Wunderkit has now gone into public beta. This means that everyone can now get to know and love the wonder that is Wunderkit.
One of Wunderkit’s unique strengths is the concept of public workspaces. Typically, you would imagine a set of tasks, or a project to be very private, either to an individual, or to a team. Wunderkit, however, has cleverly bridged together the worlds of productivity and social with these public workspaces with some amazing results.
What is a Workspace?
Before we get into the details of what a public workspace actually is, we better define a normal workspace.
A workspace is a bit like a project, or even a collection of projects. The Wunderkit intro site gives the examples of a creating a band, traveling the world, starting a company, and education. While very different from each other, each of these examples show how you can use a workspace to collect ideas, set actionable tasks to follow up and keep in touch with others involved in the workspace.
At its core, a workspace is a set of tasks, notes and people.
Lists and Tasks
Each workspace can have a number of lists. Lists are a way to collect tasks with a similar goal together. Tasks are what you, or someone else, needs to do. They can be assigned to someone, given a due date and tags, and marked to be a high or normal priority. If you’ve used Wunderlist before, then this tasks in Wunderkit will come naturally.
Notes
The Notes widget is a simple concept. You can add any bit of text you like. It’s an area to keep arbitrary notes, that relate to the workspace, collected together. Other members (not followers) of the workspace can edit and add notes. Consider keeping track of ideas and even using it as a place to store more detailed information related to a task.
Dashboard
The Dashboard is the main overview of the workspace. It shows what tasks are on your plate to action as well as the activity stream. The activity stream shows message updates, and when tasks and notes are created or updated.
What is a Public Workspace?
The public workspace concept is a little bit deceiving at first. Don’t think of it as all your tasks and notes being publicly viewable. This isn’t the case at all. It’s more of a Twitter stream or a Facebook wall than anything else. Members of the public (other Wunderkit users) can “follow” your workspace. What this does is make sure that when they log in to Wunderkit, they can see what you, and other followers, have publicly posted on your workspace profile area. Followers can’t see private message updates, notes, tasks or the dashboard. Any follower of your workspace can interact with you and your workspace by posting messages, or status updates, on the profile of the workspace. You, and other followers, can respond or show that you like a comment by clicking the heart icon.
So how does this help you?
The public workspace is now your one place for tracking, delegating and actioning tasks, while keeping in touch with those people who love your brand. You can quickly and easily let your followers know when you’ve had an idea, about to start work on a task, or when you’ve completed a something. You can even ask your followers what you should do next! You can do anything.
Wunderkit has already been using public workspaces very effectively as a support channel. Take a look at the Wunderkit Support workspace. The stream is flooded with questions, ideas and areas that might need attention. 6Wunderkinder can then respond to one comment and other followers can find it. It’s a great way to get feedback about how your brand operates and what your fans want.
Now, let’s give it a try in the real world
Hopefully by now you’ve signed up for Wunderkit and I’m confident you’re already loving it! Now head over to the Cloud Productivity workspace and click the “follow” button. Let’s keep in touch about all things business and personal productivity in the cloud (you can also join from the icon at the top of the page). Post a message and respond to others. I’ll be on there just about every day keeping in touch with everyone, asking you what you want to see on Cloud Productivity and answering any questions that come my way.
Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you there!
