Swift Kick Central

Red Rover Intro Video for Students

After we created our Red Rover intro video for staff/admin about 4 months ago, we knew we'd soon need an intro video for students. After a few rounds of adjustments and grammar corrections, here it is:

Red Rover Intro Video for Students from Swift Kick on Vimeo.

New Admin Stats Dashboard for Red Rover - Real Time Retention Reporting

As students use Red Rover more and more, our goal is to give as much of the user data back to the Admins in a usable format in real time so they can take action.

Here's an example of the new stats dashboard:

Stay tuned as we have more exciting stuff in the pipeline for the next month including classes, customized mass messaging through Facebook, and group leader stats.

Cutting the Fat

My fiancee and I (Tom) recently sold our car and signed up for the non-profit car sharing service iGo Cars. Our reasons for breaking free from the car chains were partly environmental, economical, and practical as we live in downtown Chicago. But three months into the program, I discovered another unexpected reason and it interestingly relates directly to my work with Swift Kick.

When we owned a car, the trip to the grocery store would take an hour and some change to complete. The goal was to get our weekly grocery supplies. That goal hasn't changed since selling our car, but the time it takes to do the task has. With iGo you rent by the half-hour, and I realized the exact same trip to the grocery store can be achieved in under 30 minutes. This gives me an extra half-hour to enjoy the better things in life.

Take this same concept and apply it to being an entrepreneur.

Everyday I have a defined set of tasks I'm working on that builds up to our established weekly, monthly and quarterly goals. Since I don't have a "boss" looking over me, the deadlines for individual tasks are set (or not set) by me and roughly have to be done by the end of the day.

"A task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for it's completion." - Ferriss, Timothy. The Four Hour Work Week. pg. 27. New York: Random House, 2007

Instead of just saying my daily tasks have to be done by the end of the day, I also put a minute deadline on each task. In the morning, before I open my computer to start working for the day, I estimate how long it should take for me to accomplish each task. Then I cut off 5-33% of the time and make that my new deadline. It forces me to "cut the fat" from the task and really focus.

I also downloaded Apimac Timer as a desktop timer to give me a visual cue of my deadline.

It's been three weeks since I started reorganizing my work flow and just like with our trips to the grocery store, I'm able to get the same goal completed in about 1/3rd less time.

Next I'll post about our process for deciding our quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals and the joy of ruthless prioritization.

Say Hello to the First Official Red Rover Newsletter

We've joked about making the tag line for Red Rover be, "Students Actually Use It!" The proof of course is in the pudding which we've already talked about.

We see the students as our "customer" first and the admin/staff as our "customer" second. Most higher ed software solutions seem to think the opposite. Just look at the complex user interfaces with "comprehensive solutions" and you'll know the student wasn't their primary focus. We think a bottom up approach is more effective.

One of the strengths of Red Rover is going to be in the connectedness of it's members to each other. Our goal is to help facilitate a strong Red Rover community that is in line with our bottom up approach.

We already have a Student Affairs Collaborative Blog, a Student Leader Collaborative Blog, a Collaborative Project Wiki Space, and a New Features Usersuggest Forum.

We have more ideas in the pipeline and today we just released our first official Red Rover Newsletter to help us better connect to our users and help them connect with each other. There is a separate monthly newsletter for the Admins, Student Leaders, and Regular Students. The goal is to give them tips on how to be more effective within their respective roles through the use of Red Rover.

If you're interested in signing up for the different newsletters, you can do so below:

THE ADMIN NEWSLETTER:
Email:

THE STUDENT LEADER NEWSLETTER:
Email:

THE REGULAR STUDENT NEWSLETTER:
Email:

Marketing Red Rover with a Facebook Note

The list of schools signing up to use Red Rover is growing daily, with UCLA being the newest. A great byproduct of so many active users navigating the system is seeing the new creative ways in which admins and group leaders are marketing Red Rover.

Nick Chapa, a group leader at UCLA, wrote this note about Red Rover on Facebook:

Nick's note explains the group leader value in using Red Rover for automatic recruitment and invites them to sign up with a link. I've seen schools use Facebook notes before, but Nick's unique approach of tagging all the group leaders in the note is genius, because when he posted it, they all received an email saying they've been tagged in the note, thus the click-through rate was much higher.

Going to where the students are and connecting with them through one of their favorite communication channels is just plain smart.

Nice work Nick!