Google Docs Blog
The official source for news, updates and tips about Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and Keep.
Meet the team from SongCraft Presents #myGoogleDocs
March 10, 2016
In the spirit of
Basement Queens
--an original song that was #madewithGoogleDocs, we recently caught up with SongCraft presents to chat about how they use Google Docs to power their super cool web series where they bring artists together to write a song in less than a day.
We want to know how you use Google Docs, too, so share your own examples at +GoogleDocs or @googledocs with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Hi Mike! Tell us a little about yourself and Songcraft.
SongCraft Presents
is a web series about writing and recording a brand new song, usually in less than a day. In each episode songwriter
Ben Arthur
collaborates with a new artist - sometimes individuals, and sometimes a band- to write a song.
Rob Reinhart
, of the syndicated radio program Acoustic Cafe, usually hosts and narrates the show, and interviews the artists along the way. Al Houghton and me (Mike Crehore) of
Dubway Studios
, record the music, whether done in a studio or on the fly, and produce the finished product. Our director,
Matthew Hendershot
captures the process, and edits the footage into its final form.
2015 had us in 5 locations around the country producing a version of our series called “Songs of the Road,” as well as returning to SXSW 2015 to work with 3 more artists. You can see all those episodes at SongCraft Presents or at our
YouTube channel
.
How does Google Docs fit into the Songcraft process?
We have been using Google Docs since its inception both individually and in various work relationships. Al and Mike started using Docs at Dubway Studios as a way to share information amongst both fulltime and part-time staff. The studio business has a lot of moving parts, and the ability to post forms showing what a producer or engineer needed for upcoming sessions, and that the support staff can look at for setup greatly streamlined the process. Last minute changes become less of a hassle.
As part of our “Songs of the Road” series, we had staff coming from all different locations around the country. We share all the data for our shoots - locations, contacts, directions, call times, etc - and keep everything up to date as it changes. All the staff members using their smartphones and Google Docs apps are able to log in and get or input any updates as needed on the fly. As we add staff, we just share access with them according to their needs.
What are 3 tips you’d give for other folks who use/would consider using Google Docs?
Using the “Comments” function in real time is a great way to be able to make edits and give and take feedback about them with the rest of the members of your team.
Share documents with the “View” function for those people who you do not want to give login access to, but want to share information with.
Organize your folders and color code to more easily find documents across multiple projects in Drive.
Meet Whale Thief—a comedy group that makes a feature length film in just 24 hours
January 6, 2016
Recently we heard about Movie Cram, an event where hundreds of people work together to create a feature-length film in a single day, organized—with the help of Google Docs—by comedy group Whale Thief. We got in touch with members Matt Klinman, Benjamin Apple, and Matt Mayer to hear more about the role Google Docs plays in powering this massive undertaking.
We want to know how you use Google Docs, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Hi Whale Thief! Tell us a little about who you are and what Movie Cram is.
Movie Cram is an annual event where we make a feature-length film—from pitch to production to screening—in just 24 hours. This year 200+ people participated, including 14 writers, 29 production teams, 10 musicians, and more than 100 actors. The event is run by Whale Thief, our six-member comedy group based in New York City.
Making a movie in a day requires a lot of parallel processes. The writers write their scenes simultaneously and then merge them into a single screenplay. The production teams shoot simultaneously, each with their own cast of actors. This whole time, musicians are recording an original soundtrack inspired by the script. Finally each production team edits their respective scenes and delivers them to us between 11 p.m. and midnight so we can quickly assemble them into a seamless playlist. At midnight, the finished product premieres in front of a live audience at the
UCB Theatre in Chelsea
.
How does Google Docs fit into the Movie Cram process?
We use Google Docs to organize the massive amounts of data required to pull off an event of this complexity. In the months leading up to each year’s Movie Cram we use Docs to keep track of everything—from who’s available to do the event, to who canceled at the last minute, to everyone’s contact info, to our to-do and done lists. On the day of the event, we use it to take notes on all of the movie pitches, keep track of who’s writing what and which actors are assigned to which production teams, and organize the soundtrack files.
What are three tips you’d give to other filmmakers who use/would consider using Google Docs?
Use formatting to your advantage. It sounds obvious, but if you take the time to bold your column headers, add section descriptions, and come up with a color-coded priority key, it will quickly pay off in the form of higher scannability—especially when you’re sharing docs with others.
Use Docs to give and get notes! If you ask someone to look over an entire document and then give you their thoughts on it, chances are they’ll have forgotten half of their notes by the time they start emailing you. If they can give notes as they go by leaving comments or suggestions, the resulting feedback will be far more thorough.
Get creative! Each document type is meant to display a different kind of information, but you never know what might happen if you try to subvert that intended purpose. For example, once when two of us were editing the same spreadsheet (one of us in New York, one in Los Angeles), we ended up using the spreadsheet itself as a chat room. When we wanted to indicate agreement, we just bolded what the other person had written, or increased the font size. We could write in any direction and follow our own digressions visually, or respond to individual lines before continuing. Eventually the spreadsheet looked like the wall of a gas station bathroom. It was great.
Thanks to the crew at Whale Thief for answering our burning questions about Movie Cram. For more, check out Movie Cram’s latest film on
YouTube
and read this
New York Times article
for details about how this audacious project works.
Meet Susanna, founder & CEO of BridgEd Strategies
October 12, 2015
We want to know how you use Google Docs, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Hi Susanna! Tell us a little about yourself and what you do.
I'm the founder & CEO of
BridgEd Strategies
, a consulting firm that works with education organizations to develop & implement strategy, communication, and change management plans that help them better serve low-income, first generation students. I'm a lifelong educator with experience ranging from being a K - 12 classroom teacher to a senior administrator at a technical college. Most recently I served as a program officer at a large national philanthropic foundation.
I returned home to New York City last year after a decade in Seattle.
How does Google Docs fit into your everyday work at BridgEd?
When I launched my consulting practice last year, I made the conscious choice to use Google Docs and other Google products instead of buying the other office software. I've had a Gmail account for over a decade and use Google calendar to organize (and keep a historical record of) my life.
I was nervous about solely relying on Google Docs- I was unsure how I would collaborate with clients who use the other office software. I initially gave myself six months to road test this approach. It's been seamless. I use Google Docs to write, collaborate, plan, and edit with clients and partners across the world. I’m able to access my clients’ Office documents with no translation issues.
I also chose to switch from an iPhone to an Android-based cell phone. Having all of my communications devices on the same platform makes it incredibly easy to access information, no matter where I am.
When my laptop recently stopped working, I wasn’t worried about whether I’d remembered to back everything up because all of my work was automatically saved to my Google Drive. As an independent consultant, I’m my own CEO, CFO, HR Director, and Director of IT. This peace of mind is a huge relief.
What are 3 tips you’d give for other organizations who use/would consider using Google Docs?
Google Drive is your most powerful asset for organizing and sharing information. A well-organized Google Drive will make collaboration and communication so much easier. Bonus: the search function means you don’t even have to be that organized.
The “Suggest” feature in Google Docs makes co-writing easy and exciting. I have collaborated on two blog post projects with people I know only through Twitter-- and Google Docs made that process not only possible but easy as well.
I’ve saved a photo of my signature as a .jpg in my Google drive to easily sign Google Docs.
Meet Jarrett, teacher & social entrepreneur
October 7, 2015
Jarrett is a teacher and social entrepreneur based in West Philadelphia who uses Google Docs and Drive to power a student run organization that creates healthy snacks, called
Rebel Ventures
.
We want to know how you use Google Docs, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Hi Jarrett! Tell us a little about yourself and what you do.
I work for an organization called the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative at Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships. Over the past 4 years, I’ve worked with West Philly HS students to build a business that produces healthy snacks called Rebel Ventures. Our mission is to make good food affordable to everyone. Simply put, good food is good for the people who eat it, good for the people who make it, and good for the planet. Our goal is to create healthy snacks and healthy jobs for our community.
How does Google Docs fit into your workday?
The Rebel Ventures Google Drive folder is the foundation of our job training model. Our business is divided into 6 departments (accounting, operations, sales, marketing, design, r&d) and high-school students rotate through each department, learning and developing a diverse set of skills by running the business activities within that department. The more skills HS students master, the more more money they earn.
We store all our files in our Drive, no matter what software is used to create them. All HS students with smartphones download Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc for their phone so they can access and manipulate the content at all times.
We use Slides to create all the tutorials that students use to teach themselves specific Rebel skills when no one is available to train them. Our entire accounting and sales systems are built in Sheets called Master Accounts. Every week a HS student opens and updates our Future Sales tab, which is transcribed on a whiteboard, carried into our kitchen, and the rest of the crew work on fulfilling orders.
We also use Sheets to improve our product quality in the Research and Development department. Every time we create a new flavor or product, we conduct a crew-wide taste test, where each individual ranks the products in a variety of set categories. A HS crew member is responsible for entering the data from the paper taste test forms into a spreadsheet, and then uses different functions to analyze and visualize the data so we can make informed recipe development decisions.
Our performance management system is based on peer evaluation. Every two weeks all Rebel crew members (high school, college, staff) fill out an anonymous Google Form where they rate their colleagues in 3 categories, and provide comments to justify the ratings. Our high school Rebel crew leaders are responsible for analyzing this data and then using it to co-plan SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) goals for individual improvement.
What are 3 tips you’d give for other organizations who use/would consider using Google Docs?
Trust your team and let them play.
We give our high school students free access to computers as well as their phones during work, trusting that if they are using this technology they are working with Drive and Docs. The apps are simple enough that the students can self direct their activities, and they know to look to their peers and mentors if they need help manipulating a particular doc.
Build and keep building.
We usually don’t have any idea what the final form of any of our docs, spreadsheets, presentations, or forms will look like before we start making them. We have a goal in mind, but otherwise just start building from the ground up until we’ve created a tool that is useful. We test the tool and continue building. If more than one person is working on a doc at a time, we make sure they have their own device to access the doc so we don’t stifle creativity, independence, and cooperative communication.
Be organized and be transparent.
We do our best to keep our Drive organized through folders, and regularly train our staff on how to navigate the system. We also put everything our staff needs into Drive so there is open access to the information we need to do our jobs.
Meet Bodie, filmmaker & storyteller
September 29, 2015
Bodie is an award winning writer and director of
short films
and other projects that have aired on MTVu, Logo, and the Sundance Channel, and has collaborated with
DJ ShyBoy
to create
music videos
for his debut album Water on Mars. Currently Bodie’s video work can be seen as part of the Los Angeles Public Library’s exhibit, “
To Live and Dine in L.A.
” exploring food culture and issues of food justice in and around L.A.
We want to know how you use Google Docs, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
1. Hey Bodie! Tell us a little about yourself and what you do.
I see myself as a jack-of-all-trades film/media maker/storyteller/… . Although my background is firmly rooted in traditional forms of storytelling--like theatre and film--I’m fortunate that over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to expand my knowledge of all things new-media related.
Currently I’m an assistant professor of cinematic practice at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts’ division of
Media Arts + Practice
. I teach documentary film production, web design,
installation-based storytelling
, and everything in between. The incredible group of faculty, staff, and students in our department are exploring all types of media (interactive, immersive, web-based, etc.) and how it can be used to critically engage with the issues most pressing to our culture and society. It’s an exciting place to be and, even though I’m a professor, I feel like I learn more than my students every day!
With my newfound awareness of the possibilities inherent to these emergent modes of storytelling, I’m now collaborating with many artists and designers to develop stories that will harness these technologies. This doesn’t mean I’ve completely turned my back on narrative feature films (in fact, I’m in various stages of the writing process for three), but because every project can take such a long time to gestate, I’m a firm believer of casting as wide a net as possible to keep the artistic practice in tip-top shape.
2. How does Google Docs fit into your filmmaking and teaching?
Google Docs is integral to all that I do; I use it to keep track of any ideas I have for future projects, my artistic partners and I use all of the Docs tools for our collaborations, and I use it in my classes as a space in which my students can ideate for group projects.
Re-reading that paragraph I find it amusing because I don’t think I have ever thought of word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations as artistic tools, but the way Google has designed them (and continually improved them) they’ve truly become a key part of my creative process.
3. What are 3 tips you’d give for filmmakers who use/would consider using Google Docs?
Try to think outside of the box - I’ve adapted Sheets to a 3x5” index card technique I learned at UCLA as a way to map out my screenplays, Slides has become a good pre-visualization tool for my video shoots, and Docs can be adapted to use for almost any idea!
Sync to your devices - I use the entire suite on my phone, laptop, and desktop at school. The mobility it allows is incredible and saves me from having to make multiple copies of documents for each device.
Collaborate - the fullest potential of Google Docs is only revealed once you use it to work with others.
Meet Ben, President of Delta Upsilon WSU
August 25, 2015
Meet Ben Hundley--a fraternity president who keeps his chapter moving with a little help from Google Docs.
We want to know how you use Google Docs, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Hi Ben! Tell us a little about yourself and Delta Upsilon WSU.
My name is Ben Hundley and I am the current President of Delta Upsilon WSU. We are a small chapter between the size of 30-40 guys currently and we are based off of the four founding principles of: Promotion of Friendship, Development of Character, Diffusion of Liberal Culture and the Advancement of Justice. Our organization recently celebrated 120 years on our campus and we are extremely proud of the continued tradition and benefit our members offer to the community.
How does Google Docs fit into your chapter’s day to day?
We as a chapter use Google Docs primarily with our executive board and recruitment team. The executive board has 8 sitting members and the recruitment team has 5 sitting members. For the executive board, we are able to keep documents saved via a house Google account. This allows us to ease the transition each year during officer elections.
This summer we have been using Google Docs heavily in order to allow the executive board to give input on the restructuring of our organization's bylaws. It has made it significantly easier for us to discuss changes and execute those changes in a timely manner because we can have multiple people addressing the same issues or action points without having to be in the same city or state. Our recruitment team is able to coordinate our recruiting efforts through Google Sheets. The lifeblood of any collegiate organization is recruiting new members and therefore, having an easily accessible spreadsheet to track who is calling who and which people have already been contacted is vital.
What are 3 tips you’d give to other fraternities & sororities who use/would consider using Google Docs?
If our chapter had to give 3 tips to other greek life, they would be:
Host a training session!! Although Google Docs are easy to navigate, it is still essential to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Don't forget to learn the ins and outs of privacy and sharing documents
EXPERIMENT! Try out features and see if they can be adapted to your chapter's needs.
Meet Dara Castiglione: Wedding Planner
July 7, 2015
Meet
Dara Castiglione
, a wedding planner from New Jersey. After reading one of her tweets about Google Docs, we chatted to better understand how she uses the family of products to run her wedding planning business.
We want to know how you use Google Docs, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Hi Dara! Tell us a little about yourself and what you do.
Hi! My name is Dara and I am the Owner of Castiglione Events, a boutique wedding and special events planning company in New Jersey. I plan around eight weddings a year in New Jersey and New York, as well as other small parties. My primary focus is to keep my clients organized and on schedule during the hectic planning process, which typically lasts about a year. I do have assistants, but the day-to-day tasks and the bulk of the major planning are done by me alone. Google Docs is a great tool that helps to keep myself and my clients organized.
How does Google Docs fit into your wedding planning business?
There are many contracts, budgets, spreadsheets and timelines that are used during the planning process. They have to stay organized or you’ll go crazy trying to piece everything together. I offer full service planning, but the majority of my work is partial planning/day of coordination. With this type of service, clients are very involved in the planning process. So the use of Google Docs is imperative to ensure we’re always on the same page. I collect pertinent information from clients through shared spreadsheets which allows all of us to go in and modify in one shared, organized space. Most of my clients live far away and work full-time, so in lieu of meetings and constant phone conferences that no one today really has time for, we work together in a shared space that allows a constant stream of communication. We work on wording for menu cards, ceremony programs, and even ceremony scripts and readings through Google Docs as well. Commenting is key because it allows all parties to address a question, concern, or issue head-on as opposed to writing a whole email about it. We can work together right there in the document. It’s a definite time-saver!
What are three tips you’d give for other wedding planners about using Google Docs?
Show clients how to use it if they’re unfamiliar! Don’t just settle for them not knowing how. It will seriously make your life (and theirs!) so much easier and they will thank you for it. It’s worth taking the extra time to give them a quick lesson.
Don’t forget about revision history. It allows you to view all changes and additions that have been made by you and the person you’re sharing with. Check every once in a while. You never know if something they typed in and erased out of uncertainty is actually important info or an incredible idea!
Invite vendors to join in working this way. I’m always collaborating with DJ’s and caterers to establish the perfect timeline and flow for each event. I send draft timelines in Google Docs, which allows them to add in specific elements important to them, or comments in areas they need revised to fit their requirements after they see my proposed timeline.
Meet Marie Forleo: Thought leader, award winning TV show host, and "unshakable optimist"
June 18, 2015
Meet
Marie Forleo
. Named by Oprah as a thought leader for the next generation and one of Inc.’s 500 fastest growing companies of 2014, Marie's mission is to help people realize their greatest potential and their gifts to change the world. She’s the creator of the award-winning show
MarieTV
, founder of B-School and has been featured in Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine among others. After reading one of her tweets about Google Docs, we chatted to better understand how she uses the family of products to run her business.
We want to know how you use the Google Docs family of products, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Hi Marie. First, tell us about who you are and what you do.
I’m an unshakable optimist. I believe in a world where the vast majority of people wake up everyday excited to use their gifts to create a kinder, more meaningful life for all. My job is to help you reach your highest potential and use your unique talents to change the world. I do that through writing, teaching, and speaking each week on our show MarieTV, and through our online courses and programs.
How do you guys use Google Docs?
As a virtual company, our team spans from Hawaii to Los Angeles to New York and more cities in between. And 99.9% of everything we create happens first in Google Docs. We constantly collaborate online and it’s all powered through Google Docs. We write our show scripts, craft and edit newsletters, generate all of the ideas for our free and premium content, brainstorm and execute strategies, track our priorities and goals, and review customer feedback. I’m not kidding when I say Google Docs powers our entire company. We love it and could simply not function at the level we do without it. We have a running joke that if anyone has an idea or initiative they want to bring to life, the first step is “Start a Google doc about it!”
What are three suggestions you’d have for other folks who are using or thinking about using Google Docs to run their business?
Make sure everyone on your team understands Google Docs and is comfortable with how the basics work (sharing, formatting, adding and replying to comments, etc.). A few minutes spent training each other prevents frustration early on and leads to massive gains in productivity down the line.
Be aware of who your documents are shared with. Realize everyone can see comments so be conscious of how you frame feedback to avoid upsets and misunderstandings.
Hot Tip: If you’re collaborating in real time in a super long document, you can quickly and easily “hop to” where a fellow collaborator is writing within the document by clicking on their icon in the upper right corner. It will bring you to exactly where their cursor is. This trick saves us a lot of time and helps us (literally) stay on the same page as each other while working in a virtual environment.
Do you use Google Docs for anything in your personal life or around the house?
Oh my goodness, yes. I use Google Docs for everything from tracking family expenses, mapping out home renovation strategies, brainstorming vacation plans and working on personal visions and goals. I seriously LIVE in Google Docs and I love it.
Meet Alice Keeler: Google Certified Teacher, Author, and "Queen of Spreadsheets"
June 9, 2015
Alice Keeler is a mother of five children, a Google Certified Teacher, and the author of the book “
50 Things You Can Do With Google Classroom
.” Recently we sat down with the self-proclaimed “Queen of Spreadsheets” to learn more about how she relies on (and pushes the boundaries of) Google Docs both in the classroom and in her busy everyday life.
We want to know how you use the Google Docs family of products, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Tell us about yourself, the self proclaimed “Queen of Spreadsheets.”
I am a mother of five children, have a master’s degree in educational media design and technology and am working on my doctorate in EdTech with an emphasis in games and simulation. While working on my masters degree in 2009, I realized the power of games to motivate students, so I’ve been working on applying gamification techniques and games in my instruction, built with
Sheets
.
I’m extremely high energy and I really enjoy innovating and sharing with teachers. I also have a unique talent: I can make people love data and spreadsheets. When you can get the information you need in the format that you need it, it’s truly exciting.
How does Google Docs fit into your teaching?
Google Docs is essential for my instruction. I’ve been paperless for years and Google Docs makes that possible. If I were to choose one word that is most important when choosing tools for student use, I would say collaboration. Google Docs transforms group work from one student doing most of the work to a truly collaborative endeavor. Each student is able contribute concurrently to a single document; enhancing, adding, and editing work.
Tell us about one unconventional way you’re using Google Docs to teach.
I use gamification techniques to motivate students. Rather than assignments, students have quests they can choose from, in a Google Sheet. Once a student selects a quest, they use a Google Form, linked in the spreadsheet, to turn in their quests. The ability to collect quests and have it neatly organized in one place saves me hours and hours of time.
Collecting work this way allows me to give students choices in what they learn and to be more flexible with due dates, and grading and feedback become immensely easier. When having a classroom discussion, it’s important to give every student a chance to participate and have their voice heard. This is nearly impossible with a verbal discussion. Having students respond to discussion prompts in a
spreadsheet
not only allows me to hear from every student, but allows the entire class to hear from every student.
What are the three best tips you can suggest for teachers that are using Google Docs?
First, give feedback via comments to students before they submit their work. I highly recommend learning the keyboard shortcuts for inserting a comment (Control Alt M) and closing a comment (Control Enter) as this significantly speeds up the feedback process.
Second, a kid’s best day is when they can teach you something. Don’t be afraid to try something you do not know, embrace and celebrate help from your students. Challenge them to teach you something new about using Google Docs.
And third, if you use Google Slides or Google Sheets as a collaborative document with all of your students, this gives you only one document that you have to assess. Look for opportunities to do collaborative activities using Sheets and Slides.
You have a big family and a ton of extracurricular activities—do you also use Google Docs to take care of things outside of school?
I use Google Docs for everything. Woe to anyone standing next to me in the grocery line or driving me in a taxi—I will tell you all about Google Docs and how it will change your life. I have a passion for helping find creative solutions to whatever problem someone has—and educator or not, more often than not the solution is a Google Doc. I used to make wedding cakes and created a massive
spreadsheet
that calculates the number of servings, the supplies I need, how much to charge, creates the invoice and more. Really, what can you not do with Google Docs?
Do you have any handy docs to share?
Teachers may be interested in creating rubrics with Google Sheets. This
template
allows you to create a rubric on the second tab and set the percentages for each category. Insert your class roster on the first tab and use the “Create Rubrics” menu to create a copy of the rubric for each student in your class. This makes it easy to assess students using a rubric.
Google Docs in the wild: Google Slides and Rentity
March 16, 2015
From college kids to billion-dollar companies, lots of people are using Google Docs to be productive, creative, and collaborative. On this blog, we'll be sharing some of their stories, starting with Rentity, a website that helps people find and rent apartments.
Rentity
recently used a publicly shared
Slides presentation
to spread the word about their work and collect feedback from investors, potential teammates and clients. Here’s their story, as told through an interview with their founder, Daniel Ahmadizadeh.
We want to know how you use the Google Docs family of products, too, so share your own examples at
+GoogleDocs
or
@googledocs
with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed.
Q: Tell us a little bit about Rentity.
A: Rentity connects people who are moving out with people looking for a new place to live. With Rentity, current tenants make 2.5% of their annual rent back when a new tenant is found for their apartment. We aim to give prospective tenants access to inventory at an earlier point in time, reduce vacancies for landlords, and incentivize the current tenant to be a part of the process.
Q: Why did you decide to share a public Slides presentation?
A: We're looking to build a product that connects people to people. It felt natural to be able to essentially build it in public and allow anyone to help shape our direction to make something people want. And so we created a deck that outlines the problem, solution, business model and team—and shared it publicly, with comments enabled.
Q: How has the presentation been received and impacted your business?
A: The reception has been incredible. People have told us a range of things about what they think about having the deck public. From "bold" and "risky" to "refreshing" and "transparent" and everything in between. It's a huge benefit because the more people know about Rentity and engage with the product, the better. The public deck helped tremendously because people saw the feedback that others were providing and felt more engaged with the vision rather than seeing a non-collaborative deck which would never be able to capture/nurture a sense of community.
The presentation in turn has helped us build core values. Transparency started with Slides. Building community started with Slides. Thousands have seen our presentation to date. We believe that by being open with what we are building, we are better suited to catalyze connections and feedback loops that we otherwise would have never been able to create.
Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager
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