Charting the Course

We started developing Idea Flight a little more than four months ago with a small team of talent, almost all of whom I have admired in my years at Conde Nast and with whom I always wanted to collaborate. The fact that we were able to ship Idea Flight in such a short period of time is truly the accomplishment of this amazing group of people (who don’t get told nearly enough). What’s killer about our team dynamic is that we all represent very different but complementary disciplines and although we can’t always agree, we respect each other and the expertise we all bring. This keeps meetings lively, productive and educational (READ: inspiring and entertaining).

What crystallized for us in the development process was that Idea Flight solved a problem we were all starting to experience. iPads, although barely a year old by this point, had already replaced notepads for some of us, laptops for others, and for the remainder…well, we just liked presenting our work on iPads. We figured if this diverse group of digital media professionals had a use for what would become Idea Flight, others might too.  Let the requirements gathering begin!

Something else happened while we were heads down developing that you may have heard about–Apple announced the iPad 2. Following that announcement, Allthingsdigital.com reported: “Just one year into the iPad era and there are already lots of general productivity and creativity apps on the market, and companies are rushing to find ways to incorporate line-of-business tasks into a device that is cheaper and more easily connected than the typical laptop…And Apple is actively touting the business abilities of the device, something it has done only off-and-on with the Mac over the years.” Then, although always a category, we noticed Apple starting to promote business apps more prominently.  Not to mention, the January, Notes from the Apple Earnings Call cited: “Strong enterprise demand for the iPad. More than 80% of Fortune 100 already deploying or testing it.” Read Allthingsdigital.com coverage of the call back in January.

Shortly thereafter, Forrester released results of a study of 3,000 decision makers at Fortune 500 companies and “found that 30 per cent of North American companies are already equipping some employees with tablet computers and three quarters of them are working on supporting employee use of tablets instead of laptops.”

Supporting this, we got wind via ZDNet of major organizations issuing iPads to their employees at the enterprise level… Folks like Xerox, Estee Lauder, Disney, Prudential Financial and Rite Aid to name just a few (maybe you’ve heard of ‘em)?

Suffice it to say we thought we might be onto something interesting.

So here’s what Idea Flight 1.0 is meant to do philosophically. It’s meant to change the way you manage and deliver content for in-person meetings while building your professional network. As more people rely on devices for creation, communication and connecting, this app triangulates all three. It’s meant to do what it does well, be easy to use, and have a low barrier to entry so you can start using it as soon as you download it from the App Store, whether you’re a Pilot or a Passenger. Don’t know what I mean? Check out our launch post from yesterday.

If I haven’t yet convinced you to try Idea Flight, hopefully it’s not because I lack persuasive moxie, but rather you either don’t have an iPad or you don’t read English. If it’s the former, I’m sorry… But sign up for our email list and we can alert you when we have news about new developments.  If it’s the latter–not that you can read this either, but it’s an opening to tout this very cool thing we did—Idea Flight is available in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, and German. If you download the free app you can see a free presentation that shows you how to use it so check it out  … No harm done, and then tell us what you thought.

If it’s neither of these, I’d like to know why not…seriously, what would make you download it?