I am a nut for contingency plans…i’m probably a little more paranoid then many other people.

So today is the day we launch our first private beta of WizeHive to folks outside our inner circle and in my opinion a key component of our launch and getting people the first right impression is the 4 minute video we have on the home page, which is stored on Vimeo.

I don’t know Vimeo that well but have been happy with it so far.    About 15 minutes after launch I get an email saying..looks good but I can’t see the video..might be i’m on a MAC.   So I think…that’s odd.   I log in – no video.   Go to Vimeo..site is essentially down.

Amazing.  First time I’ve presonally seen the site down in weeks and it coincides to the hour with the private email invites.    And…I have no contingency plan for it.  Never even occured to me.

So..we scramble.   Within 30 minutes we change the home page to have a link under the video that says “Alternate site” an we upload it to YouTube.   The quality isn’t as good which is why we have it as an alternate but at least we have a backup now.    So next week i’m going to find a good quality backup and see if there is a way to program the video link to sense if there is a problem where it can switch over to the other site without user intervention.

The good news is as a young nimble company we came up w/ a solution in 30 minutes.    Nevertheless, I couldn’t believe the timing!    All seems to be good now…fingers crossed.

Well, if you know who wrote that song maybe you’re as old as I am.   But it is really the way I feel about launching WizeHive.

WizeHive represents a solution to a problem I kept running into.   A few years ago after selling a business, I decided not to take a full time job but instead to invest and create new businesses and products.   Instead of one full time job I ended up creating 4 or 5 jobs that each take up about half of my time, meaning I am working almost around the clock (and loving most of it).

But, I was having trouble staying organized.  I could use some programs to manage my own todo lists but not manage or view what my business partners or employees were doing.  I could use some other products to manage or organize todo lists for multiple people but I felt they were too complicated for most people I would want to share them with.   

In addition, emails were flying all over the place with lots of good ideas about different areas of different projects or customers and I wanted to find a way to collect and share this information (and files).  I wanted a way to be able to take a top down look at all of the activities in my life, yet dig into details when I wanted to.

Enter WizeHive.  

It’s taken us longer than I expected to get here but I like what we have.  I use it every day, continuously, as do many of the people I work with.   In one business we use it as a CRM after giving up on Salesforce.com, ACT! and others.   In a few others, including internally at WizeHive, we use it for basic information sharing and task management.  It’s been in use 3 or 4 months for me and some of my coworkers and I couldn’t work without it now.   Hopefully after you give it a try you will feel the same way.

We want feedback!   We built WizeHive in a way which we think will naturally work for people but if you have a better idea please let us know.   We also have a ton of ideas for future versions but want to take this where you want us to go.

We appreciate you taking the time to check us out and hope you enjoy using WizeHive as much as we do.