Unlike many other standard and similar games with maps and directions to follow, locations in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild aren’t just points and oddball names. They have meaning and history. They remind of the time I found a flaming dragon flying around deserted volcanos, the eerily spooky woods in which I became lost temporarily, and the silent and mysterious circle of statues I found towering above me in the desert. I think about the little guy who taught me how to snowboard on my shield on top of a hill, the whacky kid scientist running an ancient technology lab, and running scared from a half man-half lion creature. More importantly, i remember elements of games past, from my childhood (Old school Nintendo Zelda) and from college (Link to the past on N64), taking me back to another time when i last visited Hyrule.

Hyrule isn’t just the game’s setting. It’s the game. So much of what we do is utterly tied to the world in which it takes place. The action is intrinsic to and designed around the environment, whether we need to scout a location to recover a memory, steer Link’s paraglider through windy allies to reach a plateau, survive the bitter cold and extreme heat of exotic locations, or maneuver though ancient, stony mazes. We’re playing both inside and with the world. There’s never been anything quite like it.

Zelda Breath Of The Wild

More than that, the world’s painting-like splendor gives soul to the story. It’s gorgeous vistas help to make this incarnation of Link and Zelda’s fight against Ganon a memorable exemplar of simple, traditional fantasy yarn-spinning. The world’s beauty is a big part of what makes their struggle worthwhile, what makes it a world worth fighting for. It’s also a world that I don’t want to leave. I keep thinking that I must be close to reaching the point where I’ve seen just about everything, but then I’ll find a new grotto or ruin or hidden cave in a nook of the map that I originally skirted around without realizing, and within it will be yet another treasure chest, block of precious ore, seed-bearing Korok, or shrine.

I’d have thought our experiences would be largely the same, but another thing I’ve learned about Hyrule is that it is an experiment in – perhaps even an ode to – player freedom. Once you’re off the plateau where Link revives, you can go anywhere you like. There are no barriers, either physical or imposed by your abilities. No order in which things must be done. More than that, how you accomplish your objectives is almost always up to you. It’s a marvel of emergent play, with rarely a single right way to do something, both in fights and puzzles. It’s for you to decide which of your abilities, weapons, gear, and elixirs to use and how. Some tasks and challenges becomes easier as Link grows in strength and earns the special powers of the Divine Beasts – giant machines that are themselves intricate puzzles – but with a little gumption and ingenuity you’ll be capable of every task in the game as soon as you soar off the starting plateau.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a perfect game. Now go play. It’s almost unimaginable that you will be disappointed.

Update! Nintendo has finally released details about the upcoming DLC pack, coming out Summer 2017. Here is a breakdown of everything The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – The Master Trials DLC has to offer:

• Trial of the Sword: By accessing this location, players can challenge the new Trial of the Sword (previously known as “Cave of Trials Challenge”), where enemies appear one after another. Link starts without any armor or weapons, and if he defeats all of the enemies in the room he can proceed to the next area. Trial of the Sword will include around 45 total rooms for players to complete. When Link clears all of the trials, the power of the Master Sword will awaken and always be in its glowing powered-up state.
• Hard Mode: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is already considered one of the most thrilling games in The Legend of Zelda series, and fans looking for a challenge are in for a treat with the new Hard Mode. In Hard Mode, the “ranks” of enemies in the game are increased (i.e. Red Bokoblins change to Blue), and players might even encounter higher-ranking enemies they wouldn’t find through normal play. Enemies will also slowly recover health in battle, forcing you to defeat them more quickly. They will also more easily spot Link as he approaches them, making these enemies tougher to sneak up on. In addition, floating planks held aloft by balloons will be scattered around Hyrule. By successfully reaching these planks, players can battle enemies and collect treasure.
• Hero’s Path Mode: Exploring Hyrule is exciting, but with such a large world it’s sometimes hard for players to remember where they’ve been. To help with tracking progress, the new Hero’s Path Mode will document every step players take, and mark their path in green on the map. The route taken will be tracked for the player’s last 200 hours of play time, with an included slider to track footsteps on a timeline. This even works retroactively, so players that have already put many hours into the game will be able to see where they have traveled. This feature will help in identifying the locations they haven’t visited in this vast world, and may help players find those Shrines they haven’t encountered yet.
• Travel Medallion: There will be a new treasure chest somewhere in the game world which contains the Travel Medallion. With the Travel Medallion, players can create a temporary new travel point on the map where they are currently standing. Link can then transport himself to that point at any time. Only one travel point can be registered on the map at a time.
• Korok Mask: By finding the new Korok Mask, players will have a much easier time finding Korok locations in the game. When equipped, the mask will shake, indicating that a Korok is hidden somewhere nearby.
• New Equipment: Eight new pieces of equipment inspired by previous characters and games in the series will be added to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild after downloading the first DLC pack. Once discovered by the player, they will yield equipment themed after fan-favorite games and characters such as Midna, Tingle, Phantom and Majora’s Mask.

360-degree-experience

š The “360 degree customer experience” is all about the careful management of the end-to-end cycle your specific audience takes, which can vary in different industries and markets. This encompasses everything from User Data, Behavior tracking, Social Media activity, and real-time / historical analytics to create a holistic view of your audience. This can also be used to identify gaps in processes, overlaps of audience behavior and ideally highlight areas that could use improvement or expose weaknesses.

So, how do we get started down this path if you work at a fairly large organization? This task seems daunting and could cross over between departments, making the process even tricker. šStart by gathering information within your organization required for planning the 360 degree experience, which derives from sources typically in different business units.

šAs part of this initial “inventory” step, a comprehensive review of tools (and teams) are necessary. A good starting place would be …

1. Surveying your customers
2. Compile data to reflect customer journeys (Email systems, Sales / CRM Systems, Social Systems, Website Analytics, etc.) and identify user interactions
3. Map Lifecycle steps and begin examining user paths

šSurvey every customer - Satisfaction surveys not only help you instrument a better product, they also help you identify at-risk customers before they leave you. Complaints can be great! They will tell us exactly where our product or overall experience is completely failing. Keep your surveys brief (1-2 questions), and make sure emailed users don’t need to go to a separate 3rd party survey site to complete the form.

* Savvy companies drive all poor ratings directly to an assigned sales or support team for email follow-up. Informing them of upcoming product enhancements, offering discounts or simply letting them know that you’re listening is worth doing. Use positive ratings to identify people for VIP programs or for driving social email promotions!

Compiling Your Data – šTake an in-depth look and reflect on your individual customer journeys (Email systems, CRM Systems, Social Systems, Website Analytics, eCommerce platforms, etc.). Delivering on the 360-degree view is not simply about having a unified database of all activity, but rather being able to pull together the pieces of information that are relevant for a specific customer workflow and specific interaction with your product.

šMapping Lifecycle - Once data is aggregated, its critical to identify areas of strength and weakness. The purpose of the entire 360-degree customer experience mapping is to influence and change institutionalized behavior and activity within your organization.

* Data Scientists and Analyst roles have become more critical in many organizations for this exact purpose, being able to identify not only problem areas, but also identify areas of potential missed opportunity and growth. šData is king. Typically, results of such an internal review and audit can expose weaknesses in unexpected areas.

Now, let’s look at few specific use cases where the Customer Journey Maps could make a difference for you…

šUse Case # 1: Overlapping Initiatives (Sales, Editorial, Marketing)

šAfter detailed review was conducted of our separate sales, editorial and marketing distribution lists between departments using aggregated data collection, it was clear there was abundant overlap of audience between our global divisions (which was a surprise to many). This resulted in spamming of user emails without proper sequence to cross division initiatives, as well as missed opportunity for cross-over sales. New product ideas were generated after seeing some of this unique customer overlap.

šUse Case # 2: Daily Social and Email Activity (Editorial, Marketing, Business Development)š

šIn recent research of aggregated real-time and email analytics for customer profiles, it was uncovered that engagement was flat for standard Newsletter and Social Media traffic for many months with little or no growth. šAfter an in depth A/B test was conducted using aggregated data between email and social media platforms, the user experience was detailed for individual users. It was clear that we had higher open rates and better social traffic growth at an unexpected hours during the day and in the evenings, which resulted in drastic process change.

šUse Case # 3: Loss of Ownership (Sales, Editorial, Marketing, Technology)

šAfter creating a specific “customer journey” for eCommerce products, it was clear there were areas of business that lacked ownership, following up with customers that do not complete the transaction funnel. Key touch points were assigned to specific departments to address areas of inconsistencies (and glitches in customer journeys), simply because no internal team has been tasked with ownership of that element. Journey maps can create clarity around alignment of departments or groups with different stages or key touchpoints in the journey that need addressing.

Reference Materials for Customer Journey Mapping

• šSticky Notes & Whiteboards — for quick and dirty journey mapping where your sources of information/research change rapidly
• šSmaply  (https://www.smaply.com/)— creates digital personas, journey maps, stakeholder mapsš
• šTrello / Mural  —  digital sticky notes and organization tool for online brainstorming, synthesis and collaboration
• šMapovate  (https://www.mapovate.com/) — digital journey mapping

Hope this info has been helpful!

This was a concept that was around for many years for hard-core gamers, with games such Blizzard’s World of WarCraft taking an early lead using the model to expand and grow its audience. Lately, this has been a key factor for any game to survive, with more recent success in games like Mojang’s Minecraft which has a constant stream of updates and enhancements to keep users engaged. This has even grown past the standard PC model, and has been a core factor for iOS and mobile adoption with games like SuperCell’s Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and more recently Clash Royale. Now, this has expanded with console gaming, which traditionally has always kept to the in-game content only model with no updates.   

Popular development studio Rockstar Games announced today a new downloadable expansion for the mega-hit Grand Theft Auto V, releasing on October 4 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The open-world game that’s one of the top sellers in the industry’s history. GTA Online online has generated over $500 million in revenue. Updates such as these on console games keep players engaged, which makes people more likely to spend money on in-game upgrades and features. This new update adds Biker “Clubs” to GTA, which allow teams (of up to two to eight players) to ride with each other, creating more of a social experience. Updates of course will also include new vehicles, weapons, clothing and other small details making it a richer experience.

Clearly, this is a direction all new games must have in mind if they want to keep players engaged and coming back for more. For additional information regarding Video Game Health Benefits, check out this read from our partners at Positive Health Benefits.

hash-tag

I’ve been recently engaged on a few SEO related initiatives and came across inquiries regarding the usage of “hash” symbols (formerly known as the “pound” sign) specifically in URLs and how they affect SEO rankings. Are these characters simply ignored by Google search crawlers, or does this make an impact that people should be aware of? How should these kinds of characters be used on the web? This is a brief description of where and how to implement these across your dynamic web applications.

A hash sign (#) in a URL is referred to as a ‘fragment’. In the past and with many legacy applications, URL fragments have been used to automatically set the browser’s scroll position to a predefined location in the web page, like a standard HTML4 ‘anchor’ link (used on many ‘link-farm style websites and old school Geocities sites). Applied in this manner, a URL refers to a document, then the fragment refers to a specific subsection of that document (or web page).

In recent years, however, this definition changed through the use of major Social NEtworking sites, primarily driven by the popularity and adoption of Twitter. Any information that appears after the first hash symbol in a URL is referred to as the fragment identifier – sometimes also called an anchor tag. By default, the fragment identifier is interpreted only by the local web browser and is typically not passed to the remote web server. For example, the following two links would both be considered requests for the same document by the web server:

• www.samplewebsite.com/colors.html#red
• www.samplewebsite.com/colors.html#blue
• www.samplewebsite.com/colors.html#yellow

Since the fragment identifiers (tags) in the example URLs above signify two different locations in the same page, search engines like Google, Bing, etc., will consider them both to refer to a single search result: www.samplewebsite.com/colors.html

For this reason, it’s important not to use fragments as a way to represent what should instead be different pages. In short, if you want Google to crawl two different pages and index them separately, you’re better off simply using two distinct URLs without fragments. However, in modern implementations, fragments are often used in a different way – to add dynamic functionality to websites and web applications. In this approach, a series of related requests are all processed by the same URL. So, in order to return different variations of the content, parameters are passed via URL fragments. Javascript is then used to interpret the fragment and update only portions of the page that need to change, without the need for a full page or browser refresh. This is typical of AJAX-style applications.

So, the question is, how does Google index distinct content within AJAX style pages? After all, we just said that Google will not consider the fragments in the URLs. The answer is Google has provided a syntax for working around this problem. It’s known as the “hash bang” syntax. By putting an exclamation point immediately after the hash sign, you’re telling Google that the fragments are not used for traditional scroll positioning but instead for loading separate content variations that should be crawled. With that approach, our example URLs with fragments could indeed be crawled and seen by Google. Our example URLs might then look like this:

• www.samplewebsite.com/colors.html#!red
• www.samplewebsite.com/colors.html#!blue
• www.samplewebsite.com/colors.html#!yellow

Remember, if you’re not using this special syntax, analytics reporting systems like Google Analytics may not be configured to track clicks on fragment links in your site. To ensure tracking works, either structure your content with distinct URLs or configure your Google Analytics code to also track fragment clicks.

Here are a few useful links regarding Hash Tags in URLs…

• Character Escaping (Stack Overflow) – http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5007352/how-to-escape-hash-character-in-url
• Fragment URLs (HTTP Watch) – https://blog.httpwatch.com/2011/03/01/6-things-you-should-know-about-fragment-urls/

Ad Viewability

Viewability is one of the hottest discussion topics among advertisers, publishers, and sales technology organizations. The emerging and immediate threat of revenue decrease and advertiser defections to high quality ad inventory have set off an industry domino effect in regards to viewability enhancement projects and initiatives within many global brands. While there are key areas to increasing viewability metrics that can be technically difficult and costly to execute, highlighted below are 3 key steps that should be considered to begin turning your viewability metrics around quickly.

1) Understand the current definition of a ‘viewable impression’.

According to the latest convention published by IAB, a viewable ad impression is defined as an ad that is fifty percent in view for more than one second. This definition could change over time, but until it does, understand what it will take to make a user keep that ad in the browser viewing area before scrolling away. For each site and brand, this will be unique, so you need to know your audience and what they want from your website in order to make these decisions.

2) Content is King.

If you do not have information on your page that will attract user eyes and attention, you have NO chance at improving your viewability. It’s important that content around your ad unit is fresh, and that ads appear in relevant locations on your page in conjunction with actual content and/or data. This might mean you need to change your ad placement locations on the webpage working with your sales and advertising teams, and it could also mean it’s time to start looking at newer ad unit sizes widely adopted today.

3) Know your technical options to make educated decisions.

Don’t start changing things until you’ve taken a solid inventory on how things work today, and don’t be quick to start redesigning which could be costly in terms of SEO and development resources. A few simple solutions that could greatly improve viewability without changing design and layout could be 100% technical. Many brands have decided to increase their site’s viewabilty score by using “lazy loading” of ad units, which programmatically sequences ad rendering and placement until after the user scrolls his browser window to within proximity of the ad unit by a few hundred pixels or so. This will limit ad calls in your ad server by not calling for the ad unless its actually viewed.

Viewability measurement is merely a stepping-stone for the digital ad industry, likely to change in years to come. While it’s a hot topic today it is definitely not the only factor to consider for advertisers. Focus on the overall quality of the content and exposure they will receive, and you’ll have some happy clients.

Here are a few great reads on the ad viewability topic below…

• http://www.chicago-d.com/digital-marketing/google-report-ad-viewability-self-serving-not-surprising/
• http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ad-viewability-problem-explained-2015-1
• http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/viewability-noticeability-counts/238334/

Website Relaunch Checklist

Launching a new website can be a stressful time for any Product Manager and Development team, especially if you are dealing with a brand that has an existing web presence and site. I’ve had the luxury over the past decade or so of seeing some ultimate successes and failures, the latter typically a result of inexperience, demanding executives, or overly-complex technical solutions. Based on some recent feedback I provided to industry peers on this topic, I’ve compiled a modern website redesign “checklist” of the most critical tactics to consider when switching content management systems (CMS), launching or rebranding new content sections, or completely overhauling your entire web product.

1. Get to know Google Analytics if you don’t already: Google Analytics is easily the most-used and well-known analytics solutions, with an estimated 50% of the top 15 million websites online using the tool in 2015. I would also recommend using Google Analytics as a secondary metric, even if you are already using another Enterprise level utility such as Omniture or MixPanel. The generic version of Google Analytics is obviously free and offers fantastic benefits over traditional, proprietary code, including: page views and unique sessions, audience and engagement data, behavioral and mobile device info, as well as much more. In addition, you should be setting up “goals” in Google Analytics, which allow you to track link and content downloads, ecommerce transactions and other detailed site conversions (you can also give your set goals a specific dollar value to help determine ROI on marketing, if that makes sense for your business).
2. Know the difference between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools: Just like Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools is also free, and is a fantastic SEO resource to optimize any website, from both a technical and keyword perspective. The two accounts like together and work together to provide insight day-to-day, but need to be individually set up and linked to an active Google account.  Webmaster Tools has features that allow you to check your site’s content index status, see why your pages are (or are not!) being crawled by Google search engine, submit XML sitemaps, generate critical Robots.txt files (which i’ll talk more about below), see broken links and view keywords that driving traffic to your site. Here is a link to setup an account in detail: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=e
3. Create required website configuration files (Robots.txt and XML sitemap): When redesigning a website, it’s key that you create a robots.txt file to tell Google which pages should be crawled and indexed (and thus appear in the search engine referral pages – SERPs). You can obviously use this method to tell you which pages SHOULD NOT be crawled, which is equally important to ensure areas of your site don’t appear when they should not (such as old pages that are ‘going away’ with your new redesign). You want to remove pages from appearing in Google that won’t help your website rank for your strategic keywords. Please note that it can take Google up to a week to find and crawl new pages on your site, and about 1 day to “de-index” a page. It’s critical to note (incase you have no experience in Robots.txt files) that when creating a robots.txt file, be 100% certain that you do not, under any circumstances, add the following line to your Robots.txt file: Disallow: / . This one line of code, while not menacing to the naked eye, will make every one of your website pages uncrawlable. In addition, and equally as important as your Robots.txt file, create a XML sitemap and submit to Google via Google Webmaster Tools. This is a key step  in the process and the purpose is to let Google know which pages you really want people to see.
4. Create your relaunch URL strategy: Every website relaunch comes with a batch of existing URLs, and you need to ensure there is no loss of traffic on day 1 by having a proper and encompassing URL strategy. Too many times I see website relaunches that kill an existing base of search engine traffic (which can take YEARS to recover from if not done properly), simply because there was not enough attention on knowing your URLs.  The usage of Canonical Tags is critical to ensure that if there is any change in structure, you need to tell Google the new URL and what the primary URL will be going forward.  This is especially important for article pages and content driven websites. In addition, you need to collect a list of all your URLs (an inventory is a good idea) and create a 301 Redirect plan. This will ensure that if you have users that bookmarked pages or using an old URL, they will find the new location with ease. Canonical Tags and 301 Redirects are near the top of my list when it comes to a successful relaunch, or a failed relaunch. Don’t give your traffic away!
5. Know your website keyword targets, and build an SEO strategy: Choosing the right keywords to optimize your content for is critical. Use Google’s Keyword Planner if you have never done this before, ensure to include both keywords and phrases. Its also a good idea to get to know your competition in the market and see what keywords they are ranking for (and use them on your website). Consider focus on longer-tailed keywords with less competition at launch, then work in more competitive keywords into your content over time. I’ve found that chunking keywords by theme, and focusing on one or two themes at a time (until you start seeing ranking improvements) is also a great strategy for companies going through a redesign. Every page has a META TITLE and DESCRIPTION, these should be unique on every page of your website. If Google finds duplicate meta titles repeated over and over again on every page (which is a common mistake on website relaunches to ‘save time’ during development), the less likely your site will be to rank in the SERPs. Make sure you can edit these tags on-the-fly, and integrated smartly so that article keywords can be easily manipulated by Web Editors with as little effort as possible. In addition, other SEO items that should be given attention prior to relaunch such as H1, H2 tags, Image ALT Tagging, and consolidation of external file references in CSS and JavaScript.
6. Every single page should have at least 150-200 words of unique content: Content is king. This is an essential rule in the Search Engine Optimization world is to have at least 150-200 words of unique content. This can be difficult on certain sections of your site (such as Marketing and Static sections) but it’s worth it to attempt these goals. Website redesigns give you the perfect opportunity to audit your company’s content inventory, find gaps and start creating the content needed to help your customers fulfill their search intent. Another good method to create content quickly is to setup an associated Blog. This is a great way to ensure your company keeps up on creating new, relevant content. WordPress pulled some pretty incredible stats on Blogs in 2014, capturing almost 20% of the entire web industry (AMAZING!). If your brand doesn’t have a blog, the train has left the station. It could be the fastest and brightest train ever, so start running.

Hopefully you found this website redesign checklist to be helpful! I would also recommend doing enough competitive analysis to know what you’re up against in the market, and it would be especially useful to create an audience / customer persona. Know what your audience needs, and if you don’t know, try engaging with them through simple methods like surveys and polls (Try SurveyMonkey) to see what they want instead of what you think they want. You can also use many other online tools, such as the “Website Launch List”, a SaaS based tool to keep track of items as you proceed forward with your project. http://lite.launchlist.net/

1) Notability (Winner in the ‘Mobile Note Taking’ category)

There are lots of apps for note taking, each that specializes in different features that claim to be awesome. Most of them were rushed to market, with poor usability and UI, and are cumbersome and useless (in my opinion). EverNote, Listy, and a slew of other apps simply are not effective or entirely useful when it comes to taking notes on-the-fly. Notability is an app that is powerful as a note-taking app, but also useful for annotating docs, sketching ideas and even recording sessions. In addition to beautiful layout and design, you can replay notes, mark up documents and pdfs, and sync with every cloud service under the sun. I find the ‘drawing’ aspect of Notability extremely useful, and find new ways to utilize the app during every meeting I attend. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.

2)   Trello (Winner in the ‘Mobile To Do List’ category)

Another category overwhelmed with options, the basic ‘To Do’ list app has plenty of competition with lots of options to consider. In my opinion, there really is no option, as Trello leads the pack in terms of simplicity, UX/UI, and design. This app lets you create simple ‘lists’ of items, and uses an agile methodology overlay allowing users to ‘move’ cards from one stack to the other. This is useful for everything from Project Management, Development Backlog Planning, as well as everyday things like Shopping Lists. In addition to being simple and easy to learn, its 100% free and available via Desktop, Mobile Apps (iOS and Android) or natively on a tablet. I find myself making lists everywhere i go, and even like taking advantage of the meta data and tagging options to sort, filter and archive tasks.

3)   DropBox (Winner in the ‘File Storage and Cloud Access’ category)

What’s not to like about DropBox. I could have easily gone with ‘Box’, or other competitive tools, but DropBox has a simple, intuitive installation process and is widely used in many industries today. I am still baffled when i see organizations using Microsoft SharePoint, or even worse, a company Intranet to store files, which usually requires VPN or some other secure access method. DropBox is great on-the-go to access files on a mobile device, and is great for its access controlled ‘sharing’ functionality, giving users the ability to collaborate in a safe and secure manner. For its most simple use, a great way to store personal photos (not unlike Apple’s Cloud storage) and share with friends and family, without worrying about your hard drive crashing and losing all of your precious moments. Get into the cloud, people!

4)   ProCreate (Winner in the ‘Mobile Art and Image Editing’ category)

While typically not considered a ‘productivity’ application, artists and creative people will agree that there is truly an advantage when you have the ability to be productive through powerful apps, other than using a full-desktop or SaaS version of PhotoShop or Adobe Creative Suite. As an artist, I’ve tried many different apps that claim to be the best for digital artwork, but none seem to rival ProCreate for iOS. This elegant and intuitive application mimics the best of what PhotoShop has to offer, in a small package. While not exactly cheap at $9.99, it is definitely well worth it when you have the ability to do proper image editing, and more importantly, drawing and sketching using layers and the toolset available in Adobe. For an ever better experience, try using the JOT pen, which is a truly great way to get a ‘real’ drawing feel. The rubber ‘nub’ pens really don’t work well, and JOT works great with ProCreate.

5)   HipChat (Winner in the ‘Mobile Communication’ category)

HipChat was recently purchased by Atlassian, the company that makes great software like JIRA, and it’s a perfect combination of everything i love about mobile communication. Similar to tools like FLOWDOCK, HipChat excels through simple integration with other development tools, while combining Video, Emojis, and HashTag# capabilities. I’ve seen firsthand how productivity increases for any team using HipChat, great for groups of all kinds from development, to education, to friendly banter. Oh, and for teams of 6 or less, it’s 100% FREE. For an extra good time, try using my favorite emoji #itsatrap! (admiral akbar).

I hope this list has been helpful to my faithful readers. Don’t waste countless hours and space on your devices downloading and playing with apps that are a waste of time. Instead, try these out … you will not be disappointed.

Let’s start with the basics, company organization. While many people are used to company business units we all know and love (Sales, Marketing, Technology, Content, Business Development, etc.), its pretty common for start-ups to “wing it” when it comes to business structure. It’s a common adjustment, mind you, since there isn’t a large employee pool to own each end of the business, each division with a strong leader and workers getting things done. You should expect to wear ‘different hats’ often, sometimes taking on different responsibilities ad-hoc, as priorities shift pretty quickly. Many people thrive in these types of environments, especially those who are willing to do something new everyday, and often take on roles that they are not qualified for. This often leads to a lot of start-up “in-fighting”, where employees all want to be experts at everything.

While business structure might seem pretty minor, there are lots of other intricacies that come with the start-up lifestyle. Process and security also come into play when working in these types of environments. Typically, every organization has institutionalized patterns of the way employees work together, everything from emails to meetings to files. Forget all of that when entering a start-up, as there are no pre-defined processes, which can be both beneficial as well as impactful in a negative way. While opportunity is there to define process if that is your thing, often people feel lost and bewildered when they don’t have somewhere to turn when problems arise. Remember, while your old company has a specific way to handle issues, you are on your own in a start-up to get the task completed any way you can, even if that means sacrificing security by sending information using any means necessary and using any tools available to complete the job. This could lead to audit failures, and future harm when sloppy start-up ways get exposed to clients (and they always do).

Personnel is another huge factor to consider, as it is pretty common for start-ups to have individuals with ‘big personalities’ and often ego problems. It’s a fairly common scenario to have power mongers in a start-up environment, as HR isn’t in place to set company standards and inform people the proper way to interact with each other. Having proper etiquette is something often overlooked in a workspace, and typically not something anyone cares about in a start-up. While there are advantages in this area too such as casual attire and no two-factor authentication, having to work with people with egos is often the ‘straw that breaks the camel’s back’.

While most of this seems negative, the positive outcome of a start-up can happen and be life changing. Get equity in your start-up, make an impact on process and be a part of something from the ground up. Take things by the reigns and run with it, that’s the best way to succeed for sure. These are all good reasons to try something new, because you never know who will become the next Google or Facebook. Ask yourself … Is it worth the risk?

This is a big step forward for this wearable technology, as there has been a lot of interest from the gaming community (as well as well-funded VCs) with Virtual Reality applicable games at an all time high (RPGs, Racing Games, etc.). The are endless opportunities to take gamers deeper into the worlds they have been seen on TV screens for many years, and dive into the VR experience as never before. Imagine the land of Hyrule in Zelda or the battlefields of Call of Duty with the 3D headset around, it would be quite impressive and realistic. This would be especially ideal for engineering simulators like Minecraft, and bring social gaming into perspective.

This ground-breaking technology and software opens a door to other areas of engineering and programming as well, ranging from Military, Medical (for Health Care Providers and Doctors) to Digital Higher Education, allowing students to be even more emerged in virtual classroom settings. While the immediate focus will likely be on the audience most prepared for these kinds of changes, there is no doubt this will be used for many years to come.     

For more information about the Oculus acquired companies, check out these links below.

• Nimble VR
• 13th Lab

1. Get involved in the process

All great application development and software is a result of a group effort, it’s absolutely critical for all technology leadership to support and nurture the process. As part of a strong, agile team, executive management needs to be involved actively and weigh in on key strategy decisions. In general, groups of people will always demonstrate better “decision making” results than individuals. Development and Product teams should strive to work completely exposed and as transparent as possible to all ends of the business.

In addition, the key role of having leadership team member play “devil’s advocate” is essential to avoid team degradation. Over time, an institutionalized group (typically when a team of devs work together for 12 months or more directly together) gets used to its devil’s advocates and learns to disregard their reasoning. As a result of this, its imperative to change up who wears the devil’s advocate hat, a healthy process of renewal that resides within solid agile best practices.

2. Engage and help nurture your product backlog

It’s equally important for management to know the product backlog, and be able to identify features that are yet to be developed. Involvement at the executive level to weigh in on prioritizing specific features according to business value (anticipated ROI) is important to ensure the team isn’t wasting enormous amounts time and effort in meetings discussing things and not actually doing it. The event you want to avoid is regrouping after two weeks with little accomplished, and bewildered faces from stakeholders as to why nothing has been done, and teams waiting on decisions.

The key is to ensure that leadership is engaged in the process each step of the way, so that product backlog decisions are done quickly and communicated outward to the group. A common pitfall of any agile team is having a stale backlog that no one sees or cares about.

3. Build trust with your team

One of the most critical duties of a great Agile leader is to build trust, on every level possible. Trust is an extremely fragile (and often short) state with an agile team, and often regaining trust from key product owners and stakeholders is much more difficult than building it. On occasion, broken trust can simply never be rebuilt; a leader needs to simply accept this fact and adjust accordingly.

When team members openly (or even worse, secretively) do not trust in each other to succeed, it often leads to disaster. Communication breaks down between the group, siloing people and feedback that is otherwise essential for the success of the product. When these kinds of situations occur, use retrospective time to open the flood gates and ensure that grievances are vetted and that a positive step can be taken to move forward for the benefit of the product, and the organization. Conflict can be a healthy thing sometimes.

For more great info on Agile practices in general, check out Mike Cohn’s blog at MountainGoatSoftware, or AgileBenchBlog.

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