submitted by Ashley Snead and Sara Morse

Hello! We’re two of the four Summer Associates at Keen. We’re excited to help figure out what makes the Keen Guides experience the best one for the traveler – from content to the flow of the mobile application.

We first needed to understand the mindset of the traveler, which we did yesterday on the National Mall. We spent the morning in the Museum of Natural History and realized that young adults, teens and kids are typically the ones with cameras, phones, iPods in their hands. As we did some “market research” to find out how many adults use smartphone while they travel, we learned that not everyone is aware of what a ‘smartphone’ is and had to reword a question or two to make them easier to understand for those who weren’t as tech savvy.

After talking with those visiting the city and observing the city, we learned (and experienced) that there was a need easily find good local bathrooms, restaurants, and transportation options for those not familiar with the city. So we’re definitely reporting that to the team and seeing if we can make that an added part of the Keen experience.

Ashley Snead and Sara Morse

by Catharine McNally

“That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, or successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.” – Garth Stein, (The Art of Racing in the Rain)

If you are an entrepreneur, a recent graduate, a parent, volunteer, a career man/woman, then you should read “The Art of Racing in the Rain.” It’s an easy read because it’s told by a dog. And dogs don’t have a big vocabulary. Enzo, the narrator, looks around him and makes pretty insightful, simple explanations of why things happen to his master, for better or for worse. It all comes down to the actions of you and I, and how we perceive and act on it.

As an entrepreneur, I learned from Enzo that I shouldn’t rely too much on my environment to make things happen. We’re still a new company: a new content partnership isn’t necessarily going to stumble across our website and suddenly take interest. My colleagues and I have to find them. Or a traveler won’t necessarily know to download the Keen Guides app or access mobile website when they are in a new city. We have to find ways to tell them about it. Apple won’t always feature our iPhone app, as they did in April. Technology doesn’t build itself either. Otherwise it’d be considered a living organism. We must continue to act, push forward, and keep making things happen.

Enzo now sits on my shoulder, whispering, “That we manifest is before us.” We have big plans to get our content in more cities, and that only becomes a reality when we act on it. Thanks for the reminder, Enzo.

submitted by Karen

Having young children while starting a company is generally considered to be at best unadvisable; at worst, a mark of true gluttony for punishment. So perhaps it says something about our not-yet-3-year-old company that we have 3 staff members and 3 Keen Babies under the age of 3. Martin’s son Marius, now 9 month old, and my kids Ady, 2 and Charlie, the littlest Keen fan at 11 weeks old, will grow up remembering painting the Keen offices, traveling on Keen business trips, and having parents whose company’s triumphs and challenges sometimes become the source of joy and tribulation at home, too. Because starting a company is nothing if not personal, permeating dinner table conversation and sometimes interrupting carpool schedules.

Having small children poses a unique set of challenges. Both Martin and I have sent emails dropping the ball into another team member’s lap on an important project with three short sentences: “Can’t do this. Headed to hospital. Baby’s on the way!” I’ve spent a conference call on “mute” with a potential investor because I was holding a teething baby at the same time. “Um, no, I don’t hear a baby crying. Maybe someone has a cat?” (Needless to say, that particular investment did not come through.) And after hundreds of hours of hard work at LaunchBox Digital last summer, Martin had to live vicariously through our big pitch in Palo Alto between feedings of his 3-week-old son. Kudos goes to Catharine for embracing these uncommon co-founders in our company. Catharine asked the other day, “If you were traveling with Ady, would you watch a video with her, or would it be better if there was a kid-friendly tour too?” It takes a special person to see a toddler as less of an annoyance and more of a potential use case.

But for its challenges, the double life of Parent Entrepreneur has its perks. This Tuesday, while I was up with Charlie at 4:00 am, tethered as usual to my best friend at that hour – my Blackberry – the emails began. Martin, up with Marius at the same time, noticed our new iPhone application’s download activity was up – way up, and realized that we’d just been featured on Apple’s New and Noteworthy page of the App Store. Martin and I fired emails back and forth, each typing with one hand while holding a baby in the other. “We’re up to 500 downloads already.” “We’re starting to see comments coming in.” “They like it!” “We’ve got so much to do!” It was an exciting company moment, and because of our kids, we got to get a glimpse of it before the rest of the world tweeted or retweeted anything. And like the proud parents we are, Martin and I sat in our dark and silent houses at 4 am, beaming with pride at this thing that we’ve helped create.

Submitted by Catharine

Start-ups should be nicknamed “Sprint-Ups” because, like most other emerging companies, we find ourselves working super hard in sprints that end up feeling like a marathon.

I’m starting to notice that our Twitter & Blog activity is sparse when we’re busily working towards a goal / deadline. So seeing that we’d gone two weeks since our last Tweet, and umm…two months? since our last blog post, I thought we’re due for an update. We’re so excited to announce a few awesome developments:

1. The Gallaudet University Campus Tour is live on the Keen Guides website (www.keenguides.org/gu), available in American Sign Language, Sign Language with Spoken English, Spanish, and Cued Speech. The podcast download on iTunes is forthcoming.

2. Content Partner in Washington, D.C., WETA TV Station: In our research to learn about existing video content currently out there, we discovered that the PBS affiliate network, WETA has a wealth of editorial, dynamic, awesome short-format videos of over 100 points of interest in Washington, D.C. We approached them about doing a pilot to test a third distribution channel, mobile, through a Beta pilot of our iPhone application. (Currently, their content is displayed on TV and Web.) For the first phase of this partnership, WETA is distributing 50 videos around Washington, D.C. through our application, so we are excited to share a robust library of content, along with our National Mall tour content videos done in coordination with DC by Foot.

3. Sneak Preview: iPhone App: Last but certainly not least, version 1.0 of the Keen Guides application is ready for testing. Before we release to Apple, we are looking for people who have an iPhone and an interest in learning some great history about Washington, D.C. If you are interested, please sign up using this form. We will send out information about downloading the test version of the iPhone application by February 1st. To participate in this sneak preview, you’ll have a chance to test all the links, to make sure everything works well, and that there aren’t any scary, mean bugs lingering around in our application. And of course, we want to make sure it’s as user friendly as possible!

Finally. Once we get our application approved by Apple, We’ll launch our Beta pilot in Washington, D.C., Austin, TX, and Winston-Salem, NC! If you’re in one of those cities and want to be alerted when these are tours are available at a site near you, send us an e-mail and simply say, “Keep Me Updated” in your subject line. (Or something along those lines!)

submitted by Catharine

At Keen, we talk a lot about our distribution channel being on the iPhone, but it’s only our first test application. We are quickly moving towards getting as many people as possible onto our mobile distribution platform. The Google Android Operating System is gaining a lot of traction, and starting to offer significant competition to the iPhone. Below is an excerpt from an article in VentureBeat:

“Looking forward, it’s a safe bet that December’s Android share will be well over 30%, helped by the introduction of Verizon’s Droid and Google’s Nexus One. But wait for it — the report to watch for will be the stats for January 2010, after AdMob begins serving ads to everyone who got a new phone under the Christmas tree.”

Yep. We need to move fast and iterate often. Our next steps are Android and a mobile web application! The mobile space is expected to grow significantly in 2010, so we’re thankful that we’ve already been in this space for a couple of years.