CoachAccountable Beta is rockin’ and rollin’.

We have officially been in Beta for a few weeks now and are super excited about how things are progressing. We have a great group of Beta users and we’ve just sent out our first questionnaire so we should have a solid range of feedback to begin our next development phase next week. Some things that will be updated include time zones and currencies so the system will be useful worldwide. Also, we will be building out new features on the calendar and working to make CoachAccountable sync with a few other popular systems. We will keep you posted as new features arise.

On a different note, we have been brainstorming ways to add more value for the coaching community at large. We aren’t professional coaches, so we won’t presume to tell you anything about being a coach or how to coach. However, one thing that we know pretty well is web technology, including applications, social networking, and future trends. We thought we could provide some tips and tutorials for coaches on improving their business with technology. Keep checking back here to see what we find. Also, if you have any questions about technology at all (from super basic to advanced or even theoretical) please just ask! If you want to know, I’m sure there are others out there with the same issue. We would love to find the answer. Cheers!

2009 is going to be a whirlwind year full of innovation.

We know we have been promising BETA launch for months now. Unfortunately/Fortunately, some really great jobs came in that have allowed us to stay off the streets this winter. We’ve mostly wrapped those up and, as I type this, my team is feverishly doing final tweaks and touches to the CA system. Can you hear the drum roll off in the distance? Stay tuned.

In the meantime, for those who are new to us, here’s the background story of CoachAccountable:

Playground is a small web development and design company. We have all had training in personal transformation technologies as well and a few of us have been trained as coaches but haven’t pursued it full time. In talking to many of our coach friends, we realized there was a great need in the market for a really good, affordable client relationship and business management system designed specifically for coaches. We interviewed a bunch of coaches to get their feedback on what kind of tools would be useful and we got to work. That was back in March or so.

Since then, we’ve built the system once, scrapped it and re-thought it from the beginning based on additional coach feedback and utilizing new technologies. We’ve rebuilt the system – bigger and better. (It’s taking a little while longer than we had anticipated because we’re building it without funding in-between other design/development jobs that keep the roof over our heads. Once we’ve launched, however, we will be doing this full time.)

As a small group of designers & developers with lots of experience, we are very quick and responsive to system needs. (Seriously, we are. When there aren’t other jobs in the queue.) We know that the system as it stands will undoubtedly lack features that people will want and we’ll need to refine or remove some of existing features. We tried to make the core of the system as versatile and intuitive as we could so that it’s very useful from the word “Go.” But we’re itching to get it out there, hear what our coaches need and sort out the best way to continue crafting a great product. Technology and the coaching industry are changing so fast; we’ll keep evolving the system to reflect that indefinitely. (We love this stuff, really!)

So basically, we are terribly excited, a bit nervous, and very focused. Working into the night, eating shrimp burritos from the corner shop and week-old casseroles. Making lists and checking things off trying to make sure we are crossing all the major “T”s and dotting the important “I”s. Hold tight, friends,  CoachAccountable is almost there.

Closing in on BETA

Alright, folks. No one is as anxious as we are to get this bad puppy up and running. We can’t wait to get our BETA testers plugged in. And it’s coming…very soon.

November was a bit crazy. Much-needed vacations, cross-Atlantic visits from family, and a lot of outside work kept us from launching Beta last month. However, that turned out to be a really good thing. We’ve been getting some great feedback from coaches (thank you! please keep it coming, every bit is super useful.) Looking at these pearls of real-life wisdom, we realized we needed to rethink some of the design and functionality to make it more intuitive and versatile.That led to a major re-think and redesign, which is complete as of today. Woot!

Included in the changes are a more customizable system to that coaches can truly set up their business any way that works for them. Drag-and-drop widgets allow you to choose which things you want to be able to see at a glance, such as to-do lists (for you or your VA) outstanding invoices, your upcoming appointments, etc. A brand new template system lets you to input your intake forms, questionnaires, and worksheets easily into the system and have your clients fill them out on-line, where they can always be accessed in a moment by both of you or emailed as a pdf. There’s also a great Library for uploading and sharing newsletters, audio files, anything you want. We’ve been working on the Billing system and think we’ve found a great intuitive way for coaches & clients to manage their financial agreements and clients can even pay online from within their system. All in all, it’s looking fantastic. We sure hope you’ll agree.

Final development has begun (and knowing John, it’ll go QUICK – particularly if we bring him hot meals occasionally!) With the holidays coming up, we are aiming for a late-January Beta launch. There’s still space for testers, so sign up and tell your coaching friends to do the same. There’s no long-term commitment, you get early access to a fully-functioning system and you’ll get 6 months FREE upgrade once we’ve released to the public. Sweet!

Lee

The CoachAccountable Team

As our calendar nears it’s completion and we look forward to the creation of our streamlined billing feature, we thought we’d take a moment to let you know a little about the CoachAccountable team.

We are a dedicated group of individuals who initially met in the formation of our design, web & development company, Playground Creative. Our skills are broad and our backgrounds diverse, however we quickly realized that we all share a desire to create beautiful, functional tools that are able to add value to individual’s lives and empower communities. Indeed, one of our first (and ongoing) ventures was the concept and creation of LiveFeed, a not-for-profit designed to engage the live entertainment industry and it’s fans to promote hunger awareness and raise food and funds for local hunger relief. We take pride in our work and are happiest when we are fully immersed in the project at hand.

John Larson: Architect and lead developer. Designs and codes systems. He is innovative and very highly experienced. John is seriously dedicated to making the best system available and is committed to continuous improvement as technology evolves and we learn more about our coaches’ needs. He also has several years of coaching training & experience.

Rob Fieldhouse: Marketing Director, Lead designer for system, website and marketing materials. Highly experienced with graphic design for corporate communications, user-friendly interfaces, and marketing. Rob trained in London and has worked across print, web, video and advertising.

Lee Robinson: Director of Operations, Designer, and Copywriter. She has a background in advertising & art direction having trained at Miami Ad School. She also has experience in counseling and sales.

Tom Robinson: Director of Business Development. Tom is the spokesperson and liaison with investors and affiliates. He has years of coaching experience and training.

New Website Design

We’ve spent the last few weeks redeveloping our CoachAccountable website. The aim was to be informative, engaging, and as accurate as possible as we continue development on the system and work on our prelaunch marketing efforts. The other big goal was to engage coaches to collaborate with us about what they want in a system. We can happily spend endless hours dreaming up things that seem incredibly useful, but since we are primarily designers and developers, we know that we’re likely to miss some key features that could make all the difference in the world and include ones that hinder instead of help. We hope that coaches who find the site will take a minute to fill out our questionnaire or become beta testers. User participation is what will make CoachAccountable different from other standard business tools: a fantastic resource and ultimately a community of coaches worldwide. So what do you think? How are we doing so far? What can we do to better serve you?

Coach’s Calendar Now Under Construction

The design and layout work is all in place and it is now time to build the calendar and schedule manager component of CoachAccountable. I’m excited by the challenge. We have it worked out to be an elegant work of cutting edge user interface widgets featuring drag-and-drop, zero-latency loading of key info, and not a page reload to be seen. With homage to the experts who have gone before us (such as the team behind google calendars) we are excited to be creating something of a comparable caliber.

After we get the basics built, we will gather feedback from coaches on specific features they would like to see for their online scheduling system. Looking forward to it!

The CoachAccountable Team Says Hello

Greetings!

We’re very excited to have just established another means by which to communicate with the coaching community, our blog!  We’ll post here news of our development on the CoachAccountable system, information about organizations we’re partnering with, communities we’re impacting, and much more!  Stay tuned!

The Coach Accountable Team