Ot-While we're showing new businesses - here's mine

[Northbound]

We're still finessing somethings on the homepage (i.e. video needs to be above the fold on all screen sizes, link to sign up for the newsletter, linking the social media icons)

We've not completely assembled our Editorial Board, but we're close, just looking for a few more athletic trainers and strength trainers who will author content a few times a month. This is why the blog isn't populated yet.

We support 7 sports and are about to add another 2 and so far coaches love it. We're pushing enhancements pretty quickly so it's hard and expensive to produce new videos that can properly demonstrate the new features. Regardless, the video does a good job communicating what we do and why it's relevant for the audience (I know we need a stronger call to action at the end of the video)

This is just a small part of a much broader high school sports strategy that has a rollout plan of 5 years. Fun part is coaches have been very supportive and when they use it they fall in love with it.

I also like that we get to create relationships with the coaches and service the hell out of schools.

Check it - www.digitalgameday.com the video is under "Take a Tour". I hope to hell that is self-evident.

Before folks ask, there are other competitors in the space, but the market isn't close to saturated and nobody is doing what our 5 year plan aims to accomplish. We're now talking with media and internet companies, plus individual brands about how they can get involved.

 

[Hoophound]

We're still finessing somethings on the homepage (i.e. video needs to be above the fold on all screen sizes, link to sign up for the newsletter, linking the social media icons)

We've not completely assembled our Editorial Board, but we're close, just looking for a few more athletic trainers and strength trainers who will author content a few times a month. This is why the blog isn't populated yet.

We support 7 sports and are about to add another 2 and so far coaches love it. We're pushing enhancements pretty quickly so it's hard and expensive to produce new videos that can properly demonstrate the new features. Regardless, the video does a good job communicating what we do and why it's relevant for the audience (I know we need a stronger call to action at the end of the video)

This is just a small part of a much broader high school sports strategy that has a rollout plan of 5 years. Fun part is coaches have been very supportive and when they use it they fall in love with it.

I also like that we get to create relationships with the coaches and service the hell out of schools.

Check it - www.digitalgameday.com the video is under "Take a Tour". I hope to hell that is self-evident.

Before folks ask, there are other competitors in the space, but the market isn't close to saturated and nobody is doing what our 5 year plan aims to accomplish. We're now talking with media and internet companies, plus individual brands about how they can get involved.

This is really cool. Good luck with it. I can see why coaches would like it. Simple and useful.

 

[Northbound]

Thank you. It's totally self-funded and took us two years to develop. My wife just got sick and tired of listening to me talk about how I wanted to do it for the past six years and she finally said shut up and do it just don't put us in the poorhouse making it happen. So we'll see what happens.

 

[noeynox]

Holy shoot dude. That was impressive presentation. Good luck. I could really see that taking off.

 

[huskymedic]

Very slick... Impressive.

I can almost see a parent using this to promote his/her "star"...

 

[Northbound]

Thanks for the feedback. Positive or negative it's all good because all of it informs the next evolution. I certainly don't have the market cornered on ideas so thanks for tossing one out there Huskymedic.

 

[arnie3]

I'd like to introduce my new business- retirement. Sorry to rub it in.

 

[CL82]

Very nice professional presentation of a solid concept.

Norton blocked the video as not being secure. It was easy to bypass that but you may want to have your website guy do whatever he needs to do, so that message doesn't come up.

 

[Northbound]

Well, hmmm. That's the first time we've gotten that after 1000's of uses. It's hosted on Vimeo. Thanks we'll have to sort it out, pronto.

 

[Northbound]

Very nice professional presentation of a solid concept.

Norton blocked the video as not being secure. It was easy to bypass that but you may want to have your website guy do whatever he needs to do, so that message doesn't come up.

One more thing was it just the video or the entire site? Sorry to ask for specifics but I want to get it fixed so I need some specifics because we've not gotten that before. Thanks.

 

[UCDaveD]

That's pretty damn cool.

 

[ZenConn]

That is awesome. Wonder if you'll develop some Apple/Android apps on it.

Especially with sports videos, perhaps an ability to highlight, circle, draw arrows within the video or on a handheld device would be good as well and separate itself from YouTube.

 

[Northbound]

That is awesome. Wonder if you'll develop some Apple/Android apps on it.

Especially with sports videos, perhaps an ability to highlight, circle, draw arrows within the video or on a handheld device would be good as well and separate itself from YouTube.

Thanks, we've discussed them and started that process, but won't develop them fully in the short term unless we get a big call for them. Ultimately, we'll have to end up there at some point.

Except for playing video, we don't think we have much in common with YouTube (we could be wrong and if we spent what we spent to make another YouTube, then I'm a huge dope, which is entirely possible), maybe the video didn't make that differentiation stand out which would be too bad. Telestration adds to the time it takes to breakdown and analyze film and there is the tendency to take a way way way deep dive where it becomes counter productive. It's one of those nice to have but for sure not necessary. That said it was one of the features that I thought a lot about before deciding to not include it in the first release and it's something that I'm always thinking about as we continues to evolve.

Appreciate the comments.

 

[ZenConn]

No problem. I'm not an expert in analyzing products and such but YouTube does allow edits (not how easy it is)

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=183851

 

[CL82]

One more thing was it just the video or the entire site? Sorry to ask for specifics but I want to get it fixed so I need some specifics because we've not gotten that before. Thanks.

Just the video.

 

[Pudge]

I'd like to introduce my new business- retirement. Sorry to rub it in.

My stateworker siblings think that way too. That seems to me the next few steps to the grave. Good luck with that.

 

[Northbound]

No problem. I'm not an expert in analyzing products and such but YouTube does allow edits (not how easy it is)

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=183851

Hell everybody is an expert in analyzing products, we all do it everyday and that's why we all make certain product and brand choices, you're perspective is just as valid as anybody else. Coaches/players commentary however have a bit more gravitas for us.

YouTube can to that, but they couldn't be much more different that what we do. It's possible that the YouTube thing would work for some folks and if it does, I'd happily point them in that direction. This will only fly if it Digital Gameday works for them better than anything else available and we can service them better than anyone else out there. I know for sure that YouTube isn't coming to a school and doing demos or answering the phone at midnight on a Saturday is someone has a question (or even sitting at someones house at midnight on a Friday night and yes that happened many times in the beta, thankfully we learned from that). We also have some key points of difference that aren't mentioned on the video because there is only so much you can fit in one video, it's long enough as it is.

It's not about just ease, although that's super important....it's the clip details, sending, notifications, ability to send to a variety of folks, etc. etc. Funnily enough the folks that designed the YouTube upload actually developed our upload as well and added enhancements (like the ability to upload directly from a DVD which means we had to provide folks access to a ripper within the site). We wanted them because it's one big bitch to upload huge multi-gig files, process them and them spit them back out in a format that's suitable for editing in a timely manner (it's a combination of the users connection, what we've got happening in the cloud and our compression software all working in tandem). There are a ton of video editing suites out there, but that is only one small part of it. If we were going to just cut up film we'd have never done it because cutting film is easy....commenting, sharing, talking about it and tracking when an individual player watched it is more challenging, because it's all the development of the backend databases and that management. The site is just the dressing.

It may be be that this sucks wind and I pissed away a lot of cash, believe me it's a very real possibility that we've known about from the beginning. If so, we gave it a good run and I learned a ton in the process (assembling a board of directors, technology knowledge, start-up life while working full-time, etc.) and that alone was worth it.

 

[Northbound]

Just the video.

Thanks, I found the issue. I always love it when I hear "we knew that was an issue but we just didn't tell you". I just shake my head and mutter to myself because it's happened so many times.

 

[SJ]

We're still finessing somethings on the homepage (i.e. video needs to be above the fold on all screen sizes, link to sign up for the newsletter, linking the social media icons)

We've not completely assembled our Editorial Board, but we're close, just looking for a few more athletic trainers and strength trainers who will author content a few times a month. This is why the blog isn't populated yet.

We support 7 sports and are about to add another 2 and so far coaches love it. We're pushing enhancements pretty quickly so it's hard and expensive to produce new videos that can properly demonstrate the new features. Regardless, the video does a good job communicating what we do and why it's relevant for the audience (I know we need a stronger call to action at the end of the video)

This is just a small part of a much broader high school sports strategy that has a rollout plan of 5 years. Fun part is coaches have been very supportive and when they use it they fall in love with it.

I also like that we get to create relationships with the coaches and service the hell out of schools.

Check it - www.digitalgameday.com the video is under "Take a Tour". I hope to hell that is self-evident.

Before folks ask, there are other competitors in the space, but the market isn't close to saturated and nobody is doing what our 5 year plan aims to accomplish. We're now talking with media and internet companies, plus individual brands about how they can get involved.

I'm sending this to my son's AAU coach! I am the "filmtaker," and we have plays at practice and just hours of film. I have the steady hand of a surgeon LOL holding that iPad! Nice job. I didn't read all these comments, but an iPhone/iPad or mobile format would be awesome and is hopefully part of your future plan! I recently read it is very expensive, but returns quickly in traffic to the site.

 

[SJ]

That is awesome. Wonder if you'll develop some Apple/Android apps on it.

Especially with sports videos, perhaps an ability to highlight, circle, draw arrows within the video or on a handheld device would be good as well and separate itself from YouTube.

This. I think the ability to highlight and circle on an iPad would be ridiculous (in a good way). Also, an easy interface where "upload video" tap brings you to your saved vids. Maybe it has this, but my impression was you had to connect through a computer to upload but not to view. Since we record from the iPad, it would be seamless. Is there also a way to add coaches to your "circle"? Maybe that is not the greatest idea, but I know my son's coach will sometimes use social media to reach out to other coaches for advice on, for instance "tools for teaching zone offense to 12 year olds"...perhaps there could be a way to view each other's game and practice film and connect for advice? Perhaps that is part of it. I am NOT a coach but I do work in a communications dept. and connectedness/social aspect seems to be driving markets nowadays. Please forgive me if I missed that element. I know our coach would use both ideas if its easy enough. I actually can't wait to share this with him because right now there is very little organization for all of this film we have. Great concept! I wish you much success. I'm glad your wife said shut up and do it!

 

[Northbound]

This. I think the ability to highlight and circle on an iPad would be ridiculous (in a good way). Also, an easy interface where "upload video" tap brings you to your saved vids. Maybe it has this, but my impression was you had to connect through a computer to upload but not to view. Since we record from the iPad, it would be seamless. Is there also a way to add coaches to your "circle"? Maybe that is not the greatest idea, but I know my son's coach will sometimes use social media to reach out to other coaches for advice on, for instance "tools for teaching zone offense to 12 year olds"...perhaps there could be a way to view each other's game and practice film and connect for advice? Perhaps that is part of it. I am NOT a coach but I do work in a communications dept. and connectedness/social aspect seems to be driving markets nowadays. Please forgive me if I missed that element. I know our coach would use both ideas if its easy enough. I actually can't wait to share this with him because right now there is very little organization for all of this film we have. Great concept! I wish you much success. I'm glad your wife said shut up and do it!

Thanks for the thoughts and wishes. I'll tell you each day is a new challenge, I want it to be perfect and I've got to come to terms with the fact that's not a realistic expectation because technology has limitations and technology will fail on occasion (i.e. server bump).

We've thought a lot about telestration, I'm sure it's something we'll add down the road as we evolve.

Video's are all stored and you can access all of them from any device and you can share them with opposing coaches (they get raw film not edited film) or college recruiters. Once a user is logged in they can access all films from the video editor or access clips for all films in the clip library or search for specific clips by play type, scenario, or player (if a coach has labeled film that way), etc.

Coaches (head, asst, etc.) for a team all are included and all have the same permissions, the players haver different permissions. Coaches can edit, comment on, share, etc. Players can simply view and respond to a coaches comments if a coach wants that capability. A coach can add as many coaches or players as they want and we've got no limits on films stored, we'll purge the film after holding it for 2 years as that's what most coaches have told us (they want to see improvement from junior to senior year for their players and their opponents).

The ability to allow players to assemble clips that a coach has shared with them to create downloadable highlight reels will be available by football season (I'm estimating mid-season). Players can then share those clips/reels on social media, etc. We're focused on the HS market, but fortunately someone from my past life has introduced us to the management of AAU nationally so we'll see where that goes.

If you and your guy want a demo, I'll set up a screen share demo with you, it's a 30 minute process, pretty easy and you can both be at your respective homes.

 

[Fishy]

It looks great to me.

I, too, have tried to start a new business venture, but have been stymied by by government red tape.

Apparently, the local zoning board has some preconceived notions about feudalism and now I'm stuck with a yard full of serfs doing nothing.

 

[TopDog18]

I think it looks awesome and a really good idea. I used to scout high school basketball a few years back, and something like this would have been much better than the coach reading my notes.

 

[jibsey]

Impressive. I would think that coaches and players would love this. Good luck.

 

[Northbound]

For those that took the time to check it out, thank you.

For those of you that were kind enough to provide comments and thoughts a double dose of thanks. It's the only way we'll get smarter and better.