Digital Village Official Launch Coming Soon
It has been quite the journey from Indo with Xander and Jim in 2016. An interesting year back in Sydney 2017 that nearly saw the end to what is seeming to become something transformational. Here we are, nearly halfway into 2018 and I’m often amazed at what is taking place.
Life is like riding a horse,
Sit on the old pony and let life pass you by,
or
Dig the spurs in, wrap the reigns,
and face the future with an acceptance of fear.
2017
It was me and Josh and we were doing our best. We did some amazing work and I failed in many areas. The tribulations and problems we faced gave birth to new business adaptations and the core of what Digital Village now promote as customer solutions. Problems such as scope creep, determining deliverables, accurate estimation, cash-flow, the right expertise, fair problem resolution, remote teams and technology communication.
What is Digital Village?
It has been a great challenge of mine to describe Digital Village in such a way that both makes sense, and highlights it’s purpose.
It’s purpose is to improve the lives of people.
Our mission is to have the greatest positive impact in the world as we can. And this is how we measure the success of our Company.?Using Innovation Accounting tactics derived from Eric Ries’ Lean Start Up, we are measuring all our users satisfaction and empowerment levels, and if these metrics are of positive scales, then we believe this will result in positive financial output.?(More information on that here)
What we do on a day to day basis is run digital projects and build products. Our background is from web design and development and now we’re building teams of a variety of digital services including, design, engineering, marketing, analytics, machine learning, and much more.
We are also a Village. Inherently a Digital Village where we as a community come together and stand for things we believe in and do what we can to make a positive impact in the things that we believe are important.
Our lives are more than our work. What we do with our lives, should be our work. This is why we provide people with the opportunity to work on meaningful projects all the while building teams of colleagues and friendships. I’m really excited about the teams aspect of the business. I believe that working in a?team of friends is better than consulting and provides better results.
Teams of friends
We as consultants/freelancers, enjoy the solitude of being independent, but working in a good team is more fun. Imagine a platform that enabled you to invite your friends and other people in your industry, (and also other industries) to work together on projects from a physical location (such as a co-work space or other) and collaborate virtually with other teams on the same project. This way of working is a step forward from individual freelancing and contracting.?
Many platforms ignore the importance of being in contact with people. Doing a whiteboard session to solve a problem. Sketching out an idea on a napkin. Most of communication takes place from body language and energy, of which is easily lost via a video conference call.
So we are saying, build local teams together with people you enjoy working with. And as a team, work with other teams of the same nature everywhere in the world to build awesome?technology solutions.?
The 20day method
20Days is our Project Management method. It is again derived from Lean Startup Principles, and it is of something much more significant than the problem it was created to address.?Originally designed out of frustrations with accurately scoping and delivering projects, it has now become our standard process for running projects and building products. Proving to have great value for our customers and solving many pain points for developers and designers.
Blockchain Application:?When the time comes, we will be applying this process to the blockchain as a vehicle to manage agreements, project deliverables and transactions. There is still much to be learnt of blockchain technology, and we are designing our processes and system architecture architecture that will quickly and easily slip into the blockchain technology landscape when our time comes. We’re moving fast, but we’re not rushing.
The Digital Village Team
Looking back on all the people I have worked with since starting Digital Village in 2015, it makes me laugh and cry. Wow there was some amazing experiences of collaboration, team work, fun and venture. There have also been the not-so-good experiences that can only be learned from. Many unhappy clients. Disappointed people that gave me a crack and I let them down. I can often get down about many things and carry the weight of expectation and reliance heavily on my shoulders. But at the end of the day, failure is only a motivator for improvement.
We are now working with a number of people an parties that are all adding essential ingredients to what is looking to be a very exciting future for Digital Village and its members.
In 2017, Digital Village has been working with Startmesh to advise in Strategy and raise Investment. I’m blessed to be have been partnered with mentor and business partner, Terry Samaras?who brings a wealth of knowledge, experience and wisdom. A team of Suzanne Sweerman on business strategy, Adam Stott on finance, Melanie Reece on commercialisation, Kim Loan on tech and Mike Sutjiadi (individual consultant) on process and architecture. Collectively, we expanded the business model and put a strategy and timeline in place with high growth goals.?In Lean Startup fashion, we opted to further test and validate the business concept and business model before diving in the deep end. based on our experiments, we will be looking to raise a Series A round of funding upward of 1million dollars this September.
I feel so fortunate to be working with such intelligent and patient technology partners. Without them, our platform would not be where it is now and I personally thank?Dmitry Chekalin and Anton Didenko for their hard work, support and partnership. I very much look forward to releasing our beta version of the app here: digitalvillage.app in the near future.
A special mention to Mike Sutjiadi for his amazing grace on the white board and spreadsheet and his ongoing support for the Village. Many other contractors and consultants of whom have had input along the way can’t all be mentioned but a shout out to Josh Thompson for his creativity and energy. James Groeneveld??for his incredible engineering and smart solutions to client problems. Joel Baldwin?for his teamwork and British sense of humour. ?Xander Groeneveld?for being the?ultimate?wierdo and a good friend.
Digital Village is a 3-Sided Marketplace
Digital Village is a 3-sided marketplace that is made up of 3 user types:
- The Client
- The Specialist/Team of specialists
- The Producer
The Client
We work with Startups, SME’s and Corporates also. The size of the teams differ, there may be more than one Producer involved, the scope expands, but the process of trading value for deliverables remains the same. A process that provides transparency for the client and suppliers to be clear on what work has been agreed on and what work has been done. It is the producers role to make sure what is being done, is the right thing for the client. ?The Teams and the Producer are paid on a per-module basis. A module is a contract of agreed deliverables and comes at a fixed price. Modules can be product iterations, development sprints, Statements of Work or anything that you as a client will pay for.
The Specialist
Anyone in the tech industry. Bespoke teams are created to come together and work on a project. The specialist is a person specialising in any digital services such as;
- Digital Design
- Software Engineering
- Web Development
- Digital Marketing
- UX/UI
- Product Development
- Data Science & Analytics
- Blockchain Development
- + more
The Producer
The Producer is a manager and deliverer of product, relationships & solutions. The sounding board that sits between the client and the design, development, engineering, and other departments such as marketing to scope requirements based on business needs, articulate this to technology developers and interpret the outcomes and results or FEEDBACK from the teams and technology. You can learn more about what a Producer is here.
The Future
We are making headway into new territory that presents a new way of working.
- We are improving conventional corporate structures with our organisational change services.
- We are helping traditional design agency models adapt and explore different ways of operating. Such as experimenting? becoming hybrid. contracting their teams as virtual collections of local and virtual people operating as cross functional teams on a business outcomes, fixed price engagement.
- We are bridging the gap between formal education and work.
- We are trying new ways of measuring success and re-evaluating what success is.
- We are building a new distributed form of self-employment that does not rely on large enterprise for economic sustainability.
- We are creating easier methods for dealing with the transaction of value for service delivery.
- We are empowering people and organisations having a positive impact in the world.
Contact Me
The Tech Revolution is an exciting time for everyone. The future is only limited by our imagination. So get in touch with me for any of the following:
- You are wanting to be part of the Village.
- You have a project or an idea.
- You are interested in investing.