Announcing syncPEOPLE

It's been approximately 5 months now that I have been quietly hinting at the new company I founded. It gives me great pleasure to finally share with everyone who we are, what we're doing, and how we're going to make it happen. So let's get to the explaining!

Our new company is named syncPEOPLE. Our tagline is simple: Connecting People, Passions & Pursuits. But it's much more than some slick marketing slogan, it's a mission that inspires all of our actions.

You might be wondering how we plan to achieve that mission. Well, that gets at what we're focused on. We're developing a new breed of event software, yep events (from trade shows to conferences to associations to clubs and everything in between). Here's a snippet from the new site:

We build and maintain web-based communities for events of all sizes, from the biggest trade show to the smallest club.

Every event provides opportunities for new connections, we simplify and accelerate the process.

Our unique event management system will deliver measurable value and lasting results to event attendees, exhibitors and show management.

We probably comply with every buzzword that's buzzing right now, but that's not what we're concerned with. We want to deliver the best solution possible and we'll use whatever it takes. Sometimes, a fresh outlook is so much more than a new numerical designation.

I've written quite a bit more of the back story after the jump. I hope you'll take the time to see how we ended up where we are and why we're so passionate about it.

Warming Up To Relationships

About two and a half years ago, I started a company called the SparkCard Company. I had developed some interesting solutions for the dating industry, specifically a way to make it easier for people to exchange their info while out and about. I put on a few events that brought people together and we saw some really interesting things happen as a result.

Unfortunately, the idea was a little ahead of its time and my efforts to sell the concept to a variety of different groups didn't pan out as well as I had anticipated. However, the most important thing I learned was how valuable creating relationships could be in this day and age.

I needed a new direction.

Examining Events

As I started to organize our own events (and attending a variety of others), it became clearer than day itself that an ideal use of the system I had designed was to make it possible to reduce the size of those stacks of business cards I was collecting at events and conferences.

Where events were concerned, it wasn't so much a priority to secure the attendee (though it's always been a top priority for our design), but to increase the surface area I had exposed and to make that surface as "sticky" as possible. I've been amazed at how often I've heard complaints that "the event was great, I just wish I had a little more time to meet people".

It took quite a bit of time to engineer this next phase of the system, something on the order of a year, but in October 2004 I was done with it. I first tested the system at BloggerConIII and it was quite useful. I demoed it to many other people and they eager to use it - I just wasn't eager to release it.

Events were certainly the direction I needed to pursue.

Preaching To The Masses

In December of 2004, I met with a VC who was interested in the event community system I had built. We were set to pursue a new business together but the deal got delayed. I used that time to pursue my podcasting interests. Beercasting was born.

I spent six months on the road taking the show to a variety of cities and venues. Each week was filled with more and more research on just what happens when we put a bunch of people together and get them to talk. It didn't hurt that it was a heck of a lot of fun either. In the end, I abstracted out the process and the key components and added them to the list of requirements for the event system I wanted to build.

Sparkcasting was born and we began to assist events in producing their own talk shows - similar to the Beercasting concept. We've done a few events this year and they've been a tremendous success for everyone involved - the attendees, the organizer, and the sponsors.

The power of dialog cannot be dismissed.

A Rebirth

In July of 2005, we were coming close to working out a deal with the VC mentioned earlier. It worked out that we ended up getting royally screwed in the process of educating them on the vision we had and the entire deal fell through - the system had suffered a setback. Things seemed to be spinning out of control.

To add to the mess, my partner in crime had begun a new consulting project (she's since left the company) that raised a new issue with our name. While we were the Spark Card Company, and had been so for some time, we didn't take all the precautions that we should have (and probably neglected most of the research we should have done). It turns out that a much larger company, with serious resources, had filed for a trademark on the word Spark and the description they put together was just too close to what we were doing. We needed a new name.

In some ways, it was an awakening that really needed to happen. The business concept was apparently sound - someone was trying to steal it. The name was good, but in the end, it wasn't meant to be. In these times of desperation, we sometimes find the strength to be remarkable. This was one of those times.

As we searched for a new identity, we went through a variety of variations and themes. It was only by chance, or perhaps destiny, that we ended up in the final direction. Thank goodness for the naming engines at the domain registrars.

By accident, it seems, we found syncpeople.com. But maybe it wasn't an accident at all. In the last 10 years, I've been almost obsessed with the concept of sync. I'd previously launched companies named autoSYNC and emailSYNC. My consulting company is named SYNC 2 Company. It was much more than an accident - it was meant to be.

Things couldn't seem clearer.

A New Kind of Venture

I decided this time to make a serious departure from my previous efforts. In my past life, I was always juggling as many of the roles as possible. I spent the last two years also removing myself from the marketplace as a developer while maintaining my connection to the technology world. During that same period, I started this blog and have been working on strengthening my position in the social media world. In the end, however, I am focused on running this business more than anything. That's unique unto itself.

Aside from my personal shift, I assembled a team in an all new way for me as well. Instead of continuing with Cold Fusion, I fell in love with and decided to build on top of Ruby on Rails. In that process, I met with many as many developers as possible. Ultimately, this blog (Thank You) and e-mail served me best. Duane Johnson, my lead developer, came almost by accident - but it has been one of the happiest possible. Duane's a genius in many ways, development included. He's also helped to surface quite a few others in the process. Lastly, we got several key people from the rails community involved early on in developing several components to the system.

The most fundamental shift, however, is the move for capital. I'm still wholly dedicated to proving the value of syncPEOPLE with good, old-fashioned sales, but I've seen too many of my past projects not flourish because they were undercapitalized. I've invested quite a bit on my own already and will do whatever it takes to continue to move forward.

So that's it. That's our story. This is just the beginning and we're happy to have you here as witnesses.