First up, I’d like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! This post is about looking back at 2009 and looking forward to 2010; we are very excited about 2010 and what it will bring.
2009 started on a good note. We had just hired our new lead developer, Derek Martin who went to work right away and started moving the code to a new framework; by March he was done and we were able to re-launch the Alpha site under the new framework. The site became faster, more reliable and, most importantly, easier to develop upon. Since then, Derek and the team have released half a dozen new Alpha releases which included many improved and new functions like search, history and moderation. Derek has been doing a great Job and we're looking forward to more coding magic from him in 2010.
2009 also saw us team up with TABIA - which is the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas - and we look forward to working with TABIA and other BIAs in 2010 as well. Our involvement with the Bloor West Village BIA has helped us formulate some strategies as to how we can work more closely with the BIAs moving forward. I can't wait to employ those strategies - so watch out BIAs because we’re going to blow your socks off in 2010!
Also in 2009, we were able to prove a number of our assumptions. We launched our Alpha Ad platform with the help of our partners Shiny Ads and our new advertising model will be tested early this year - and we hope to deploy it across North America by the second quarter.
We spent a lot of time thinking through the Open Marketplace model and the manifesto. Though it detracted from other projects, it helped us build clarity around what wikiDOMO is about and how the model is much bigger than the wikiDOMO.com implementation. We will continue to evolve that model this year by reaching out to the Open Data and Linked Data communities to develop strategies around the Open Marketplace.
We learned a lot of things from our thousands of daily users. Many of them will be integrated into our Beta launch in February. As with everything we have done so far, it will be a quiet launch initially but keep your eyes open around April, when we will start making some noise. It’s been a long time coming - and we still have a lot of work to do - but we are extremely excited about the Beta launch.
Along with the Beta launch we are also working on our Iphone application. It’s something that we've been working on for some time and have been talking to a couple of potential providers and we think we found the right partner with the right idea. In retrospect, I’m glad we did not execute a half-baked Iphone strategy earlier.
Now that we are getting closer to our Beta launch, we plan on being more transparent with the goings on at wikiDOMO. So, watch out for more posts, more info and more opportunities to participate and engage in a number of different levels.
Have a happy and open 2010!
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