Center'd

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from a guy called Mike over at Center’d.com asking if I’d do a review of their site. Now I don’t usually do that sort of thing, but I do always like checking out the sites that are forwarded to me. I must say though that I was rather impressed with Center’d when I took a look… so much so I decided to take the plunge and write a quick post about it!

I suppose it’s best to start by explaining what Center’d is, and for that I’m going to cheat and copy it from their site (There’s a one sentence summary after the italics if you want to skip it);

We just love it when a plan comes together. Unfortunately, that rarely happens without heroic efforts, hundreds of emails, and a fair amount of anxiety.

Who is going, where are we going, when are we going. Easy, right? Well, not so much. In fact, no one has created an experience that combines the best of planning tools with the best of local search. And until someone does, we will either continue to endure, or stop making plans altogether. Sigh.

But wait! At Center'd, we’ve been thinking about how to solve the challenges that exist in making plans. From the smallest get together, where you just can’t decide on where to eat and oh-my-goodness-I-can’t-take-it-anymore-maybe-I’ll-just-stay-home-and-wash-my-cat, to the large fundraisers and school activities that require signups and hundreds of emails and weeks of meticulous planning, one thing is clear: We can help you spend less time planning, and more time enjoying yourself.

We do this by focusing on three categories:

People - Connect to people you trust, and get their opinions and information to help you find that perfect place or make successful that successful plan.

Places - See what the crowds think by seeing ratings and reviews from across the web, or find out what your trusted friends think.

Plans - Easily invite friends, find out where everyone wants to go and when with place and time voting, empower volunteers to sign up for tasks, and stay on top of it with reminders and notifications.

So basically, Center’d gives you a platform to create and manage events with minimal fuss (as large as you like or as small as you like), but within that there is a platform for finding places like bars, coffee shops, halls etc and add the locations to your event. What I like about it is the simple and clean interface, and the overall ease of use… I was able to put together a demo event in a minute or two, which is brilliant for those small meetings or spontaneous events that come up. You can find the demo event here by the way, feel free to mess around and have a tinker.

I have to say, the thing I like most about Center’d though is the fact that you don’t need an account to be a part of an event, and to take part in the organization of it once it’s been created. This really saves time for those who just want to click on an email link and say “yup, I’ll be there”, but also means that those who want to be a little more involved in the event don’t actually need to have an account to do so. Although I had to make an account to create the demo event, it only took the same amount of time to do so as it did to make the demo itself, which again, is another bonus.
Creating events themselves is very stress free, and includes all the things you could need; Event name, description, location, time, whether you want to make it invite only or public etc, whether you want to track RSVP’s and whether you want to be able to ask volunteers to sign up for your event. It even lets you add a little picture for the event, you can choose from the default ones, which are taken from flickr or you can add your own from the web or your desktop. I should also mention that you can choose to have a vote on the time and location on the event.

Once you send out the invites and links to the event page your invitees will see a cool little page that details the time location etc and allows them to vote on these if you have requested a vote. It has a google map to map out the event location(s), an attendees section and also a comments section. Along the top it gives you the options to add tasks for the event, share the event, and send messages (as of yet I’ve only tried the sharing bit).

There’s not much bad to say about Center’d (apart from the fact we spell centered like that in the UK so I’ve had to correct my spelling every time I’ve typed it!), what I will say though is that I had difficulty adding my locations into the event and found I had to type a specific place otherwise it would take an American bias… but apart from that, I love it and as event tools go it’s a very good one. I must also say though that it’s got a lot of potential to be used in a school environment, they even give you templates for typical school events (which can be found here). Overall a very nice little tool for a multitude of situations!

The Bass Player

(p.s. If you think I should do a few more of these please say in the comments)

Business and innovation

Take a minute to imagine the education system as one big business. It shouldn’t be too difficult, I mean at the end of the day it has a lot of similarities to a business. It has a product (teaching), which it delivers to its clients (students). It has the same sort of staff hierarchy, it has its sets of rules and its policies and it has a reputation, which can be considered proportional to its success. There are however the differences; no foreign call centers, no company cars and definitely no multi-million pound/dollar bonuses (or is that just banks that get those…).

But I suppose the biggest difference of all is the fact that because of the way the education system works it just wouldn’t survive in the cut throat world of business when put up against the likes of Google, Sony or Apple. Why? Well, the main reason is innovation. Companies thrive on innovation, it’s what makes or breaks them. Unless you innovate in business you get left behind, and are overtaken by your competitors. This is something that the education system just isn’t used to, and because of this it’s been stuck in an endless loop for decades. Granted, there are glimmers of hope here and there, when the government tries to mix things up a bit, but there are never any notable changes.

It’s just a shame there isn’t a structure in place where schools are in a way made to innovate, as if they were a business and as if they had competitors to try and stay ahead of. It’s a shame because it’s only once a structure like this is in place that our schools governing bodies will even begin to think about stepping outside the box, and consider letting our teachers improvise rather than supervise. I guess this is where my comparison between the education system and a business really rings true, because these governing bodies I speak of are no different to CEO’s and Presidents of global companies. They only care about the facts and the figures that - every year - equate to better results. Results that they can boast to shareholders about… or in this case, tax payers. They won’t deviate from a system that is getting them the kind of results they can put in headlines and say “look, the number of people passing English is up by whatever percent”, so they need something else to make them change things, and properly for once. We need to put something in place that gives them the statistics they so desperately crave, but actually helps the students learn skills that will be useful in todays society, not last centuries.

So here’s my idea; I think we should put in place some sort of scheme, where a districts funding (or part of a districts funding) for education is dependent on how well they can innovate, and introduce new things to the classroom. Not only this but they should have to dedicate a reasonable amount of time to preparing our young students for life outside of school. Money should be taken away for turning that bit in to any kind of formal lectures or talks, and money should again be awarded for creativity. I also think that districts should be allowed to keep any money they save by switching to open source software, or by moving things like student planners online. I do however think, that one of the main points on the list should be making sure our students feel like they are a part of something, and actually making them a part of something. While all this is happening though the districts need to keep a good level of achievement with exams etc to thus satisfy the statistic lovers. Feel free to object, and make suggestions but I believe this to be a good compromise, and a good method for not only opening up our education system and modernizing it, but allowing it to continue along a similar vein to which our Governments wish to keep it.

We need to understand that our schools have been safe, and stable with the current structure for decades upon decades. What I’m worried about now is how much longer the structure will hold? Do we stand by, watching and waiting till the global education crisis creeps up? Where what teachers are told to teach becomes irrelevant, and our text books simply aren’t fact anymore. Where exam results mean nothing in a world where free thinking and true learning outweighs the ability to regurgitate information. Our Governments need to prepare for this, and stop relying on a system derived at a time when people didn’t even know what electricity was. We need innovation in education.

The Bass Player

Photo 1. by what what on flickr

Photo 2. by Rob Shenk on flickr