There are some problems in the collaboration space that are annoying to all of us, but don’t really cause enough pain (in each instance) to demand an elegant solution to the problem.

One of these problems I just wrote about in our “Technologies to Watch” blog, and uses YON software’s MeetingSense to deal with the annoying problem of meeting quality and outcomes. I have never met a VP of meeting quality at any of the companies we have consulted with, yet almost everyone I interviewed at these companies complained of bad (low quality) meetings.

TimeDance to TimeBridge

Another annoying problem is meeting scheduling its self. It is a very inefficient process, and in some cases has required as many as 12 different e-mails to set it up. TimeBridge, is the evolution of an idea that started about 5-6 years ago with a start-up we worked with called TimeDance. Unfortunatley, TimeDance was a victim of the dot bomb era, but one of the founders is advising the TimeBridge team.

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Today, to schedule a meeting we often have to go through a process like this:
1. Check your time
2. Send broadcast email
3. Hold times on calendar
4. Collect and interpret
5. Negotiate
6. Re-broadcast
7. Collect and interpret responses
8. Confirm time
9. Remind and re-confirm
10. Pray…you don’t have to re-schedule

This is a very inefficient process, especially if the people your trying to meet with are very busy. About a year ago, Bill Glazier (who we know from his days at PlaceWare) was working with one of the VCs that had invested in TimeBridge. He asked Dave Antila (another CS analyst) and I down to Sand Hill Road to run the product idea by us. We thought it was a good idea and talked about our prior involvement in TimeDance.

Fast forward about 9 months. I met York Nelkin, the CEO of TimeBridge at the CTC conference in Boston (yes, it's a very small world), and asked if we could come in and see the progress they had made. Dave and I met with Yori and their VP of Marketing and agreed to be in their beta program (and we are told we were the only analysts in the program). We used TimeBridge in a number of different ways. Between Dave and I, since we were both TimeBridge members, and also between CS analysts and those we were setting meetings up with (which was the much more common usage).

How It Works

Essentially what TimeBridge does is make the process of setting up a meeting with multiple attendess more efficinet. Right now it is still in beta (and I just downloaded the latest version), and is a toolbar that plugs into Outlook. It works with your calendar to schedule a meeting, even with others outside your organization that might not be using Outlook as a PIM (Personal Information Manager). TimeBridge is making their debut today at the Web 2.0 conference, so we thought it was about time to give our take on this technology.

TimeBridge sees 5 steps to setting up a meeting:

1- Pick a time/date for the meeting and invite attendees
2- Attendees respond
3- The meeting is confirmed and conflicts arre resolved
4- Share information with attendees (online meeting space for agenda and documents)
5- Meeting takes place

TimBridge also provides a central place where you can review all of the meetings you have set up and can look at meeting details and documents if you wish.

When you create a new meeting TimeBridge opens next to your normal Outlook e-mail invitation. It allows you to propose multiple meeting times and send them out in the invitation (See Figure 1).

Figure 1

Once the meeting attendees receive the invitation, they can reply or suggest one of the other times that might work better for them. It allows them to choose the “best” time for them for the meeting, other times that are OK, and times that will not work. It even gives you the flexibility to “not participate” or invite another attendee who you think might be critical to the meeting (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

Once the time and date of the meeting has been negotiated and the attendees confirmed, then you can begin to place the content for the meeting in a safe storage space (See Figure 3).

Figure 3

Time and Identity

TimeBridge is really in the business of “trust networks” i.e. you would let someone you trust see your calendar or times you are available to meet with them, and you would not let someone you don’t know see this personal information. What you do and when you do it, especially if it is set up through the Internet, has a lot to do with your Identity. I have written about Identity 2.0, and how a number of pieces of information about you would like to be captured by vendors on the Internet, and that you may have to protect your information so that you can choose who you want to give it to and who you don’t. This level of protection of your time and schedule may well be a premium service that TimeBridge will offer sometime in the future.

The Cost of Time

TimeBridge is initially a free service focused on “prosumers” individuals who are professionals and might not be in a large organization that runs Microsoft Exchange servers, and yet need to schedule on average 8 meetings a week (I know I easily do more than that). If Collaborative Strategies is any example of a "prosumer" then TimeBridge should do very well, and possibly even spread virally as their marketing plan suggests.

Revenue and Premium Services

TimeBridge will also offer some premium services to generate revenue. One that we are pretty sure they will offer is more storage. What if you want the documents for a meeting to stay available to the meeting participants for an extended period of time? Other ideas for premium services could include: recording, indexing or archiving meetings.

Another area where TimeBridge will add value is through partners. It seems obvious to us that TimeBridge and MeetingSense both solve annoying problems around meetings, so maybe a partnership there would benefit everyone?

Since I often have meetings with a meal, integrating with another service like Open Table (restaurant reservations) should be high on their list of partnerships also.

Just in Time

Although TimeBridge is announcing their product and company today, they are a well funded elegant solution to a very wicked and annoying problem… that of the inefficiencies of scheduling meetings. We see a number of large partnerships for them in the near future, as well as the connection to other services that will enhance the user experience. However, they are also just the type of company that Google likes to snap up (like Writley and JotSpot). It will be interesting to see what TimeBridge looks like a year from now?