Our headquarters for the week was on a very steep block. We frequently joked if one of us tripped outside our place, tumbling down the rest of the block would likely ensue. Below is an image from the top of the block; our flat was on the right side.

The agenda going into the week was ambitious. Multiple meetings everyday spanned from San Francisco coffee shops to Facebook’s HQ. Below are a few pictures of the team and our meeting places of choice.

Lunch at the legendary Xerox Parc was insightful — the mouse originated here. Above is a picture of the entire team only a few hallways down from the office of OpenStudy co-Founder, Ashwin Ram.

Computer science pioneer and OpenStudy advisor, David Pollak shared an afternoon co-working with us at his local coffee shop.

Touring the Facebook headquarters was inspirational. Here is a picture of the team on the Facebook Wall.

We met with current students attending Stanford and received feedback about our latest iteration of the site.

Our trip wasn’t all business meetings and late night coding. The images above are just a few of the places we visited — there were many more but we’ll keep it to the highlights! Alright, back to work in our missed home of Atlanta, Ga.

Lead Designer, Siddharth Gupta (pictured middle) walks toward MARTA.

Some other cool items on deck: 

- This trip will be the first time we meet (in person) and co-work with one of OpenStudy’s advisors and hacker extraordinaire, David Pollack. We’re huge, huge fans of the founder of the Lift Framework and can’t wait to share more of what we’re building, thanks to him. We hope and *think* he’s excited as well (see image below)

- In-N-Out Burger: Yeah, we don’t have these in Atlanta, so Stanford alum and OpenStudy CEO, Chris Sprague, will be making sure we all get our burger-fix this week. We thought about packing a suitcase full of Chick-fil-a sandwiches and selling them to West Coasters!

- Lunch with OpenStudy Co-founder, Ashwin Ram, near his new office in Xerox Parc. Chris and I had the chance to roam Ashwin’s new diggs in August and they are pretty sweet.

- Many more meetings with other startups, potential investors, and more online education enthusiasts, but we won’t bore you with the details.

We love our hometown of Atlanta, but a week with the whole team in SF and in Silicon Valley during Halloween weekend will be one to remember and document.

Best,
Jon

P.s. We rented a house in the middle of the city for the week, (thanks AirBnB!) so let us know if you’re around.

]]> http://blog.openstudy.com/2011/10/25/openstudy-in-sf-for-the-week/feed/ 1 http://blog.openstudy.com/2011/10/23/study-how-you-want-to/ http://blog.openstudy.com/2011/10/23/study-how-you-want-to/#comments Sun, 23 Oct 2011 05:42:16 +0000 JonnyBird http://blog.openstudy.com/?p=1578 We’ve changed OpenStudy to put more control in the hands of users and facilitate deeper relationships; all with the end goal to produce authentic learning, synthesizing, and sharing of information when studying online together. Our redesign merges the user’s spheres of traditional classmates, future co-workers, never-met-before online learners and established friends in the most seamless online study experience — let us explain.

Find Others Studying Exactly What You’re Studying, Right Now

Instead of broad study topics like Mathematics, Chemistry, etc. you can now find groups of people studying your material.

For example, a user wants to know if the net present value (NPV) of a particular investment is beneficial or greater than 0. In order to solve, a mathematical equation is necessary. In the image below, the OpenStudy user has three different groups of people he/she can join: two individuals in the Finance study group, 11 students in Emory’s business school might take a moment to help derive the NPV, or, if they are too busy, it’s likely one of the 22 people in the Mathematics study group will help with the equation.

Anyone Can Create Study Groups

If a user can’t find a group of learners studying similar material, then he/she has the option to create a study group. The study group can grow in two ways: others on OpenStudy will search for the topic of study or the user can grow the study group through their immediate study network (classmates, FB friends, Twitter followers).

Courtesy and tact are emphasized more on OpenStudy. If a user acts inappropriately, getting booted from a study group is one click away from the group creator, global moderators, or highest ranked user in the group. This functionality builds greater trust among users and maintain levels of respect that align with our vision of how learners should study online.

Same Tools, More Study Groups

The popular equation editor, whiteboard, and file upload are still here. The difference is the increased control the user has when asking a question. Now a user may ask the same question to multiple study groups along with greater responsibility is shifted on the user. Lastly, a maximum number of 5 groups may be joined; therefore, one question may be asked five times simultaneously. A user should use caution with which groups to ask their question so they don’t get booted for irrelevant or spammy questions — choose wisely

The overall changes to OpenStudy will help a user expand their study network, get better, more credible help, and develop lasting relationships around others who are learning the same field of study.

We’re excited about these changes because they’ll change the way you study once you sign up.

Jon Birdsong

Marketing Manager