Today we beta-launched the first startup to come all the way through our shop.

BlipSnips makes online videos more powerful. It lets site users tag specific moments in videos, and send their friends straight in. One of the great benefits of this tool is the annotation that people generate for videos. Suddenly, we can discover the very moment that's drawing people to a video online; and we can even try to understand why they're drawn to it, since users describe their tags in their own words. Powerful? Check. Offers something useful to users and to advertisers? Check.

In delivering BlipSnips, we wrote Ruby, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and marketing copy. Our development team encountered technical challenges galore, which I mostly dodged by claiming to be a PHP developer; but that defense didn't hold up when it came time for wordsmithing.

Along the way we also developed our own dojo4 processes and collective vision in much greater detail.

Of course, all of that was made possible by the drive and vision of the BlipSnips management team, John Bliss and Greg Keller. Having them at the dojo has been greatthey've been a part of the team, caffeinating when we do, watching our endless furniture evolution.

I hope we get to do this many more times. But BlipSnips will always stand out as the first time dojo4 built and launched a product together. I have to thank the BlipSips team, John and Greg, and the dojo4 crew, Ara, Jeff, Dave and Corey, for an exhilarating ride right up to the end. What a rush!

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