The Fiducial Mark

I had the opportunity to check out the new update from UMapper today, which adds the ability to layer real-time tweets over your maps.  While there are a lot of real-time tweet-mapping applications out there, the interesting thing about UMapper’s implementation is that you can create a map with a specific search term built into the map metadata.

See below for an example: this map focuses on the Washington DC area, showing tweets with the word “Toyota” in them.  In the map below, you can also pan and zoom – which will show the posts from any area of interest.

UMapper has come along quite away since the last time I looked at it, which was around a year ago.  The map above uses OpenStreetMap as a base layer, and there are quite a few improvements: different base data providers, several templates, as well as a flexible user permissions system that allows for collaborative mapping.  While I didn’t include anything fancy in the map above, it is also possible to mash in other data sources (e.g. KML, GeoRSS, GPX).  This allows you to easily design and share maps.

The ability to embed maps, such as the one above, is also a nice capability.  For example, it would be great for event monitoring – where people all over the world may be using a Twitter hashtag to talk about the event, but you are only interested in tweets from the specific event location.  While geotagged tweets have been possible to view in Google Maps for awhile now, I think the UMapper approach presents an attractive alternative for homing in on specific topics of interest.

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune on going on my first customer tour in quite a while.  I’ve done a lot of these over the years, but it is a refreshing eye-opener to meet customers for the first time in a new role.  While phone calls and email discussions are valuable, there’s no substitute for learning about how customers are interacting with your product.  I want to touch on a few key areas that live visits have helped me with, namely context, feedback, and insights.

A useful component of an in-person visit is an understanding of context.  For example, during the recent trip I was able to visit major corporations along with small and medium-sized businesses.  The needs between organizations of these sizes can vary greatly, and on-site visits can help understand how barriers to success can differ between organizations of varying size.  For example, a large enterprise deployment may require a comprehensive plan for user adoption, initial training, and continuing refreshing (e.g. new features or workshops to get new employees up to speed quickly).  There may also be several groups within an organization that have different needs, and may need to use the system in different ways.  This can differ from a smaller organizations, where the number of use cases may not be as broad and the business needs for the software can be fulfilled by small number of power users.

Feedback and insights are also valuable reasons for customer visits.  Here are a few considerations:

• How are customers using the software (actually watch)?  There’s no replacement for seeing how people interact with software first-hand, as it may not be in ways you would expect.
• Points of pain: are there any “but if it only did this….” moments?
• Learn about the role your software plays at a customer site: how does it add value to their business?  What problems does it solve for them?  What are the usage patterns (e.g. casual usage, project based, constant part of a key workflow, etc).
• Ideas generation: great ideas can come from listening and brainstorming with customers.
• Communications: how is the relationship between the customer and your organization.  Are they getting the level of service they desire?  Are they getting timely updates about new features?  Visits are an opportunity to learn how customers want to interact with your organization.

While events such as trade shows, workshops, and seminars are also great places to interact with customers, going on-site and understanding the full experience through a customer’s eyes can provide a great deal of value.  There’s also another great reason for customer tours: relationships.  Much like we (product management) appreciate feedback, customers tend to appreciate all the software tips, ideas, and insights into the software that you can provide them.  And when you’re not there to sell anything to them, the trust factor can be high.

After reading about Autodesk’s Project Butterfly, I took some time to give it a whirl.  Project Butterfly is an on-demand system designed for users that want to experience AutoCAD through a web browser.  Being a technology preview with limited functionality at present, it isn’t a product available for sale – but you can try it out for free and see how the experience differs from the usual desktop (on-premise) experience.

I’m not a heavy CAD user, but there are several reasons why I think Project Butterfly is compelling.

1) The fact that it is an on demand solution:

• No installation required.  A secondary benefit is that updates are pushed out rather than downloaded and installed.
• Platform independence: enables accessibility on desktops, laptops (netbooks!), and a number of operating systems.
• Project Butterfly utilizes Amazon Web Services.  This enables online data storage, but also allows users to download models to local computers.

2) SaaS solutions are nothing new, but I’m not aware of a precedence of a solidly entrenched geo-related desktop application being offered as an on-demand service in addition to the traditional desktop ownership model.  I wouldn’t bet on the decline of AutoCAD as a desktop solution anytime soon, but Project Butterfly provides and attractive glimpse of future possibilities in terms of CAD and geospatial data production and editing.  It will be interesting to see if and when Product Butterfly can graduate into a commercial product!

3) Online data hosting:

Data Download Capability Via Amazon Web Services

Files are stored using the Amazon Simple Storage Service.  It is possible to upload your own data (e.g. I was easily able to add a JPG image as a backdrop), or download data in a number of formats.  These include DWG, PNG, JPG or Zip (with Xrefs).

4) Data production and editing tools: I played around with the geospatial sample data in Project Butterfly.  While the current functionality is limited (it is a tech preview after all), the available features are presented in an nice user interface that is easy to navigate.  Basic drawing and editing tools are available, as well as modes such as snapping and ortho.  It is also possible to upload (import) local data.

Editing in Project Butterfly

5) Collaboration: I didn’t actually try it out, but there is an option to invite others to edit and also set permissions for invitees.  These include the ability to edit and download the data – great features for showing the data to someone without actually allowing them to edit or download the data.

It’s great to see a major vendor moving in this direction.  From a product perspective, an application like this should be able to dramatically reduce the typical software release cycle (e.g. 6 months or more for a heavy desktop application), and create greater efficiencies in terms of product rollouts, technical support, removing the need to ship traditional media discs, and more…