Genii Weblog

A potential GeniiJam moment

Wed 26 Mar 2008, 01:32 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
Yesterday, there was a perfect example of how the new dialogue we want with our customers could work, and also of how GeniiJam is likely to differ from IdeaJam.  In the comments for a post from November 2007 called Midas 4.00: More control over file attachments and file icons Mika Heinonen expressed two wishes, or two ideas, that he would like to see.  Specifically, Mika wrote:
I put also attachments on their own line, that works fine. One very annoying thing is however that I can't change the filename of the attachment directly, but I have to detach, rename, and attach it again. Can't MIDAS fix that bug in specification? :)

It would be also nice that .doc, .xls, .ppt would be automatically forced to use the OpenOffice icons, so that people don't wonder why my icons look different than theirs. Another thing for MIDAS?
My response:
You can certainly do either of those with Midas 4.00, Mika
So, here were two ideas that Mika asked for, but which he did not realize already were handled by Midas.  The first request, that a filename of a file attachment be changed without detatching, is handled directly by the RenameAttachment method, while the second request, that the .doc, .xls and .ppt extensions use the OpenOffice or Symphony icons, is handled easily using properties in that and other methods, such as the AppendFileAttachment method.

So, how would this fit into the dialogue I mentioned before?  With GeniiJam, one could easily suppose that Mika would propose the ideas, and we at Genii Software would respond with solutions and the ideas would be marked Completed.  This is somewhat different than IdeaJam, where for example there are 399 ideas in the Domino Designer idea space and only one is marked Completed, and there are 350 ideas in the Notes Client idea space, and only two are marked as Completed.  I don't mean that as a slam against IdeaJam, but simply a recognition that with GeniiJam, you are likely to have a far higher focus on Completed items and links to solutions than in IdeaJam.  That is our goal, and the standard we need to meet to consider the experiment successful.

Copyright © 2008 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


684.1. Matt White
(03/26/2008 11:59 AM)

And with all of the RSS feeds that IdeaJam offers you can have customers be notified whenever a new feature is released or a new way of doing things becomes available.

Sounds like a really interesting way of interacting with customers.


684.2. Ben Langhinrichs
(03/26/2008 12:53 PM)

Matt - Exactly right. The RSS feeds would be an excellent way of feeding out information both on new features and on answers to ideas/suggestions/wishes. I'm excited to see how the IdeaJam software will flex to meet this somewhat different model. I'm confident, given what I have seen so far, that it will do well.