Dave Carolan - In the Wild

Coming and Goings and moments of inspiration while out and about!

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Filling the void!

The website was completed in the middle of last week and outside of the test content I effectively have had to start to populate a complete website from scratch! Creating content in a wide range of resource categories for people coming to the website is no small feat. I plan to have at least three or four articles written per category for launch of the website in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully that content will prove interesting as I have tried to mix factual information and opinion too. The design that Celestin abuse in creating website itself is really, really nice! All of the content seems to flow about the background image. And is not something I have seen in any other website today! Menu systems on the main content page are also Multi-Touch enables allowing scrolling very easily on an iPad also. The website has also been designed to interact with the app itself. It will ingest all of the drills and sessions available to download within the app. You will also be able to preview any and all drills that you would like to see. We have also created a how-iit-works section on the website, with videos to come explaining how to use i-Drills. These will be bite-size chunks of information to support all users when they first begin to use the application.

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I-Drills moves to beta testing stage.

Time to get this thing rolling! This week I will have a complete version of my iPad application in my hands. i-Drills will move from the hands of the developers into the hands of designers! A vigourous period of testing will then follow to see if it can stand up to the rigours of the expected functionality of the application. The Alpha stage with the designers and developers will cease and the beta stage testing by myself will have begun. Within a few days I would have expected to have tested all of the usability of the product and there are many things to think about when having to test something like an iOS application. Many different situations have to be engineered in order to see if the program will run seamlessly and if there are any bugs that might be within the code. Much of this will have been completed by the development team as they went along but users may not interact with the system in the same way as developers would. This week we have been looking at our system for in app purchases and the subscription models that we will be offering customers at launch. I believe the pricing structure we have chosen will be fair for the amount of functionality we will be giving everyone purchases the app. i-Drills will not only allow users to consume predefined content but also create their own content and merge all of these together in one place. This I believe is unique among any of the coaching apps that are currently available. This system that has been created for making training sessions is excellent. Its a clever mixture of swipe and drag-and-drop gesture technology. With really simple menu system to select categories, coaches will be able to create their training sessions next to no-time.

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Website is revealed; yet still secret!

This afternoon I received a real surprise when into my inbox arrived an e-mail from Selesti. I've become used to these late Friday night e-mails from the company telling me about progress but this week was more than I had come to expect as a close to the week. From earlier blogs you will know that we have been working on the web space design and today I got to see the actual webpages in action. This HTML coding has brought the design is life allowing full interaction with the site and therefore a real feel of how each page on the site will interact with all of the other pages. In essence I saw the pictures come to life before my very eyes. Now like many people I've messed around with creating websites and webpages, fumbling with software, apart from the brief tutorial at the start, I no real idea of what I was trying to create. HTML coding was just not for me; keep it simple stupid! And time and investment by using an award winning company to create my website has certainly seemed to pay off. The website will have a great deal of interactivity allowing users to not only interact with us as a company but also with the content we will generate populate the site as a whole. I have chosen a very simple design with only a few header pages from which all information can be accessed and a return to each section header is very simple. By designing it this way but all users to find a very simple interface that will allow them to get information they want as fast as possible and as comprehensively as possible. We will also be including some rich media files; videos and hopefully podcasts to come. We will be launching with some tutorial videos to help users to create sessions and drills they require with a simple learning interface. We will also include some video files providing inspiration for creating advanced as well as basic training drills and sessions. So as the weeks countdown the project is all coming together. The app; the website; the content all reaching a pinnacle ready to unleash on the unsuspecting coaching fraternity.

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Lets hear it for the Developers!! Createanet are King!

Another week in the world of budding App Creator... and it's all coming together. And as Hannibal in the 'A Team' would say " I Love it when a plan comes together"!

My last blog entry I spoke at length about the need for a good, no great design team! Those damned creatives (of which I'm probably one!) and their design ethos! But what of the nuts and bolts guys, the stokers in the engine room creating all the heat and steam to make the engine run at full throttle under the hand of the captain.

Developers... you definitely can't do it without them. And in Createanet (www.createanet.co.uk) I've got me some really good developers.

Thats not to say that the relationship was all sweetness and light at the start; but for understandable reasons. As an 'ideas' guy, a blue-sky thinker if you like, I can see the App, the project in my head. Every button, function, 'call to action' is there working just as the thousands of apps we all interact with everyday just work. We never consider the functionality, the flow, the fitness for purpose or the finer aspects of coding. For us, apps just work. The challenge was to marry up my passion with their knowledge and skills.

These guys know the hidden language of coding. Its probably a language that has touched more people than latin, mandarin or english but we just dont know it. Most people probably dont even know it exists. But i-Drills as an App wouldn't exist without it.

At Createanet, MD Kevin King is the slick operator at the head of the organisation; the company was recommended by Selesti, through a recommendation to them. And it goes to prove the age old adage that the best recommendations are the personal ones. Leave aside the slick advertising campaigns or glossy brochures. Good people rarely have to sell themselves. Kevin made the time and effort to travel to the team hotel in Exeter to have an initial chat about the App idea - The Coaching App as it was referred to in the early days!

On his trusty iPad sat a number of Apps Createanet had, eh, created! Farm and Cottage Holidays had just been released and was downloading for fun; up to 10,000 a day!! Impressive numbers indeed.

Throughout the briefing process and scoping Kevin would be really insightful as to what could and couldn't be done for the dough; and the added value they have created to date is excellent. I wanted the App out in June - but will have a far more polished product in November! Some of the little touches, the nuances of coding that have been brought to bear, means that time and money spent on the project will hopefully produce a product that we can ll be proud of.

Today I again saw the app in action and it gets slicker every time we see it. You want players - BOOM! Different colours of players - BOOM! Discs - BOOM!, Ladders - BOOM! 

My design brief was 'to be as fast as pen and paper or the coaches wont use it'! You'll be able to decide for yourself in the next few weeks as to wether that has been achieved. 

But I already know the answer!

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Things are certainly picking up speed as we draw closer to the launch date in October.

If I’m not looking at template redesigns one minute, its webpage proofs the next, and then the App’s functionality itself. As an ‘ideas man’ it certainly pays to spend time trying to understand the technologies and professions at work, as when time is tight and costs money, you certainly dont want it to be wasted in a Class 101 on WebPage design.

Thats where I believe having good people; no excellent people and professionals on board is not only saving me time but (hopefully) saving me money. There’s no cotton wool surrounding the brief and design; I tell them what I want, they tell me if its a) within scope, 2) possible and 3) adds value to what the project is about. If theres a better way to do it, its explained and we make a decision. After all, its not only the ability I’m paying for but the opinion too.

When the project gets to certain milestones then ‘sign-off’ time arrives and that can be an important period! A little like getting married – its a commitment thing – once you say yes, changing your mind can be pretty expensive and may leave you looking a little foolish; best to have thought things through beforehand. And if everything is in place, you don’t want to disappoint the gathered throng by having stage-fright.

Having known the guys at Selesti for a good period of time (I had actually recommended a few people to them before I took the plunge myself) I knew that the quality of service and work would be high. Their portfolio of clients speaks for itself. They were my first and only choice for this project; not that I hadn’t had a few flirtations regarding other projects – some of which will hopefully bear fruit – but they were still relying on other pieces of the jigsaw to be in place first. Now that I’ve worked with them for a good year or so, they have shown their worth. Relaxed and encouraging when its appropriate, focussed and driven at game time.

Selesti are, to me, Ollie (MD) and Tom (Account Manager). Together they make a great team, they have each other’s back but there’s no comfort zone thats apparent to the client. Tom keeps everything moving, fielding calls, emails, texts etc with aplomb. To me, my app is the only project in the world, and the only one that Selesti should be working on; in reality its just one of a host of projects in the Selesti stable. I know thats the case but it never feels like that to me. Thats because Tom makes it that way. A+ Customer Service. If there’s difficulties with anything else, and only when needed, Ollie appears and together they make the difficulties go away.

So, if you’re in the market for an App or a website, Selesti should be your first port of call. Without their help, I’d be miles away from where I am now.

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I-Drills to the Market

Another good week of development on the application and it was great in mid week to actually get our hands on a working version of the native app. So where do we go from here? Now our thoughts start to switch to the website and also the marketing strategy to get i-Drills as the number one coaching resource in the iTunes store! As you may have read in my earlier blog posts the design of the website will be on an echo of the design of the itself , using many of the similar design features as you will experience when using the application itself. The visual features, the icons, the backdrop will all make you feel like you are interacting with the i-Drills application. The plan currently, is to have a number of different pages focusing visitors attention on the resources that they want to interact with. With features on coaching, tactics, as well as practice drills themselves, in the future I hope that I-Drills becomes a community forum where there is an exchange of information between many many coaches. A transfer market if you will to allow coaches to exchange ideas freely and how to solve any problems that they might find within their clubs or teams. After all coaching is all about education and why shouldn't coaches educate each other on aspects of the game they may not be strong on. In terms of marketing we have a number of different strands that we wish to explore as we look to have a successful launch the application. As well as personal recommendations and professional testimonials I will also be looking to take advantage of, other avenues in order to get the word out there that I-Drills. Initially our media contacts look quite healthy with most of the major media genres covered. Of course the Internet based names that a lot of the focus of attention will be through that medium. I don't mean to sound like I will be ruthlessly exploiting friends and colleagues is right places what it would also appear foolhardy to ignore such strong relationships. And of course the more coverage we get the more the word will spread about the application and its benefits to coaches especially in football as that is the launch product. Later this week I will begin to make contact with many of those friends and start to make them aware of the imminent release of the i-Drills application. Weather in the role as a manager on coach I'm sure they would be enthused to hear of something new and innovative that will affect their work in a positive way. Time will tell on that one I suppose!

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The i-Drills App. Coming soon to iPad. Please visit www.i-Drills.com to register for information or visit www.davecarolan.com for news.

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The home page for i-Drills is coming along nicely, ably created by the guys at @Selesti http://www.selesti.com I'm really looking forward to getting some information on here for you guys to explore and interact with, all on the back of the iPad App i-Drills, coming real soon!

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The Pad will be mightier than the pen!

Last week was certainly an exciting week in the life of iDrills. The work that has been done on the app up to now behind the scenes has been well worth the wait to witness on screen. To see a functioning app in action certainly adds to the excitement of the whole project.

While i-Drills as a concept has been in my head for 15 months getting it into a working, functional app has taken a long, long time. From conceptual drawings to design and development it has taken hours and hours of work from many people. While the pace of design and development can be somewhat frustrating, it would seem that time spent ruminating over little pieces of design will result in a far better user experience.

Born out of watching many coaches spend many hours creating training sessions and drills on pen and paper only for them to be tossed in the bin at the end of the day frustrated me. Good ideas are valuable resources were lost to the landfill every year. And this was often the case due to either a coach's lack of confidence in relation to the computers or because of the lack of resources readily available to coaches.

That is why from the outside I insisted on a user interface that was faster and more accurate than using a pencil or pen. The user experience itself while not exactly unique will in the hands of an experience coach saves them so much time and you give them a much better resource than anything else currently available. The ability to create and consume content will be unique in this niche; most other applications either allow you to only create or only consume the content within.

While being given a video demonstration over Skype from Devon the UI certainly seems very slick and fast. It behaves exactly as I imagined it. And with those last few weeks of design and development to go, I am confident that i-Drills will be a successful and addition to the coach's armoury. Please visit www.i-Drills.com

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New Idea takes shape and gains momentum!

Well after what seems like an age, with nearly a year of planning and discussions, the next big project is almost ready to go.

Having hit a bit of a brick wall in the early months, when the initial idea lost some impetus for a number of reasons, phonecalls exchange a couple of weeks ago, followed up by a couple of meeting in the last 7 days get me to a position of securing funding.

At this stage the more 'traditional' route to funding seems the most obvious - unless there are any 'investors' out there willing to take a punt on this idea! 

We have met with two excellent partners, one for design and one for development - both having successful track records in their spheres of influence and placed alongside what seems a pretty robust concept, I hope to move forward in earnest next week - hopefully exchanging contracts in the VERY near future.

Stay tuned in as I shall post updates as they come. 

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Elite level conditioning for the masses!

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Dave Carolan