It’s 18:00 o’clock in Strasbourg and I’m rushing home to get ready. The party will probably last all evening, so I figured I may as well leave the office early. Setting up my internet connection and sending a last minute e-mail announcing the access link to Edgeryders…
Meanwhile, the whole team gathers in a private on-line room, waiting anxiously and starting the countdown. Truth is, for some of us how Edgeryders would look like was just as surprising as a brand new toy to play with. A little too many minutes after 19:00, some would say, the website is finally up. You could see people entering the Welcome group and greeting each other, and then they have faces and then stories attached!
For me, personally, it was important to finally see who’s ryding which edges… until now we assumed there’s plenty of Edgeryders out there, but providing them with a place where they can meet, share and ultimately be professional about transition by doing research on it. So the good news is: indeed, there’s a feeling of community in there… and this means there’s huge potential to achieve what we want and communicate it to the world.
Like any game, it takes some time to discover how it works, which button takes you where, what it takes to complete a mission and how many points you get for that etc. But that’s the fabulous-ness of exploring. Of course, the purpose of beta testing being to collect information for improvement, you shouldn’t be surprised if by chance you end up with -5 points : ) It’s probably just a bug somewhere, but it’s important to report it, as well as all sorts of problems you run into. I’m not sure about others, but navigating on the website was not as smooth as we would have wanted: but do keep in mind that it’s a website in construction, a work-in-progress which needs all the input from the community to become what we want it to become. It’s not an expensive product developed by a private entity and then laid out for us to use it. Working with open software is hard, so we’re all stepping on unknown grounds. I’m sure you Edgeryders understand this and will bring your own thoughts to the table. We definitely aim at being truthful to observations, suggestions, and sincere comments expressed. Did you like it…???
Thank you Edgeryders for attending! We’ll probably keep on testing until Thursday, after which date we’ll announce the official launch! Reporting from live beta tests, Noemi
UPDATE: On Thursday, October 20th beta testers spend the last hours navigating on Edgeryders until this first round of iterations is over. Giving that it’s a lot to take in, the feedback reporting will be ongoing after this date. Stay with us for an open discussion of edgeryding at the beginning of next week… Until then, you can see who the explorers-Edgeryders are here.