Ideation/Idea Extraction through linkedin/email?

Anonymous

March 27th, 2014

Lately I've been going to tech meetups and been asking leading questions such as:

"What takes up the majority of your time each day?"

My intention is to try and elicit the person I'm talking too to bitch and complain about some service or protocol or whatever that they use in their stack. Then assuming I find a recurring pattern I can go back to this same set of people and start to trial out a solution.

I'd like to speed this up, however, as I can only have so many meaningful conversations at these events at one time.

preface: I live in SF so it's ridiculously easy for me to potentially meet a ton of cto/vp-eng/developers/etc. but I'm finding trouble trying to use the same tactics through online channels such as email/linkedin/github/etc.

I've gotten a lot of responses in the past by having a direct point of conversation ("what do you think of technology X?") but I'm trying to leave it open ended this time around to collect pain points solely from the person I'm talking with - not ones I'm thinking of.

So to point - any good methods of doing this online?

Anand Ramachandran Founder & CEO at IdeaGPS

March 27th, 2014

We tried this a few years ago for a company internal project. People generally find it tough to 'ideate' facing a blank wall or screen. You'll need to provide something to which they can react.

Ask yourself the same question. Share your full experience in a well-written story so it's more engaging to your audience. I found that the most useful lessons came from observing conversations of others. Get people talking amongst each other.

Going too broad in early stage ideation can be counter-productive - too many ideas, too few patterns..

Cheryl Tom CEO, Founder at Vain Pursuits

March 27th, 2014

As a technical person, what is your biggest time waster during the work day? (Aside from meetings)