Archive for the 'Tech' Category

VisitSweden redesigns it’s website visitsweden.com

Published by
Margareta Björnberg
on by
Margareta Björnberg
February 25, 2008 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News, Redesign visitsweden.com 2008 and Tech. 0 Comments

2 months after its beta launch, Community of Sweden, surpassed 1000 members. Next step is how we let visitors from the official swedish website – visitsweden.com – get travel tips from our community members. And how to we trigger potential visitors to Sweden to share their travel tips on the Community.

That is one big issue in the development of visitsweden.com. Another important issue is how we take our Google Maps application one step further and let visitors make online bookings by navigating the map.
A third issue is how do we implement the new site based on Content Management System Epi Server 5.0, a .NET platform.

Let me also introduce myself: I, Margareta Björnberg, work as senior webmaster and project manager of the development and re-launch of visitsweden.com. You’ll soon hear more.

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“Top 100 highlights in Sweden” now on Google My Maps

Published by
Margareta Björnberg
on by
Margareta Björnberg
December 7, 2007 in Design, News, PR, Tech and web 2.0. 0 Comments

Do you like Google Maps. We do.
Since last May we use Google Maps on visitsweden.com to guide our visitors to Swedens greatest attractions.
On December 3, we launced a Mapplet in Google My Maps for these attractions. You need a Google account to view the Mapplet named “Top 100 highlights in Sweden. The Mapplet leads traffic back to our website. We hope of course that this Mapplet will attract many new visitors to Sweden.

Click here to check it out!

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Status of CommunityOfSweden.com after one month?

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
December 4, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Tech and web 2.0. 0 Comments

We launched CommunityOfSweden.com nov. 1st on schedule. I think it’s time for an update on the status of things.

How did it go?

The launch went great! We had a couple of major bugs the first few days. Mostly related to the internet explorer browser and some issues with inputing tags correctly.
November will always be remembered by me as the month of bug hunting.
And probably by the developers as the month of bug fixing ;)
We’ve come a long way and although there are still a list of issues to fix there’s nothing big that will impact the user experience negatively and that’s the most important thing.

What’s happened since?

We’ve held off with the marketing of CommunityOfSweden.com during november to make sure we’ve got a good and stable service for our users. We’ve only leaked the launch a little by word of mouth, through this blog and our CEO’s blog.
The marketing activities will start now and continue to grow during december and januari and we have a huge list of marketing activities for 2008. It’s very exciting!

What’s next?

First priority is to fix the remaining issues.
Then we’ll start implementing some functionality that we didn’t have time for before november. Such as search functionality!
Yes of course, you didn’t think we’ve forgotten search did you? :)
Also the share functionality so you can easily send tips about good content you find on CommunityOfSweden.com to your friends.
And more…

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have already found your way to CommunityOfSweden.com and become members. Many of you have also helped testing actively and also helping a lot just by providing content to make the community feel alive. Keep it up!
Thank you! :)

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Oakwood Creative and NetRelations of Scandinavia

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
August 16, 2007 in Business, CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News, Press Release and Tech. 0 Comments

After a tough and stressful July of inviting tenders for the online community design, we’ve finally selected who we want to work with.
Unfortunately, because of the cramped time table, we didn’t have time to show you all the designs and vote on them. I hope you will like the end result anyway.

Design created by Oakwood Creative

As I’m writing this they are working hard at creating a beautiful and user friendly design. The first prototype has now gone through a couple of iterations and we’re close on reaching the final design template to proceed.

Oakwood Creative is a small web design agency located in Gamla Stan / Old City, Stockholm.

Design implemented by Netrelations of Scandinavia

I’ve chosen the perhaps unusual approach of letting another company implement the design. I’ve continued our “dream team” approach to this project and NetRelations have a very good reputation especially when it comes to implementing web sites according to standards, usability and accessability.

NetRelations of Scandinavia is a consulting agency specialized in accessability and web standards located in Gothenburg.

In the next post I hope to show you how far we’ve come with the design! :)

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Week of the Wireframes

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
July 6, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, Meetings, Tech and web 2.0. 0 Comments

Last week was the week of the wireframes, literally.
Me and Hans from Trive worked hard on getting the community wireframes as finished as possible before he would leave for his summer vacation. It was essential for the project to make the best of the time we had so there were a couple of late working nights and many long meetings last week.

All is well that ends well they say and it’s true also in this case. We were almost done with the wireframes when the friday came. We got to celebrate with some gourmet food and drink (read: pizza and sweet cider…).
I’m very happy with the work we did last week. Hans did a great job!

Since then I’ve done the finishing touches and the wireframes are now finished - as finished as a working document can ever be, that is. I’ve done two presentations with the wireframes in house, both very successful. It’s great to see and hear how others now can visualize what I’ve had in my head for so long.

I will explain more about wireframes and how we’ve used them in a future post soon. For now I’ll leave you with this photo taken last monday during a brainstorming session that laid the groundwork for the wireframe.

Tommy Sollén and Hans Leijström

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“Phasers on stun” - Community Launch Strategy

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
May 21, 2007 in Business, CommunityOfSweden.com, Planning, Tech and web 2.0. 1 Comment

I’d like to say a few words about our launch strategy. By just looking around at other new online communities it’s obvious that there are many ways to go. Launch everything at once. Private beta phase. Public beta. Launch a little, then a little more etc.

These are our thoughts

  • We’re planning a private beta
  • Then a public beta period (phase 1) which is the official launch
  • Phase 2 launch, end of beta
  • Phase 3, slower continuous development

It’s hard to wait with functionality to later phases when we know it will add a lot of value but there are a few good reasons.

First of all we don’t want to put all the eggs into one basket. Also I don’t think the users want an overwhelming amount of features to hit them at once. Better to let them discover the features one by one and give feedback on what works and what doesn’t. We can then take this feedback and compare to our own release plans. Hopefully they’re in sync, otherwise we will have the opportunity to adjust our plans for the next phase.
This strategy helps the development process. If we see a demand for a particular feature we can prioritize amongst what’s in the pipe line to accommodate our users. We want to respond to their needs and to show that we listen and care.

Nothing new under the sun here. I think this is how most other community drivers think. I just wanted to bring it out in the open so we can discuss it if you feel like it :)

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Community platform chosen!

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
February 19, 2007 in Business, News, Planning and Tech. 0 Comments

It’s not easy to choose how the online community should be developed. Should it be open source? A more official tried and proven solution or something new and daring? Perhaps not even a platform at all but instead more of a mash up solution.

Finally the decision was made. We’ll be using StarCommunity from Netstar and Trive will implement it. It finally came down to the extensive experience Netstar and Trive has in the world of communities.

We’re both very excited about this project. An official press release is in the works. Stay tuned!

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What to do? What to wear? Which online community platform to use?

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
January 29, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, Planning and Tech. 0 Comments

On November 20 2006 I sent out emails to a number of Swedish companies who might be able to meet our demands for a online community platform.

These companies had two weeks to send me a time and cost estimate back along with some information about themselves and their thoughts regarding the project. Most of the companies were very interested and responded in good time.

As it turned out I was a bit optimistic in my original estimate on how long it would take to go through the proposals and to make decision. What a surprise… Lesson 1 learned right there.
I thought I could pick a supplier within two weeks. Well, it’s now the end of January and I still haven’t decided. I’m even further behind on regarding who’ll do the design.
In early December we figured we needed to clean the table a bit regarding a bunch of other smaller projects before going ahead with this one. Now that that’s done I’m very excited to focus on this online community project!

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