GroveSite Selected for Under the Radar Conference!

GroveSite was selected from hundreds of nominees to be one of only 32 presenting companies at the IBD Networks Under the Radar conference in Silicon Valley this past Wednesday, Nov 16 05.  It was an honor to be recognized as a growing, promising, high technology firm – worthy of the attention of venture capitalists (VCs) around the country.  Even though we aren’t actively looking for VC money at this time, it was a great opportunity so we accepted the invitation.

The presentation format was challenging – only 3 PowerPoint slides, only 5 minutes, and no product demos allowed.  But Joe McVicker, GroveSite’s dynamic and talented President, did a great job in front of a panel of VC judges and an audience of VCs and interested Silicon Valley writers, bloggers, and tech company executives.

It was very interesting – some presenting firms had innovative state-of-the-art technology, but no customers and no revenue.  At GroveSite, we have great, hosted, online collaboration technology that is ‘wiki-easy’ and very unobtrusive.  Our innovation is really in the USER EXPERIENCE – easy to try, easy to buy, easy and oh-so-empowering to use.  GroveSite makes its clients look good to their own clients.

It was a great experience all around!

Do-It-Yourself Collaboration Applications

Our CTO, Joseph McVicker, has been invited to speak at the Collaborative Technologies Conference in New York, June 20-22, 2005.  McVicker will speak in a session called "Who Needs IT? Simple Lightweight Applications You Can Use on Your Own".  This session is targeted at business managers who may need a simple ad hoc solution either as a complement or in the absence of IT supported applications.

For more information, see the press release.

New Collaboration Tools

A few weeks ago, I attended the 6th Annual Knowledge Management Conference sponsored by the e-Gov Institute in Washington DC.  GroveSite was invited to speak about wikis as part of a session about new tools for collaboration and we were excited to be included. 

My presentation focused on the differences between Wikis, Content Management Systems and Collaboration Software.  We get calls from many people who want to jump on the wiki bandwagon because of all the recent publicity.  After further discussion we find that many are really looking for collaboration tools not wikis.  Collaboration software typically offers more business workflow and interactive features with higher levels of security and customization.  Traditional wikis, on the other hand, offer an easy way for many people to contribute web content without any cumbersome approval process.  It will be interesting to see how organizations incorporate both types of software into their business processes in the next couple of years.

The conference seemed to have a pretty good turnout and it was great to talk to people who are representing many of the largest government agencies to find out how they are using collaboration tools in their environment. 

The takeaway for GroveSite from this conference is that there is definitely a place for wikis in business organizations but the flexibility needs to be tempered with the reality of security requirements.

Koren Elder
VP of Technology