Archive for January, 2009

2009 is going to be a whirlwind year full of innovation.

We know we have been promising BETA launch for months now. Unfortunately/Fortunately, some really great jobs came in that have allowed us to stay off the streets this winter. We’ve mostly wrapped those up and, as I type this, my team is feverishly doing final tweaks and touches to the CA system. Can you hear the drum roll off in the distance? Stay tuned.

In the meantime, for those who are new to us, here’s the background story of CoachAccountable:

Playground is a small web development and design company. We have all had training in personal transformation technologies as well and a few of us have been trained as coaches but haven’t pursued it full time. In talking to many of our coach friends, we realized there was a great need in the market for a really good, affordable client relationship and business management system designed specifically for coaches. We interviewed a bunch of coaches to get their feedback on what kind of tools would be useful and we got to work. That was back in March or so.

Since then, we’ve built the system once, scrapped it and re-thought it from the beginning based on additional coach feedback and utilizing new technologies. We’ve rebuilt the system – bigger and better. (It’s taking a little while longer than we had anticipated because we’re building it without funding in-between other design/development jobs that keep the roof over our heads. Once we’ve launched, however, we will be doing this full time.)

As a small group of designers & developers with lots of experience, we are very quick and responsive to system needs. (Seriously, we are. When there aren’t other jobs in the queue.) We know that the system as it stands will undoubtedly lack features that people will want and we’ll need to refine or remove some of existing features. We tried to make the core of the system as versatile and intuitive as we could so that it’s very useful from the word “Go.” But we’re itching to get it out there, hear what our coaches need and sort out the best way to continue crafting a great product. Technology and the coaching industry are changing so fast; we’ll keep evolving the system to reflect that indefinitely. (We love this stuff, really!)

So basically, we are terribly excited, a bit nervous, and very focused. Working into the night, eating shrimp burritos from the corner shop and week-old casseroles. Making lists and checking things off trying to make sure we are crossing all the major “T”s and dotting the important “I”s. Hold tight, friends,  CoachAccountable is almost there.