Filled to the Brim » GroupTable

GroupTable Update

David Brim — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 03:18:10 +0000

A lot of really exciting things have been occurring with GroupTable, my start-up, over the last few months.

For those of you that don’t know….

GroupTable is a simple collaboration software that helps you easily manage group projects, study groups and all of the other groups of your life. With group calendars, to-do lists, file sharing, discussion boards and more, Mashable, a leading technology news blog, had this to say ”The entire makeup of the service is quite impressive. Powerful but not overwhelming.”

Over the last few months we have launched a number of major upgrades to GroupTable. We have also launched a GroupTable Support Wiki to help our users. We also created a simple overview video explaining GroupTable, which I’ve added below.

There are also a lot of great progressions going on behind the scenes as well that will come to light soon.

Thanks for your support over the last couple years everyone!

We’ll keep you posted

David

GroupTable featured on California News Station

David Brim — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:16:45 +0000

Hi Everyone,

This past week GroupTable was featured on a news station in California. GroupTable is a collaborative software that improves group communication, planning and document management. GroupTable now has thousands of users all around the world. In addition to being a founder I was also the CEO of GroupTable for over a year until I took a less day to day role to focus on Brand Advance. The news segment was well done for the most part and worth sharing. Enjoy!

Cheers,

David

GroupTable helps Bentley Student Group win Competition

David Brim — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:53:47 +0000

I recently came across a blog post done by Nick Rac, a student from Bentley University. He gave his personal account on how GroupTable helped his group not only eliminate many of the problems they had, but played a part in helping them win a $1,000 contest at his school.

With his permission I have re-posted it below.

Thanks for the great testimonial Nick

–

During my junior year of college at Bentley University I was enrolled in a mandatory course entitled GB 301. The course was primarily a project class in which a real world business with a real world problem approached our class and asked for consulting. After being broken into groups of 5 we were given basic information, and a few assignments – from this we were to formulate a 70 page business plan for the client, this was a competition style course with a $1,000 cash prize for the winning team. This course is extremely well-known and feared by Bentley students as it is extremely time intensive is a serious time commitment for ANY student.

After holding my group’s first group meeting it became apparent to me that all 5 of us being able to meet in the same place at the same time would be extremely difficult and I began to search for free group collaboration software. I gave a number of products a good thorough testing and decided on one outstanding product: GroupTable. The next group meeting was introducing the application to my team and explaining how I wanted to implement it into our project – everyone was excited to use GroupTable and we all agreed that it would be essential to our group’s success…little did we know that it would probably save the project.

Over the course of the semester we met on a regular basis of twice per week in person and twice per week via GroupTable. Once the semester got a little busier we were all struggling to make our meetings and began meeting 4 times weekly on GroupTable and only once in person. We were the only group (of 20 total) which had implemented the use of collaboration software, which gave us a true advantage.

Typical college level group projects function in one of two ways: 1. All members of the group meet in a single location and work on each part of the pject one piece at a time. Or 2. All members meet, distribute the work amongst the group, disburse and meet again to review and combine each assignment. A group project using GroupTable functioned very differently. We were able to meet in person, assign out work AND collaborate with one another at any time. GroupTable’s clutch moment for us was when a group member had an unexpected trip home to London. He was able to meet with us, submit his work and share the ideas he had brainstormed during his travel time.

When one of us had a question or idea during the day we would simply post the question/idea to the private GroupBoard discussion board and wait for other’s input. During our online meetings the chat allowed us to talk real-time with one another to discuss issues, ideas and concerns. These two features combined with the “Binder” feature (which allows users to upload documents to share) were essential to the success of the project. At the end of the project we calculated that each group member met for 4 hours on GroupTable for every hour they met in person, impressive considering we averaged 250 hours of work PER PERSON for 14 weeks.

In the end we ended up winning the course competition and the cash prize. Our group was able to finish the project 5 days before the deadline (normally groups are running to Kinkos at midnight the night before to get the plans printed and bound). Our presentation was killer, our plan a huge success and we were able to do an impressive class presentation on how we used the GroupTable software.

In a business school like Bentley the majority of our courses require a large amount of group collaboration, Bentley teaches that in the business world of today you MUST be able to function in the group environment. This can be difficult for many people as it requires commitment, flexibility and pat. GroupTable addresses many issues associated with any type of collaborative work and I continue to use it to this day for large group projects.

GroupTable Update- What do you bring to the table?

David Brim — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:05:57 +0000

November was a great month for GroupTable. With no funding, nobody on our staff working full time and a lot of late nights GroupTable now has over 1200 students using our software, and we’re still in beta! You can also see our unique visitors to the right. All of our marketing, minus one promotional event at UCF during the summer and a few email campaigns, has been through word of mouth/social media. On a limited budget it’s amazing what having a quality product that solves a need and tech savvy users can do. You’ll notice a small dip during the summer months, but a strong rebound when school started. By the way this graph includes November and there is still a week and a half left in the month.

This month there were also a lot of great posts written about us on various education and technology blogs Here’s some of my favorites:

We really have a perfect product for the time. College enrollment is rising, especially with the economy the way it is. On top of that, students are staying school longer for their mba and doctorate degrees. Group projects are often required in classes and it’s proven that study groups improve grades, however students are busy and/or lazy and getting all group members together and focused at the same time is challenging. Many students face this problem and neither social networking sites or course management software systems solve this need, however GroupTable does. Below is a message sent to us via twitter.

Besides our strong user traction and growth, we have a number of companies that want to partner with us that can really add value, an enhanced design ready to be integrated, several campus representatives at different locations across the country and a solid revenue model. We are in the process of raising capital, which will allow us to really ramp up. If anyone knows of any investors passionate about education and technology please connect us. The sooner we obtain resources, the sooner GroupTable’s staff will be able to give this venture our full attention, build our team and grow GroupTable to it’s full potential…What do you bring to the table?

Contacts? Capital? Comments?

GroupTable Milestones

David Brim — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:58:19 +0000

September was a great month for GroupTable. We now have over 750 registered users signed up for our beta and are quickly approaching a million hits for the month. Carl and Zach have been working very hard on GroupTable V2 and Scott and I have been working to grow our user base and awareness in the student community. We are also most likely bringing on another marketing staff member sometime this week…I’ll keep everyone posted!

Landing Page Replacement Day!

David Brim — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:15:00 +0000

I posted this on GroupTable’s blog last week, but thought I’d share it on my blog as well…I was cracking up when I made this. Let me know what you think and share/bookmark it below if it made you laugh.

———————————————————————————————————————-

Attention All,

Lend me your ears

I proclaim that Labor Day, 2008 be forever remembered as “Landing Page Replacement Day!” Put it in the history books…

A small step for GroupTable, a giant leap for our conversion rates. Sorry Old landing page…you tried, but your timid and uninformative ways didn’t drive enough action. The old must let go and move aside to make way for the new. Also tell your friend “YouTube GroupTable Demo May edition” that we no longer need his services. Landing pg V2 will be a good page…The New and Improved Landing page- The sugar and the spice, the plate of chicken wings with just right amount of hotsauce (That ones for Carl), the super sundae with rainbow sprinkles…I apologize where was I…Oh yeah

Effective 1:00 pm your contract is terminated and you will be replaced. We don’t care where you go, but you gotta get the hell outta here.

Deepest sympathies…The job market is tough

As for you GTV2 Landing page…you’ve been training hard, now is the time to shine… Lace up your boots your up!

Old Landing Page

ps…Feel free to leave your comments for GroupTable’s old landing page or words of encouragement for Landing page V2

Visit http://GroupTable.com to see the replacement landing page…Share this post if it made you laugh.

GTV2 is Coming

David Brim — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:31:00 +0000

Play Me….

ok…

so i’ve officially become a dork…lol

But anyway GTV2, GroupTable’s new version, is on it’s way…I’m excited!

Check out our blog for more details

GroupTable Article in the Central Florida Future

David Brim — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Today an article about GroupTable was published in the Central Florida Future by Jillian Krotki. The article discussed our promotional event, upcoming enhancements to the site and some future plans. You can read the plain text version here: GroupTable Article

Here is a picture of the actual article:

We have a lot of great things coming…Stay Tuned

GroupTable’s Most Recent Article

David Brim — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:11:00 +0000

I was just glancing at GroupTable’s stats and noticed a decent amount of traffic was going to GroupTable from UCF’s website. I explored the issue further and sure enough noticed they posted an article about our recent promotion. You can see the article here: UCF GroupTable Article

Overall the article was not bad, however it still seems that the writers don’t quite get exactly what we do. GroupTable is a collaborative software that is tailored to fit the needs of student group projects, study groups and organizations. It facilitates group collaboration, communication and organization and helps them to work more efficiently.

The article says that we are a student networking and document sharing site. Though students can network somewhat through GroupTable we are not what I would call a networking site. In addition to that sharing documents is only one aspect of our site. We also offer task management, online chat, discussion boards, file organization and more.

We are in the midst of enhancing GroupTable even more for the fall semester…Stay tuned!

IZEA’s Birthday Bash

David Brim — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:47:00 +0000

Yesterday after GroupTable’s Promotion I attended IZEA‘s birthday party. IZEA is a really innovative social media marketing company that connects advertisers and bloggers through their two products PayPerPost and Social Spark. They have really cool, laid back and fun culture…They have Cakeplows (See the pics below…lol) for employees birthdays, tequilla shots for new hires and much more. Even though they have a good time, they get things done and really excel at it in my opinion. It’s been a great experience working with them so far…Check out the pics from the birthday bash below: