Christine Renaud (@e180) as well as other supporting team members organized a 5 à 7 last tuesday, smartly named “5 à 7 «Marché des savoirs» – Réseau des entrepreneurs sociaux du Québec”, which is a rather catching & curious event name. I lost touch what she was doing with her e-180 startup, but the event looked like it had a purpose behind so I finally joined in.
There were lots going on, but the main concept was simple: match 2 individuals, one teacher and one learner. So attendees would chat to others who would have an interesting skill set on their name tags.
I found it interesting as a product validation mechanic. Lean development for instance encourages early customer validation, but most posts on the Internet focuses on putting online a homepage or a landing page and tracking conversion stats.
It strikes me that an offline event similar to what Christine Renaud would be much more efficient and faster than the classical homepage form. You get to see how people react and feel to your product and you know quickly if it has value to them. You can also improvise new “user experience” tactics to make things flow better. I found out for instance you need a mentor/community manager to actively match people.
Of course, this might difficult for certain kinds of web startups, but not impossible. Just setup a fun-looking event, invite potential users for drinks, observe & note interactions, and make it fun & light. Gaming and mobile startups would especially gain from this tool.
Comments
Montreal Tech Watch July 09, 2010
#e180 field test http://bit.ly/btQsE9
mtltech July 09, 2010
[mtw] #e180 field test http://bit.ly/btQsE9
Dominic Jodoin July 09, 2010
RT @mtw: #e180 field test http://bit.ly/btQsE9. @e180: Happy to see the seed is still germinating. :-)
CVCA Team July 09, 2010
#e180 field test http://goo.gl/fb/Bdn21
Martin Dufort July 10, 2010
That would enable us to quickly gather feedback and validate assumptions before throwing it in the “public” landscape.
Christine Renaud July 10, 2010
The Marché des Savoirs’ main takeaway is simple: E-180′s mission is to unveil knowledge to help people jumpstart their learning, not to build a web app. The app part is still in the running, but as a tool, not as an end for itself.
Taking it offline is a way to test the idea and assumptions behind it, being that people have an ability and a will to educate one another out of fraternity. And for that, a beer and a name tag showcasing your knowledge needs and offers will do just fine.
But an app that can unveil all the knowledge present in your network or in a city where you are traveling, and connect you with like-minded people willing to share their knowledge with you, will be pretty damn great too.
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Shameless self-promotion to make this happen (hope you don’t mind Heri): Please vote!! – http://www.refresheverything.ca/e180
And contact me if you want to join the team – we need great collaborative tech minds : christine [at] e-180.com
Heri July 10, 2010
My comment was more for entrepreneurs involved in web applications, the message being that that one way they should try testing their ideas/product offline.
By the way, completely forgot to mention it, but congrats for the event. It was highly successful (I’d say between 33 to 50% who were in the event were maatched). You should get the pictures where we got both. I’ve tagged them here http://www.flickr.com/photos/heri_quebec/tags/e180match/
Martin, yes! and if you do one, let me know. I’m really curious how (and if) it works!
Christine Renaud July 14, 2010
Here’s the follow-up article: http://e-180.com/2010/07/14/e-180-ca-marche/
Christine Renaud July 14, 2010
Si vous l'avez manqué, le billet de Montreal Tech Watch ( @mtw ) sur le Marché des Savoirs de #E180 et @inm_nouvelles http://bit.ly/aSoGMI
Lance Glassman January 24, 2011