Mindquarry closes it's commercial operations. We did a long fight to avoid that. But we became meanwhile a little company, depending on financial support. Without that we must try going other ways.  Lars will for sure not stop to support the community, as long as the community will exist. I will try to support Mindquarry from my personal blog iqupi's world. 

A final summary:

The Minus Side

Mindquarry has not finished the product as a stable version in the way it was intended.
The hosting engine, designed to run on the Amazon server cloud EC2 / S3 has not been finished and reached just a kind of alpha stadium, mainly from a lack of developer resources. That made it impossible to launch Mindquarry GO in time.
Mainly due to that facts, Mindquarry lost the confidence of its investors what prevented to continue the commercial operations.  

 The Plus Side

Mindquarry has gathered a inspired and motivated team, build up a community, delivered a product within one year, developed a leading hosting engine pilot for the Amazon server cloud and created a known brand with the potential to become a key player in the collaboration marked. Customers from all over the world supported us and were waiting for our professional offers.

So what?

We are proud  of the company and our community. We want to thank all people who have set trust in us and supported us. It was our goal, to make a software for better collaboration, to give you a one hand solution for virtually teams. That task was perhaps to big for one year.

Should we have tried less? I don't think so.  Mindquarry is a virtual team solution, providing the needed resources in a single point of access. That makes the Mindquarry software unique.

But we should have done it step by step with better quality in each step to release reliable software suitable for a customer basis.  We simply did not do it that way because we had planned with more time for developing our operations. 

This is perhaps the end of the Mindquarry company as we know it today. This is not yet the end of the Mindquarry product and it's community.

 

Posted at 11:00AM Oct 04, 2007 (Permalink) by Stephan Voigt with tags business mindquarry  |  Share This Link

As I will be offline for the most of the next week and the last week has been one of the most interesting and successful ones for Mindquarry so far, I would like to recap the events of this week in a short blog post:

Monday

• I wrote in my weblog about the faced search for tasks in Mindquarry 1.2, which has been picked up later by Stephan and Michael Sampson, and Forum User BeneM contributed a patch that further improved this feature. Thank you.  
  

Wednesday

• We had a very interesting talk with Jonathan B. Spira of Basex who is an expert in the collaboration business and monitoring the knowledge economy for years.
  

• We launched Mindquarry PRO, our offering for enterprise customers 

  We re-worked our Homepage and have now clearly defined sections for Mindquarry DO, Mindquarry GO and Mindquarry PRO 

Thursday

• I finished my article "Elements of Collaboration" which lists some of the most popular tools and methodologies for knowledge worker collaboration. Since then it has been picked up by some blogs, for example the Bumble Bee. Thank you.
• We rolled out a new version of Mindquarry GO, which means we can now activate an order of magnitude more users for Mindquarry GO beta than we already did. If you are waiting in line for a Mindquarry GO account, the wait is over soon.
• I started discussing new features and implementation in Mindquarry 1.3, the main focus of this release is user and permission management.
  

Friday

• Alexander Saar released the first version of a Mindquarry Plugin for Eclipse Mylyn that allows you to track your tasks in Mindquarry right from your Eclipse IDE.
• Mindquarry (as a product and as a company) is featured by Linux.com. Thank you Joe and Tina.
• Opensource Tutor.com describes how to set up a collaborative learning environment with Mindquarry and Granule

If you want to stay up to date with everything that happens in the Mindquarry community, do not forget to check Planet Mindquarry and the Mindquarry Forum.

Posted at 05:38PM Aug 03, 2007 (Permalink) by Lars Trieloff with tags community mindquarry report status  |  Share This Link

In the first part of this collaboration guide I was highlighting the first steps for an administrator to make the system usable for common users. Now I want to say some words about the first steps for common users.

2. Basic Principles

2.1 Teams

Every team represents a group of people with the same rights. What teams are standing for, I've described in part one.  

So if you are for example a member of the "Marketing" team and need a kind of sub-group to show results to other people, you'll have to create some more teams like "Interop Las Vegas 2008". To create a new team, you'll currently have to ask your administrator.

But every user can add and remove team members from a team. To do so, go to the team section. On the left side, select your team. Now your teams name is the headline of your page. There you'll see on the upper right side 2 buttons, labeled with "members" and "edit". Hit the "members" button and the "Change Membership" form appears. On the left side are the members of the current team, on the right side are all possibles members left. (Note: if the right side is empty, all possible members are already team members. To add generally new members, ask the administrator) just click in the right side peoples "add member"-link to shift them to the left team side. To remove member from the team, click in the left side peoples "remove member"-link to shift them to the right side with non-members.
Doing the last, you not delete this members, you just exclude them from the current team.

2.2 Files

Mindquarry has a powerful file version control server. For those with more technical interest, the system is based on the Open Source product "subversion". What is the idea behind this technology?

All team members should use the same files and documents with the same file directory tree. And all team members should use always up-to-date files and documents. To do so, the whole teams file directory tree with all files and documents is copied to each user's laptop or desktop computer. The file server is the golden copy and archive.
Who already worked with subversion knows, that this is not the traditional copy procedure. There are more than 20 commands with lots of options each. Basically the subversion server acts like your public library: First the documents have to be registered. Then you "borrow" the document and you "give it back". (Fortunately, the library has enough copies for all readers) If you modified the document, the library treats the modified as the new valid document and keep the previous version for history views.

A very powerful and reliable archive. To keep it simple, we developed a "library broker", a servant for you: The Mindquarry desktop client. He's on your local drive doing all that command stuff for you by one single command: "synchronize".

2.3 How to synchronize?

To synchronize, you have to download the desktop client. Don't worry, it's a smart client, easy to install and easy to remove as well. ("no-footprint-client") To load it down, you have in the file section the big button "synchronize" which will start the download and after the download it starts the desktop client.  (Hint: Mac users should download the special mac version) . The installation is easy. You just have to write the local path for you teams main directory, like c:/documents/Marketingteam. After you did so, you can start to create a file directory tree below that directory and add the first files. With your first sync (open the desktop client and hit the button sync) you install a copy of your local file directory "Marketingteam" on the Mindquarry server. Now everyone else from your team can sync and gets the files from your Server.

Every time you change a document or a file you should synchronize your laptop with the team server (or at least once a day). Now the file or document on the server is updated, and the previous file or document is archived. That's why you are able to see all the past versions in your time line at the file section.

But if you don't change the files but others do so?

Every time you synchronize your laptop with the team server, the server checks out the modification date of the files on the server and your local stored files. If there are modified (and therefore newer) files on the server, the server will download them to your laptop. Therefore you can trust to have alway up-to-date and valid documents and files on your working computer after a synchronization. We recommend to synchronize daily, even when you did not change any file.

What happens if 2 people change the same file?

Your desktop client which is used to do the synchronization shows you a conflict message. In that case I recommend not to synchronize. First take a close look to both versions and decide, which you want to keep:

• if the server version is better, just erase your local file
• if your local version is better, just synchronize and your local version overwrites the server version.

2.4 Knowledge @ Wiki

A wiki is a comfortable way to collect and publish knowledge. It's just easy for every team member to contribute his ideas since that Wiki is very easy to use. (WYSIWYG) Recommended appliances for Wiki's are:

• Gather Ideas for new product features, for events or for your maintenance process
• Publish common conventions and glossaries like name convention for programmers, step-by-step guides for installations or other reference works
• Create user driven documentation by contributions of every team member

To use the wiki just go and try it out. Just some basic important hints:

• To start writing hit the edit-button or double click the Wiki text.
• Create new pages by linking to them from your current page. Mark a word or phrase and use the icon with the red link symbol (a finger is pointing to a red text line) to make that to a link to that new page. Now save and click the new link which brings you to the new and empty Wiki page.
• When you done your editing, don't forget to save! ;-)
  

2.5 Tasks

Tasks help you to get your daily workload sorted.  You can better keep track on your duties and it helps you not to forget to much things. It brings quality and reliability in your work results. Most of you will perhaps use tasks in Outlook or other programs.

Mindquarry tasks are simple to use. They just start with a title and a status. But you see below the label "fields" addition optional fields which can be activated just by clicking on it.  Try something, create an own task and one assigned to an other person. Add a due date. just try to find your own way of usage, use them.

Mindquarry tasks will be continuously improved and integrated into the other components and become an important role in the Mindquarry collaboration way.

 

So thats all for today. Stay tuned for the next part about the first steps for user.

Posted at 03:39PM Jul 16, 2007 (Permalink) by Stephan Voigt with tags 2.0 collaboration firststeps howto mindquarry  |  Share This Link

You decided to improve your teamwork and got a Mindquarry account, either from the hosted "Mindquarry GO" or from the free download and you already have installed Mindquarry. (did you tell us about your installation in the voluntary registration form? Yes? very good. That helps us a lot to improve our services by knowing our customers) Anyway now you are ready for the first steps:

1. Initial Administration 

The first principle you have to learn is that a administrator is a  administrator and not a user. So after the installation you have the admin login(pwd admin/admin (if you are using Mindquarry GO you'll get your administarion account by email). As the admin you have the following initial tasks:

• add all possible users
• create the necessary team spaces
• add the first members to the according team

1.1 Add all possible Users

Go to the teams section. On the right side you'll see 2 buttons: "new user", "new team". Hit the new user button and a form appears, were you have to fill in the master data for the new user:

• User ID: this is the login-name. You cant that change lather, so use ID's according your common rules, f.e. email, name.surname, nicknames and so on.
• password: use something what is easy, the user can change that lather on his own.
• photo: this can be changed from the user lather on too, never than less I recommend to do that, if possible. It helps the users to feel confident.  The picture should be .jpg or .png format.  It should be quadratic with at least 48*48 pixels, but it can be bigger. The small sizes just load up faster. If you use bigger pictures, the will be resized to the appropriate format automatically.
  
• First name, surname: That should be the real names as long as you are not illegal criminals.
  
• Email: please use the correct email address of the user.
• Skills: that can be changed by the user too,  usually you can fill in descriptions of the role or position, like f.e. "CEO and lightning idol" for me.

Well now you have described your first user. Hitting the button "create" will save that for future use. But hold on a second. First I recommend to send that person an email with his access dates: the web-address were to login (look at your browsers current address) , the login name and his password. (Yes, it's already part of our road map to do this automated soon.) And now, finally, don't forget to hit the button "create".

And now you just have to do that for all users you plan to invite to your team spaces.

1.2 Add all wanted Teams

A team is the space were related people work on a project or a global task. Possible teams may be:

• departments, like Marketing, Finance, Human Resources ....
• projects, like "desktop client development", "coke summer campaign" or "collecting oncology data"
• global tasks (over different projects or departments), like "press wok" or "user reporting"

 
So you go to the teams section. On the right side you'll see 2 buttons: "new user", "new team". Hit the new team button and a form appears, were you have to fill in the master data for the new team:

• Teamspace ID: That should be considered carefully, since you can't change that lather on. The teamspace ID is used to have understandable web-URL's. So avoid difficult and too long names here. Avoid special characters of your local font set. Just keep it simple and understandable, like "financial" for the financial department.
• Teamspace name: That should be preferable the best describing name for your team. You can change that lather too.
• Description: It's always helpful to add some words to the task and goal of the team. But you can change that lather too.

Now hit the button "create team" and you'll done. Repeat that for possible other teams. Every created team should appear in the left navigation bar of the team section.

1.3 Adding Members to Teams

So you go again to the teams section. Go to a team of your choice by clicking it in the left navigation bar. Now the team name appears in the headline of your current page.  You'll see 2 new buttons: "Members" and "Edit". Hit the members button and a form appears, which has all possible members listed on the right side. just click to the "add members"-link in the peoples description and the people will be added to the current team. You added a wrong person? Don't worry, just hit the "remove" link in the persons description on the left team side, and it will go back to the peoples pool. When you adjusted all users to the current team, hit the save button to save your work.

And now do the same procedure for every other team. This part of the administration work can later be done by the team members itself.

 1.4 Further Administration Tasks

Adding Teams and  Team members will always be a task which can be done only by the administrator.

 

Well that's the stuff for today. Stay tuned for the next article about the basic principles of Mindquarry.

Posted at 12:09PM Jul 13, 2007 (Permalink) by Stephan Voigt with tags collaboration first-steps howto mindquarry  |  Share This Link

Just a quick note for everyone googling for "Mind Quarry" and not finding "Mindquarry". We are called Mindquarry, as we find this is the easiest and most intuitive way of spelling our name. Some people are referring to Mindquarry as MindQuarry with a capital Q in the middle, which is not completely wrong, but we still prefer Mindquarry.

Posted at 10:08AM Jul 12, 2007 (Permalink) by Lars Trieloff with tags mind mindquarry quarry  |  Share This Link

I am happy to announce the immediate availability of Mindquarry Collaboration Server 1.1.2. This is a bugfix release for the stable Mindquarry 1.1 branch.

You can download release 1.1.2 now. It especially fixes a showstopper in 1.1.1 on windows.

• http://releases.mindquarry.org/com/mindquarry/launcher/mindquarry-launcher/1.1.2/
  

The downloads page will be updated later today:

• http://www.mindquarry.com/products/downloads
  

The release notes can be found here: Mindquarry 1.1.2 Release Notes.

For upgrading see:

• Windows
• Linux
• Mac OS X

Posted at 04:27PM Jul 11, 2007 (Permalink) by Lars Trieloff with tags mindquarry release  |  Share This Link

Today Mindquarry is (I'm first time live blogging :-) ) Lars holding a workshop about the modification and programming capabilities of the Mindquarry Collaboration Server. Behind Lars you see some dishes with pie to lure the students to the workshop. I guess, Lars will not release the desk until he finished his lecture. :D

Posted at 03:52PM Jul 06, 2007 (Permalink) by Stephan Voigt with tags hpi mindquarry pie students workshop  |  Share This Link

So finally we made it to get the 1.1 version into a stable release. It has the new GUI, lots of features and it looks much less "childisch" like one of the testers of the 1.0 version was calling it. Read the press release for a overview.

I like  especially the time line feature. It makes me feeling like the time traveler in Orson Wells "Time machine",  putting my had on the lever and pulling it down to 1812... Ok, I just grab the time slider with my mouse and draw it back some days. But anyway, now I can go back and change earlier versions of my files and tasks, and it looks cool too. I often happens to me that I edit documents in different steps and the erlier versions are mostly more universal and a god basis for different variations of the document. For example I have a basic presentation and make often some special editions from it for special events or customers. It's easy now to go back to the primal version.

 So if you try it, don't hesitate to give us your feedback, we're eager to hear from you.

Posted at 01:47PM Jun 14, 2007 (Permalink) by Stephan Voigt with tags collaboration mindquarry release stable  |  Share This Link

Once again we've been chosen to be nominated, that time as one of the top Ten Bleeding-Edge Open Source Companies.

We are very happy to get such attention. I think it's the result of our close work with our early adaptors, people who see the great potential and help us with their feedback.  We are very grateful to you.

Posted at 12:31AM May 03, 2007 (Permalink) by Stephan Voigt with tags mindquarry opensource  |  Share This Link

All of the Red Herring 100 Europe award winners got the chance for a 12 minute pitch. Mindquarry was placed into slot B and at half past 5 p.m. it was my turn to take the stage. I was in high spirits and that usually gives me wings.After the presentation we had a lot of interested people with lots of questions. Lars joined me gladly to help with the more technical matters.
When we finally left the room we had made contact with some interested VC's. Getting inquiries is always a honor for such a young startup like Mindquarry. So we (Lars and I) have been very satisfied with the evening.

Posted at 06:54PM Mar 27, 2007 (Permalink) by Stephan Voigt with tags 100europe award mindquarry pitch redherring session  |  Share This Link