Community Checklist

Alright, I'm going to give this new Purple Include quote stuff a try.

I promise this is not "Let's blog about Robert Scoble day," but, I guess it is :)

I just saw a great post by Scoble about how the Google Reader team could have prepped the community better before releasing a controversial new feature. Using some great advice from Read/Write Web, he asks:



(The stuff above was grabbed using Purple Include; now if I could have just hidden this parenthetical aside using Stretch Text.... future project... BTW, if you are reading this in an RSS reader Purple Includes don't work in my feeds yet -- see Scoble's original post to view the list)

I really like the list that Scoble & Read/Write Web provide. In fact, I've turned it into a checklist of things I should make sure to try to do when working with the community around Gears when there is a significant new feature:
  • Did we show anyone at a conference the new feature?
  • Did we do a video?
  • Did we brief bloggers ahead of time and get their feedback?
  • Did we show our #1 customer/user these features and get their feedback?
  • Did we give an interview to a video journalist like Kara Swisher (or Robert Scoble) before release?
  • If we are about to release, are we targeting Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, versus other days?
  • Do we have a demo to show off?
I'm printing this list out and putting it up on my wall here at Google.

Disclaimer: As always, I speak for myself and not my employer, Google.

Comments

Unknown said…
Well, one thing I'll say about the purple include stuff is that it doesn't show up in rss readers such as Google Reader.

Did you show this feature to anyone at a conference?
Did you do a video?
did you brief bloggers ahead of time and get their feedback....
Brad Neuberg said…
@moof: LOL, yeah, Purple Includes don't show up in my RSS feeds right now... I did demo this stuff to a few colleagues, but its my own open source hackery and I don't have quite the PR time to throw at it like my full time job. BTW, getting Purple Includes to show up in RSS is on the time line. Interested in hacking on it?
Brad Neuberg said…
@moof: BTW, the simplest way to get it to show up right now is to create a FeedBurner like service that simply proxies a given RSS/Atom feed, and when it sees a Purple Include it simply fills it out once and returns everything inside the feed. Folks would then subscribe to that feed instead of the non Purple Include-enabled one.

(The harder approach is to hack your particular CMS to produce its Atom/RSS feeds with the Purple Include stuff already filled out).