

Ask HN: Review my idea - olalonde

I was thinking of building a website where users can upload a screencast of their workflow / productivity environment and view other user's environments.<p>For instance, as a web developer, I would send a short screencast of what my typical work environment looks: my Netbeans IDE, my WAMP setup, my web browser with the web developer and firebug addons, etc.<p>This would be interesting for people looking forward to increase their productivity and see how others in their field are working. In my own experience, I've learned a lot of productivity tips from my co-workers and I think this kind of service could be helpful for home workers who can't take a look at the next cubicle ;)<p>What does HN think of my idea ? Any suggestion ?
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thiele
Why not give it a shot using a simple site/blog and YouTube? You could first
make your own screencast and post it up in a blog article. Then recruit a
handful of your friends to make their screencasts. If the project still seems
fun and you are seeing some user interest, then think about building the site
out. MVP ;-)

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olalonde
Good idea ;) Lean and clean.

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cglee
It'd be sweet if the recordings were of people actually creating something
well known. For example, if you could say "here's a screencast of how the
Twitter prototype was built".

In a similar vein, I remember an Etherpad recording of PG writing an essay. At
the time, it was one of the coolest things I've seen, and would love to see
more famous writings composed in such manner.

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olalonde
That's a good idea but I'm not sure how I would go about getting some famous
developers to send a screencast of them at work!

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bretpiatt
The sharing of environment configuration is very common among high end WoW
raid guilds -- we did this on a regular basis and would see significant
statistically measurable improvements when people setup their interface for
specific encounters.

The process of going through and explaining each step in your workflow and why
it is setup that way helps even with limited collaboration. The drawback to
this is environment configuration is very specific to the type of project,
size of your team, and the development process you follow.

In order for this to succeed as a site you'll need to pick a niche (like any
startup should, boiling the ocean is hard) and build an audience around that
-- i.e. developers using Netbeans on C++ projects using buildbot for CI in an
agile environment. I use this example as you cite Netbeans in your idea and
you thus probably know others using it giving you the start of a community.

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betterlabs
It is a good idea but there is a fundamental problem, I believe. The
developers who have a great environment may not have any incentive to share
it, and a lot of other who share may lead to spam/not-so-useful screencasts
which may be laborious to clean (even if you use the community to rate it).
Also how do you think this service will make money?

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olalonde
I haven't thought of a revenue model yet: just throwing the idea out to see if
that's something people would actually like. Getting developers to share their
work environment would indeed be a challenge. Perhaps, a karma system a la
StackOverflow/HN could be used as an incentive. Developers on StackOverflow
don't mind helping each others out so I don't see why it wouldn't work with my
proposed format. I have to admit though that making a screencast is time
consuming and the karma incentive might not be enough to balance.

Another option that was mentioned in the comments was to ask "celebrity"
developers to share their workspace. Celebrities usually like free publicity
so I believe that might be a viable option to start out.

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willwagner
I like the idea.

I really like this site which I believe I found via a hackernews comment
sometime back:

<http://usesthis.com/>

It performs a similar function, albeit exclusive to their hardware and
software setup, and a screencast and more detail would be interesting.

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olalonde
Pretty similar indeed. Thanks for sharing the link.

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JangoSteve
I think that's a cool idea. I've always enjoyed Lifehacker's pieces on the
Featured Workspace as well as their Featured Desktop articles, because I like
seeing fresh ideas for arranging my home/office and desktop. I would
definitely enjoy seeing the same for workflow environments.

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skmurphy
The ability to diff two environments would also be useful, it would allow you
to find folks that were close to yours but different (e.g. same tools
different settings) vs. different tools.

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ThinkWriteMute
Make doing screencasts with voice easier and then I'll get back to you.

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officemedium
it can't be too productive spending your time watching other people be
productive..

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olalonde
On the short time it isn't but on the long term it can be. I've spent a few
hours reading on version control a few years ago and I've been more productive
since then ;)

