This month was full of work on what regards the website. The migration from wordpress to joomla is openning up new possibilities for Letsevo as a collaborative platform.

After the implementation of a Forum system, I added some social networking functionality to enable inter communication between collaborators and most importantly, have collaborator profile pages. Lots of improvements are still needed and not to mention the amount of bugs… but it is a step forward into creating a collaborative community around product innovation.

Website Ideas currently on the pipeline:

-The ability to have user profiles for sponsors and manufactures (still not really defined) but anyway, a system to make it easier for sponsors to interact with possible users they want to sponsor.

-A file publishing system, to enable each project to have it’s own database of Drawings, 3D files, Suppliers, Components, Templates etc to be easily documented, shared and commented.

-A front page layout that refreshes automatically when ever something is added to any of the projects (like digg.com)

In parallel to that, our Logo got a lift. The eurostile font gave space to custom made L, E, T, S, V, O that now “talk” more to the 4 arrows of the logo.

And there is one more thing, and it regards the title of this post, it’s Letsevo mantra for at least the rest of the year: Small Steps, Big Dreams. For me, It represents much of the way product development needs to be today: A series of small steps towards bigger dreams, that hopefully benefit not only the people involved in the projects and the companies sponsoring it, but the innovation and creative community as a whole. The “steps” part of the mantra, is every project blog post, every guest comment, every drawing uploaded, it’s the interactions we are having here. The “Dreams” part of the mantra, is on every collaborator’s mind, it’s what people will make with these interactions. I started Letsevo with the premise to help my projects get more exposure but I have understood now, that exposure is only part of the equation to put an idea in the market, it’s the interaction between people where knowledge is created and where a lot of  satisfaction resides. With this thought I can see Letsevo evolving from being an Open Design Brand into an aspiring Design Incubator/Platform that facilitates the development of aspiring innovators with “Dreams” just like mine. Who knows, I will let future interactions guide me on this…=)

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I have been twittering on last months about the research I was doing in order to improve the Letsevo Innovation Platform. The first implementation is out today, the Letsevo Forums. Built using the open source CMS software Joomla, the forums are made to support the conversation around our projects. I would be happy to see it hosting some interesting talks on the ideas we share.

There are some bugs in this new website still, but I am doing my best to learn Joomla fast so the site can be fixed and improved with time.

Follow us at: http://www.twitter.com/letsevo

Communicating what is the current state of a open project and what are the next steps to be taken has been done until now, purely by the exchange of emails between the collaborators of the platform. To an extend this works fine, but something was still missing: A simple way to easily communicate to anyone who visit the project’s page, which phase the project is currently on, and which are the missing links in order to move the project to the next step.

Now each Letsevo project’s page received a “Project Status” page, featuring information about the current state of development. The Idea is that people can leave comments on the “project Status Page” so that everyone can be part of the conversation.

A Status Scale was created by myself to visually communicate the Stage of development. This Project Status Scale uses the 5 phase design process* vocabulary coined by the famous Design Firm Ideo, described by the author Jeremy Myerson in the Book Ideo:Master of Innovations.

Ideo’s 5 step Design Methodology is:

1. Understand
2. Observe
3. Visualize
4. Evaluate and Refine
5. Implement

During the progress of this platform, we will optimize this “Project Status Scale” modifying it’s 5 phases to the needs of our projects, but for now Ideo’s 5 phase design methodology seems like a good starting point.

To see directly which is the status of each currently open project you can now refer to their respectively Status page:

e.Moped Project Status
ECOSK8 Project Status

*The 5 Phase Design Process of Ideo is also described in this Website

Today is the offcial start of the e.Moped Design Project. After having talked to some friends about Letsevo’s plans to start a open source project of an electric scooter, the wishes have finally come to reality.

I spent a a couple of hours programming and setting up the space for this project here at Letsevo.

Colaborators are wanted, we need engineers, electrical mechanics, motor developers, test riders, designers….any one wanting to evolve this idea further.

I know this a pretty daring task, to build such a vehicle from scratch. But for me, the wish of some day, be cruising around the neighborhoods on what we built, is much greater than the fear of failling. Not to mention having in the end, collaborated for more clean ways of transporting ourselfs around our planet!

So Let the journey begin!

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me if I could tell him about design events that are happening here in Europe since he is planning to spend some months traveling around the old continent.

I sent him a couple of events that I know happen every year and pointed out to him Upcoming.org, one of those clever web 2.0 tools that does the task of organizing shared events from users around the globe. Think Flickr for your calendar, did some thing sparkle in your mind? Well, it sure sparkled in my mind that craves for exploring the potentials of such tools.

Why am I talking about a calendar tool here in letsevo? What does that have to do with product innovation?

Before starting to explain or respond to these two questions I would like you to please take a look at the Sidebar of the Letsevo website, the right sidebar. YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!

I am freaking glad to anounce the brand new Letsevo Collaboration Calendar! Powered by Upcoming.org and some mad artists/designers/scientists/cool-kids/inventors/whatever contributors that want to join the team of letsevo in the task of tagging every event surrounding technology, innovation, design.

Why am I doing this?
Because I want to share the events I know with the developing community and in this away help spreading the news about places to go when you want to exchange ideas, see new things and learn whats going on.
Why collaborativately?
Because I am positive that there are always people that know more then us, and when we do this together we have more power to achieve greater changes.
Why should you participate?
Because its fun to change the world, action by action. But in order to answer this question more accurately I will tell you a small story that happened to me:

I got to know that this year’s Volvo Sportsdesign award theme was EcoDesign through a post in the Design Blog “Design.com.br”, writen by Fernando Galdino. Without Fernando writing it about it in his blog, Letsevo would probably miss the deadline of the Award. We, from theEcosk8 project, sent immediately a prototype of our ecological Skateboard to the Award. And as I wrote here before, we were nominated for the Board equipment category!! If it wasn’t for Fernando Galdino and his love for sharing his knowledge, maybe it would have been too late for us to participate.

I hope Letsevo Calendar helps someone just like Fernando’s post helped the ecosk8 project!

Wanna participate? Logon to the Letsevo Calendar group inside of Upcoming.org and start to change the things around here. Lets evo!!!