First Day With The New Blog?

Okay, so I'm late. Yes, I should have been blogging 2 years ago, it's not that I didn't have anything to say, it's just that no one was listening. I am amazed and honored by the worldwide interest in Nibipedia. I'm the face, Schubring's the brains. That said, I guess technically, I had the idea and the story but I got it from talking to him.....

Nibipedia was born after 3 years of reading self development, psychology, business, marketing books and cutting out all other media. Then a summer watching TED talks everyday before triathlon training and daily meditation. All of this coupled with a year of talking with Terry Schubring about Web 2.0. Then, after 3 years of non-fiction, I read Dune.

With 80 pages left, I had an idea, "Companies who support the memes succeed." then I sent out an email to a group of people. "What can we do to make the memes happy?". Two weeks later while listening to Bill Bryson's Brief History of Nearly Everything which is really about the history of science and scientists I thought, "I want to see Wikipedia articles associated with this." I called Schub and in two days we had the first demo.

I owe Guy Kawasaki a great debt for Art of the Start and his blog which is the only blog I read religiously.

Note for Snarky Developers:
The idea for Nibipedia came Oct 9th, we launched Nov 1st. Three weeks from conception to launch. Within 3 months of launch we had over 10K visitors. Now, we're expecting 10K per month. The growth is staggering, the budget non existent. This didn't happen because we had it perfect, it's because we had it launched. Users don't have to think about what our software does so they can focus on what it means. Another thing to keep in mind, we haven't raised a cent from investors. Terry builds it, I promote it. It may not be pretty, it may not be scalable but people are using it and just as important they are talking about it.

So What Does It Mean?
Well, what we're really trying to do is hook up all of the social networks (Facebook, Myspace, Linked In, Ning, Moodle etc.) into a synchronous/asynchronous platform neutral video annotation environment.

English Please.
Okay, so imagine a free hospital. Best doctors in the world. You go there, sign a form, your care is free but your procedures are filmed and medical students from around the world can watch and participate via Facebook, when the procedure is done a button is pushed and voila' it's saved. Essentially what you'd be building is a giant video help file for caring for the human body that can be shared everywhere. Testing etc., educational content management is trivial technology and is available for free.

Please don't get hung up on the nuances of how the AMA/HPPA is never going to let that happen. It's not the point, the point is with what we're proposing we can infinitely scale learning with fixed costs using free tools. Whether it's medical, scientific, technical, professional services or algebra it doesn't matter. What matters is infinite educational scalability at fixed costs.

Nibipedia is a small idea right now but we've come a long way in 4 months. We have made a lot of friends who have seen our potential and the next 4 months will be even more dramatic.

This blog is not meant to be a corporate blog, it's mine, so I may post on my thoughts about marketing, education, closing the digital divide, Einstein's Real Law of Attraction, dirigible transport, the space elevator, nano tech or any other subject that tickle my fancy. In this first one I felt that I had to pay homage to the only reason anyone is listening to me in the first place. Nibipedia.

Chi Migwetch for reading, nij.

Troy