Feedback round-up; a few questions answered
Thanks for the comments we’ve had so far which have been without fail encouraging. Here’s a round up of the most common issues that you’ve raised, and our answers (if we have any) for them:
- What’s going to make people put their desks up? This is undoubtedly one of the big unknowns : this is only going to work if we’ve got enough giving people with desks. We don’t have a solid business argument for it either : let’s be honest, there’s not much of an upside to it, apart from the warm glowing feeling you get from helping someone out, and the chance to meet a new person. And I think that’s what we’ll be focussing on : the feel good factor; sharing because it’s nice thing to do; the sociable element. It’s going to be a challenge for us when we create the brand and set the tone on the site. It has to feel supportive, collaborative (we’ve started well in this respect), and people will need to feel as if they belong to a community with a shared ethos of giving, sharing and not expecting much back in return. [Rob, I've just rambled in a pretty illiterate fashion as you'd expect from a developer : you're a words man - can you say this any more succinctly?]So far the straw poll highlights this challenge : there are far fewer people saying they’d offer their desks than would want to use them. But there are people saying they’d offer desks, and I think we probably do need a lot more people who might use the service than there are desks, so perhaps this split is about right.
- I don’t want to share my office with an axe murderer Yup, as has been suggested by lots of you, one of the first things we’re putting in is a rating system : people who use the desks can rate the desks, people who share their desks can rate their users. Frequent users get great ratings and nice things said about them. Of course at the beginning that’s no help, so then it’s down to sensible precautions. We’ll probably have an information section on the site, setting these out, but they’ll say something like:
- If you don’t know the person, make sure you speak on the phone before they come in
- Ask for references if you want [ultimately the reviews of desk users will end up being references, perhaps we should put a 'happy to be contacted as a reference' flag in when they make a review?]
- Don’t leave people you don’t know in the office on their own
- Avoid giving people key codes to doors
The only real security risk that sharing your desk introduces is the stranger in your office. With most open offices these days, that stranger is going to be surrounded by trusted employees : it’s going to be very difficult for them to get up to any mischief and there are much easier ways of stealing stuff / murdering people than this.
Open minded employees of larger firms are probably going to find it difficult to get it past the jobsworth facilities manager. This is something we recognise and we really see this app being embraced by small business offices rather than big firms. Of course if Google want to get on board, I’ll be the first one trying our their spare desks!
Marcus also pointed out that there might be an environmental angle to exploit. I’m with you Marcus, it feels like there should be… I’m just not sure what it is yet!
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August 12th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Re: >> What’s going to make people put desks up?
1. Yes, I’ll re-write a more succinct answer.
2. It struck me that me don’t need a 1:1 ratio of desks:people-who-want-desks… i.e. 1 x desk-listing will serve more than one of our visitors’ needs. Obviously analytics will tell us what’s happening when its running, but if you look at the votes we’ve got a very close to a 1:2 ratio at the mo’. So, as long as each desk is used by at least 2 people, we’ll be fine!
This doesn’t account for the extremely likely scenario that one person may use more than one desk “in a given time period” though… which will obviously work out of our favour. So, perhaps we should do a bit of a push to likely desk-sharers at some point!
August 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Good point Rob, someone may list a desk for 2 weeks, this could serve 10 separate people at 1 day each! Nevertheless, always better to have more option up there so definitely agree that that is where we should be aiming our focus in terms of rounding up users.
As for taking the “it’s a nice thing to do” approach, I agree that this is a really nice angle to take. Since becoming a member of Freecycle this is exactly the vibe I’ve got from that. Everyone I’ve spoke to via Freecycle during my hunt for a desk has been extremely pleasant, with a handful even having offered to “keep an eye out” for me and let me know if anything comes up that I may miss (being a new user and all)! This nice community feel that has evolved has most definitely encouraged me to consider using Freecycle from a ‘giving’ perspective as opposed to my initial ‘take take take’ attitude when initially registering!
I would imagine that Freecycle would have had similar concerns when setting that up, as people generally tend to ‘take’ far more than they would ever ‘give’! So it’s good to know that the ‘nice’ angle does work as loads of people list stuff on there. Let’s hope that Flaming Desks evolves into a friendly environment in a similar way!
August 19th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Desk users can add value to desk lenders. Having someone new in the office can allow you a fresh pair of eyes on what you are wokring on. Presumably most desk users will be freelancers, who therefore haave a skillset and a sole business mentality. They are more than capable of reading pitch documents and feeding back / looking at your new website / sharing ideas for new business etc.
Maybe desk lenders can give users gold stars if they make a significant difference to their business so that other lenders know that a desk user can add rwal value to their business?
Draft FCB London used to have a think call The Sandpit. Jonathan Rigby, the MD, got a load of small entrepreneurial companies to use the desk space for free including commercial graphiti artists, Urban Junkies, Weapon 7 etc.. In return for the free desk space, clients and the agency could access these talents on tap, the building got a cool vibe and loads of creative energy, and the small businesses got a cool address, big meeting rooms, fully serviced offices for free. (The Americans then came along and fired Rigby because they couldn’t see a relationship between all the new business wins and Sandpit on the balance sheet - despite the fact that I personally worked on 2 new business wins for them for free etc.)
Anyway - thought this might be interesting. You might even want to find Rigby and pick his brain?
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Hello lads…just been catchin up on Flaming desks…sounds cool…had a thought on the “why would i lend my desk thing?”. Definitely think the feel good factor is the right direction but could you also add a little something to leave a Flaming Desks trademark on the place.
Could the person borrowing the desk bring a small something as a gesture…i dunno something small with personality might be fun, lendors collect gifts from visitors and visitors may develop trademark gestures….build into profile
Or you could Flaming Desks could suggest standard gesture of a cup of tea or a drink of choice to be brought on arrival…might help give flaming Desks a personality in itself beyond just facilitating of introducing two people…
September 15th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Just follow up your instinct and people will believe you.