Week 3- 5 year vision

My long term vision for Meeting Sprout is to penetrate into the small business market. Businesses would be able to post important events, coupons, and store hours on their calendar. Users could then search a business, see this information, and merge it with their personal calendar to see times they would be available to attend the business. We would charge the businesses a monthly fee to keep their page open, serving as our main revenue stream. To attain this, we would require a large active user database built up from previous years.

We would offer the business an API that allows them to see the most popular times that people are available, and this would serve as the revenue driver. We also could offer the business other market research information such as how many page hits per day. With this data, the business could staff and have hours of operations appropriately.

Week 2- Technology side

The technology needed to pull this idea off include a deep understanding of code and programming. To be able to sync calendars, the user will have to export their personal calendar into a database that we would own, and it would have to come in a grid format close to Excel. Also the information would have to be in a consistent variable so the server side code PHP and MySQL could decode it, parse it, and store it on our database in format that could be later displayed and accessed through PHP.

The consumer would have to know both where to send the information from their calendar and how to export the information. This would require a training video for each platform available. When the user hits export on their calendar, they would have to copy the URL of their Meetingsprout home page to properly export it to the right place.

To make the genral website, front-side code such as Javascript, HTML, and CSS would have to be used. The HTML would serve as the backbone, while CSS will make the design look nice. JavaScript would add the interactivity to the user such as rollover images and actions when the user clicks, and form verifications. The forms would also be verified server side, however, using PHP.

Week 1- General Idea

      I am currently working on an entrepenurial idea and am part of a start-up company called meetingsprout.com. Meetingsprout.com is an online service that offers calendars to students that contain their class schedule, important due dates, and university events.  Our vision is to allow students to simply log-in and receive all the above information without the need to input any information.  Through Meeting Sprout, students can view each others schedule and merge (sprout) them to see available times.  

      A unique feature of Meeting sprout is a group project facilitator.  Students can invite group project members to a page, and sprout all members class schedule to see overlapping times.  In addition, they are able to chat, assign tasks, upload documents, send blast emails, and many other features that will help facilitate group projects.

      Our long term vision is to sell this product to other universities, and then shift into the corporate world.  Group work is the backbone of any business, and can be very frustrating and complex.  Meeting sprout will provide project managers with a base of operation.  Meeting sprout  helps deal with the little annoying aspects of creating a meeting, like finding a place and time.  In addition, Meeting sprout will help keep teams functional by allowing users to add group objectives, assign tasks, send blast emails, upload documents, and many other key aspects that are involved in group work.