Posts tagged GroupTable
GroupTable Update
Aug 23rd
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
Jan 31st
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
A Year in Review & Lessons Learned Since I Started Blogging
Feb 10th
It’s amazing and inspiring for me to examine how much a year can change your life. If you have a blog and keep it updated, it almost provides a way to interview your previous self and see what you were thinking and doing and how everything has ended up thus far.
With that said, tomorrow is my one year anniversary since I started blogging.
The purpose of this post is to outline major events in my life and the lessons I’ve learned about blogging since I first started on February 11th, 2008. I encourage each of you to do this exercise as well. It can really be rewarding/helpful and encourage you to think about what a year from today can bring. If you do, or plan on doing a similar post drop me a comment, I’d like to check it out.
Major Events Since February 11th, 2008 (My blogging B-day)
- Launched GroupTable‘s Beta (First week of February)
- Went to the Indy 500 Racetrack & pitched GroupTable to judges in the back of a limo (Late March, National Business Plan Competition)
- Won the UCF Joust Business Plan Competition (Only UCF Student to ever win back to back competitions, April 2008)
- Started working at IZEA (May 2008)
- Attended conferences: Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, Search Marketing Expo in Ny, Blog World in Vegas, IzeaFest, Affiliate Summit in Vegas (Random dates- Definitely learned a lot)

- Became the Director of Premium Blogger Relations at IZEA- Met and worked with top bloggers like Chris Brogan, Wendy Piersall, Chris Pirillo, Jim Kukral, ShoeMoney, Neil Patel and many more. (Late July)
- Moved with Lindsay (@Lindsay273) to an awesome apartment in Baldwin Park (August)
- Graduated College from UCF with a degree in marketing (Mid August)
- I was interviewed on Orlando’s Local Six news about Social Media & its impact on Politics (Mid August)
- I got my first dog (Pics: Jackson and me, Jackson and Lins) (September)
There’s a a few more…but I’ll keep it to 10
Lessons I’ve learned about and from blogging
- Blogging is a great way to build your personal brand.
- Like writing in general, blogging is an effective way to organize and get your thoughts together. It can be very therapeutic.
- The blogosphere/twittersphere has its own culture. It’s best to interact on other blogs and see how those who are experienced do it before you jump in. (Double Dutch Analogy)
- I’ve learned how to identify influencers and high quality bloggers…It’s my job
- I learned that I like WordPress way better than Blogger. It’s more flexible and has lots of cool plugins.
- If you don’t post regularly your traffic will drop….significantly
- Write about issues others are interested in (even do keyword research before writing certain posts). When I first started this blog all I wrote about was GroupTable. When I started writing about other issues (like some of my favorite posts on the right) my traffic and reader engagement went way up.
- Social proof is a powerful thing.
- It’s good to comment on other blogs regularly. (Helps build relationships and brings you traffic)
- Twitter is an incredible tool to increase awareness & traffic to your blog if you know how to properly use it. (Many people who join it don’t have a clue how to harness it’s power or are unaware of all the third party twitter apps available)
Writing this post definitely helped me become more aware of how far I’ve come in this past year and what I’ve learned during my first year of blogging.
What have you learned since you started blogging? Isn’t it great to be able to have a chronicle of what you went through, or were thinking over the last year(s)?
GroupTable helps Bentley Student Group win Competition
Feb 7th
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 entit
led 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 Makes Top 10 Best Classroom 2.0 Applications List
Feb 7th
GroupTable has made Huddlemind’s Top 10 Best Classroom 2.0 Applications List. Huddlemind is a specialist social-media education and eventing company. They also own and operates a Social Network of Educators and Organizational Development practitioners at huddlemind.net.
Here’s Dave Duarte (Co-founder of Huddleminds) list:
–
1. Udutu: Easily author and publish courses online
2. Engrade: Web-based tools for educators – including tools to keep track of marks and publish assignments
3. Haiku LS: Easy, elegant learning management system
4. Grouptable: GroupTable is a web-based software and success network developed specifically to help student groups improve document management, project planning and communication.
5. Edufire: Learn online with live video
6. Global Classroom: Create elearning centres to train staff or clients.
7. Adobe Connect Pro: Host classes live via the web
8 . Schoolrack: Manage class mailing lists, calendars and assignments in one place for both teachers and students.
9. Studeous: enhance courses with tools like live chat, discussion boards, podcasting, and text messaging.
10. Edmodo: Free private micro-blogging (like Twitter) for teachers and students.
Thanks for including us in your list Dave!
Been Busy…Stay Tuned for more posts
Jan 21st
Hi Everyone,
I’ve been extremely busy lately and haven’t had much time to come up for air and post on my blog. I was out of town for a week in Vegas for Affiliate Summit West then came back and have had a lot of obligations for both IZEA and my start-up (GroupTable) late
ly. It’s the beginning of the semester so many students across the country are going back to school and so GroupTable’s usage is really picking up. GroupTable also has a bunch of other things in the works, which I’m not able to talk about until they come to the light, but trust me it’s awesome.
(But time consuming)
Rest assured I will have some good posts in the near future.
Thanks for your patience
GroupTable Update- What do you bring to the table?
Nov 18th
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?
Magic, Mashable and Mo-Users…Oh My!
Nov 10th
Today was a really good day. In short GroupTable officially passed 1,000 registered users for our beta, I got 3 free tickets to go see the Orlando Magic and while there Paul Glazowski of Mashable, one of the most popular tech blogs online published an article about GroupTable. He mentioned that:
“The entire makeup of the service is quite impressive”
- Paul Glazowski
You can view the whole article by visiting the following link:
http://mashable.com/2008/11/10/grouptable/
This should provide some good buzz for us. Often times other tech blogs see what the top dogs like Mashable and TechCrunch post and give their personal twist on it.
Fyi- The Orlando Magic lost, but Lindsay and I still had a great time!
If you have any thoughts on the article, or have other ideas or comments about GroupTable feel free to post them here or email me: Dave (at) GroupTable (dot) com.
GroupTable Milestones
Sep 29th
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!
Sep 6th
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.







