It took 10 years but we’re finally outgrowing our Flintstones-style approach to conf room reservations. We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
On my first pass it’s by far the best balance of simplicity & robust key features, including tablet door-side schedules/reservations. I think we’re going to pilot it internally but I was curious if anyone else had hands on experience with this tool in particular?
-Alex
P.s. as I’m looking at a lot of the tools being marketed to coworking spaces all I can think is BOY these are overengineered kitchen sink messes. I don’t mind paying for a quality tool, but if I have to spend an hour configuring things before I can make my first reservation…yikes!
There’s still so much room in this industry for simple, opinionated tools.
···
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
I also prefer picking the best tool for the job rather than putting all our eggs in one super complicated basket.
We currently use http://youcanbook.me. It sticks bookings into Google Calendars. We can then use other Google Calendar integrations to keep members informed.
It took 10 years but we’re finally outgrowing our Flintstones-style approach to conf room reservations. We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
On my first pass it’s by far the best balance of simplicity & robust key features, including tablet door-side schedules/reservations. I think we’re going to pilot it internally but I was curious if anyone else had hands on experience with this tool in particular?
-Alex
P.s. as I’m looking at a lot of the tools being marketed to coworking spaces all I can think is BOY these are overengineered kitchen sink messes. I don’t mind paying for a quality tool, but if I have to spend an hour configuring things before I can make my first reservation…yikes!
There’s still so much room in this industry for simple, opinionated tools.
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Jonathan Markwell [email protected] wrote:
I also prefer picking the best tool for the job rather than putting all our eggs in one super complicated basket.
We currently use http://youcanbook.me. It sticks bookings into Google Calendars. We can then use other Google Calendar integrations to keep members informed.
It took 10 years but we’re finally outgrowing our Flintstones-style approach to conf room reservations. We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
On my first pass it’s by far the best balance of simplicity & robust key features, including tablet door-side schedules/reservations. I think we’re going to pilot it internally but I was curious if anyone else had hands on experience with this tool in particular?
-Alex
P.s. as I’m looking at a lot of the tools being marketed to coworking spaces all I can think is BOY these are overengineered kitchen sink messes. I don’t mind paying for a quality tool, but if I have to spend an hour configuring things before I can make my first reservation…yikes!
There’s still so much room in this industry for simple, opinionated tools.
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
We have not used RoomZilla as we rather like our Flintstone system for reasons you’ve heard me go on and on about. That said, I’m interested to see how your trial of roomzilla goes as I’m always looking for solutions that are simple and human focused. Too many things that get “fixed” by technology are worse off then if they were left alone in the first place.
I hear you saying some variation of that in your question here. If you are interested, it may be useful collaboration to work on Nadine together. That’s the platform we’ve been working on quietly at home for years now. Yes, my first paragraph was talking about how I’m skeptical of technology and my second paragraph is talking about the platform we’ve built. It’s not a contradiction if you understand where we are coming from and what we’ve built.
We’ve open sourced Nadine from the very beginning so you can pick it up and run with it if you like, but it fails your test of being super easy to setup. I can help with that as I’m looking to finding people who are interested in helping me build it in to a more complete system. If you, or anyone else, is interested, please let me know.
On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 11:54 AM, Alex Hillman [email protected] wrote:
It took 10 years but we’re finally outgrowing our Flintstones-style approach to conf room reservations. We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
On my first pass it’s by far the best balance of simplicity & robust key features, including tablet door-side schedules/reservations. I think we’re going to pilot it internally but I was curious if anyone else had hands on experience with this tool in particular?
-Alex
P.s. as I’m looking at a lot of the tools being marketed to coworking spaces all I can think is BOY these are overengineered kitchen sink messes. I don’t mind paying for a quality tool, but if I have to spend an hour configuring things before I can make my first reservation…yikes!
There’s still so much room in this industry for simple, opinionated tools.
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Jonathan Markwell [email protected] wrote:
I also prefer picking the best tool for the job rather than putting all our eggs in one super complicated basket.
We currently use http://youcanbook.me. It sticks bookings into Google Calendars. We can then use other Google Calendar integrations to keep members informed.
It took 10 years but we’re finally outgrowing our Flintstones-style approach to conf room reservations. We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
On my first pass it’s by far the best balance of simplicity & robust key features, including tablet door-side schedules/reservations. I think we’re going to pilot it internally but I was curious if anyone else had hands on experience with this tool in particular?
-Alex
P.s. as I’m looking at a lot of the tools being marketed to coworking spaces all I can think is BOY these are overengineered kitchen sink messes. I don’t mind paying for a quality tool, but if I have to spend an hour configuring things before I can make my first reservation…yikes!
There’s still so much room in this industry for simple, opinionated tools.
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
I know you want insight into roomzilla and I have none but you said something really interesting there. You're obviously employing some system other than economics to ensure room availability. If you've ever blogged or podcasted your philosophy on that, could you share a link? I'm intrigued!
We have used Roomzilla at Greentown Labs for the past 3 years. They are a startup born out of another incubator space in Cambridge, MA (the CIC)!
Functionality is great, we have never had an issue. It books conference rooms, phone booths, etc. online and at the room; and provides information on amenities in each. As a product, I have no complaints. The only downside I have experienced is the cost. It is $20/room/month…we can become pretty steep fast. Currently we have 6 Roomzilla enables conference rooms which puts us back $120/month just for booking.
Happy to answer any more specific questions or let anyone take a look at our setup!
Liz
···
On Friday, May 20, 2016 at 2:55:12 PM UTC-4, Alex Hillman wrote:
It took 10 years but we’re finally outgrowing our Flintstones-style approach to conf room reservations. We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
On my first pass it’s by far the best balance of simplicity & robust key features, including tablet door-side schedules/reservations. I think we’re going to pilot it internally but I was curious if anyone else had hands on experience with this tool in particular?
-Alex
P.s. as I’m looking at a lot of the tools being marketed to coworking spaces all I can think is BOY these are overengineered kitchen sink messes. I don’t mind paying for a quality tool, but if I have to spend an hour configuring things before I can make my first reservation…yikes!
There’s still so much room in this industry for simple, opinionated tools.
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
Hi Alex, Haven’t used RoomZilla yet, looking forward to hearing your thoughts. We use Get a Room at BizHaus and like it so far. https://getaroomapp.com
···
On Friday, May 20, 2016 at 11:55:12 AM UTC-7, Alex Hillman wrote:
It took 10 years but we’re finally outgrowing our Flintstones-style approach to conf room reservations. We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
On my first pass it’s by far the best balance of simplicity & robust key features, including tablet door-side schedules/reservations. I think we’re going to pilot it internally but I was curious if anyone else had hands on experience with this tool in particular?
-Alex
P.s. as I’m looking at a lot of the tools being marketed to coworking spaces all I can think is BOY these are overengineered kitchen sink messes. I don’t mind paying for a quality tool, but if I have to spend an hour configuring things before I can make my first reservation…yikes!
There’s still so much room in this industry for simple, opinionated tools.
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
I’ve been looking into a lot of software solutions/platforms for a new space we are opening in Westchester County, NY and really like Eventboard (eventboard.io) - it’s not too expensive and offers a pretty straightforward interface that also looks good. We are planning on integrating it with Google Calendar and tying it into liquidspace, sharedesk etc., I signed up for a demo and was able to talk through the setup with a rep on the phone - took all of 5 minutes.
That being said, I haven’t looked into RoomZilla - let me know if you choose to go with them and why!
We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.
We’re still looking for ways to keep the process personal and we have no plans to start charging for our meeting rooms, but we want an easy way for someone to see if a room is available at some point in the future and mark it for themselves.