evals, we will no longer be counting ideator comments in our “Most Comments” sorting algorithm.
We made this change after many community members expressed concerns that “comment padding” — the practice of flooding an idea with unnecessary comments to boost comment counts — was messing with our ability to bubble the best ideas to the top.
We still think that comment counts are a good way to measure buzz around an idea, but we also want to make sure it’s not used as a tool for manipulation. All comments, including those by the ideator, will still be counted, but only non-ideator comments will be factored into the “Most Comments” sort. We’re hoping this will result in a fairer, more honest product evaluation process.
This certainly isn’t the end of improvements, so please keep your feedback coming on our support forum! We’re as eager as you are to make our evaluation process the best it can be.
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