Some examples of where having multiple folder owners can be helpful:

Initial Setup

If you’re the one initially setting up the network, to help get things started, you’ll probably go ahead and create a dozen folders or so, with appropriate sub-folders, but add others as owners if they’re more directly involved.  This could mean just adding the one other person to the folder as an owner, and letting them add others from your network as needed.  After you’ve made them an owner, as you yourself are still an owner as well, to hand over full responsibility of the folder, you can change your permissions to an Editor or a Reader.

Project Management

If setting up for a larger project, add sub-folders for the larger sections and add the person that’s the most appropriate or involved, as an owner, or co-owner, for each folder or section.  They can take it from there and add others to the folder that they feel are needed for the project.

Freelancing Collaboration

If sharing your network with other freelancers, you can create an initial folder for each of them, or their main activities, and make them the owner to more fully develop the project or activity, including sharing with others whose expertise may be needed.

Sharing Hobbies

If using with a personal network, you can create a folder called Hobbies along with the relevant dozen or so that are most popular with your group.  This could be for seasonal, such as summer or winter, or other ongoing interests such as with reading books, playing music, cooking or other creative activities.  As you’re probably not the expert for every one of these, add the person that generally is the expert as the owner, they can best decide who else in your network is interested in that hobby.

How to Add Multiple Owners

After you create a folder, click the “Add Owner” link in the folder summary, as shown below:

Or, if you’ve already added the person to the folder as an Editor or Reader, click their name followed by clicking Edit to change to Owner permissions.

A helpful feature for getting things started with others in your network, let us know in the Help Desk if you have any questions or need assistance with getting started.

• Global Online Employment Report, Q1 2012, Elance: General growth across the board, QoQ growth showed Creative skills at 32%, Marketing at 22%, Operations at 22% and IT at 14%, with many specific skill sets ranging from +40% all the way up to 101% (in Creative, Web Design).

• ‘Gigging’ in the New Economy: Is it for You?, Fox Business: Addressing a younger audience, pointing out that 83% of those under 30 see freelancing as a cornerstone to their career strategy.

• The Virtual CFO, Business Today: How the freelance CFO concept is taking off in India, helping new and small businesses better understand new complexities they may find themselves in.

• The Gig Economy’s Answer to the European Debacle, Forbes: As freelancing is growing everywhere else, areas in Europe are no exception.

Yeah, for a whole host of reasons, freelancing is finding to be an appropriate endeavor in all kinds of situations.  Whether from just graduating and looking to get your feet wet, get busy with something, or those with more experience but looking for a change and a more independent lifestyle, or others becoming a little bit more of an expert in a few of their creative hobbies and bringing it to the next level.  Either of those and many others, the end result being it seems almost everyone you talk to, ok maybe 50% but that’s still a lot, is either already involved or at least has been thinking about it.  This could start from hearing someone else doing it, then another, and another, and finally maybe starting to do a little research of their own, look at possible options.   Just from going through that exercise, can make you aware of doors that you just hadn’t thought about before.  From there could be more questions, more research and next thing you know it’s no longer such a strange idea and you have a somewhat balanced view of what you’re getting into, both positives and negatives.

Maybe similar to a bird hanging out in its’ nest, seeing all these other birds flying around all over the place, peering over the edge of the nest, looking down and gets nervous, crawls back in, sees more birds flying around, tries it again, and so on until it eventually makes the jump, crazily flaps it wings in any and all directions and if not immediately learning how to fly on the first try, at least slows down the descent, not so hard of a crash landing, making it maybe a little easier to try again.  Starting from the ground, as not so far to fall, less fear and before you know it, we have lift-off.

Sure, you could say it’s not so similar, it’s completely natural for birds to fly, they even have wings for it.  Well, while one could say that birds have more developed characteristics to fly, those wings (we can still jump however), humans maybe have more developed brains, used for things such as ideas or imagination, capacity for learning or something similar.   And with learning, as one learns the most through failure (another unfortunate irony…), it’s probably hard to argue that you could find an activity more ripe for failure/learning than with freelancing.

Nevertheless, as most freelancers find themselves wearing hats of creative, finance, marketing and a hundred other varieties, it’s definitely never what you could call a boring experience and with trying to do so many things at once, it’s no surprise that there isn’t more failures than successes.  That said, hopefully learning how to flap the right way will have been done enough times, so at least if not instantly airborne, the landing was eased and ready to try it again, .

What do you think, freelancing, nature vs nurture, intuitive vs environment or perhaps a bit of both?

Here are 20 benefits you can get from having your own private network:

1. New Members: Have different types of reference information available.

2. Sharing Meeting Minutes: Store in notes, helpful for occasional reference or for those unable to attend.  Others can add a comment for additional feedback.

3. Plan a Party: Schedule an event, add a note of details, share photos afterwards.

4. Stay Informed: Add blogs or news feeds from the area or others complimentary to your association.

5. Create Sub-Groups: For any activities where everyone in the association isn’t involved, you can create a new folder to only share with whom you feel is appropriate.

6. Maintenance Activities: Add reminders in events or a note for seasonal maintenance duties that should be done.

7. Change Owners of Folders: If management positions rotate year after year, change the owner the folder to reflect the new responsibility.

8. Getting Focus: No ads or other distractions, just content focused for your association.

9. Tailor Your Network: Add your own network name, sub-domain and folders customized for your group.

10. Plan a Trip: Create a new folder for the idea of the trip, add a note of the general plan, send it with an email notification to others for confirmation, add any appropriate actions, websites and blogs for reference, and finally schedule an event with an email alert for a little extra preparation.   Others can give feedback in comments and you can share photos with others in documents.

11. Add a Professional Folder: For reference, you can add a new folder, call it Professional, where members can add any websites or blogs that they’re more professional involved with.

12. Get Efficient Responses: Anytime you send an email notification, recipients can respond either clicking the link to your network, or by simply clicking Reply from their email provider.   From here they can send a response directly to you or include others the email was originally sent to.

13. Scale as Needed: Use different plans to best fit for the size and activity of your group.

14. Projects: Use actions to organize a group project, assign priority, an owner, status and when due.  Filter and sorting options are available for further organization.

15. A Secure Network: All the content in your network is password protected and under HTTPS security standards, helping to make sure your private network stays private.

16. Schedule Key Events: Whether monthly, quarterly or annual, add important events or dates into the events application, include an email alert for a little extra notice.

17. Get Quality Support: As you’re the customer, we’re here to support you and your network, whether for questions just getting started or suggestions for new features.  There is a Help Desk available to ask a question, track the support ticket and receive an email notification as soon as updated, no later than 24 hours.

18. Store Additional Contact Information: People from your network can add additional contact information in case of an emergency, besides email, can add phone number and location.

19. Operational: Store websites or other external resources that your association uses from time to time.  As it’s a secure network, also use as a backup for different types of files.

20. Own Your Content: No worries of any of your content being used for anything but the purposes of your association, helping to make it a more comfortable environment to collaborate with others.

Need more?  Visit the solutions page for associations or try it out for yourself and see what you can come up with.  Start with the free Spark plan to share with five people.  If you like it, affordable plans are available to upgrade to and feel free to ask us a question if you need help getting started.

New Website Background

Nothing like adding a little contrast to better highlight or give something a little extra focus.  For what it’s worth, you’ll now see a black background throughout the external website pages (ie, this blog).   This is especially helpful as most of the website is fairly straightforward, with descriptions of the features, examples and just a few extra graphics and colors for minor enhancements.  With the black background, the subtleness of the minimalistic style comes through a little bit more, but never too much or too overpowering.

Sections Highlighted

These are the section headers such as Tour, Plans, Solutions, Blog, Support and Login at the top of the page.   Made a little more prominent with a single line underneath, versus the previous large blue bar going across the page.

Tagline Tweak

This is going from “Simple to Create, Easy to Share” to “Secure Private Networks” to now “Hassle Free Networks”.  You could say transitioning from at first being too soft, too generic, to next being too hard, too corporate to hopefully now being just right, appropriate for people looking for a simple network for communication and collaboration.

Initial Sign-Up

This includes both moving the “Get Started Today” button to above the rest of the page as well as the actual signup page, now including a brief description of the free Spark network.  Helpful for people seeing the page for the first time, give a better idea of what’s included.

Login for New Users

When you add others to your network and send them an email notification about a new folder or application item, when they get to the login page, there is now a very clear notification for first time visitors, for setting up their initial login name and password.

Or, people can always just click the Forgot Password link and enter their email address to get a reset.

That’s it for the changes update.  While change can always be difficult as it’s sort of also implying that something before (that you thought was a good idea at some time or another), maybe now isn’t so much.  But, after you swallow a bit of that pride, washed down with new awareness, you’re usually grateful you did and ready to share the new meal or creation with others.  See if it tastes as good for them as you thought it did for you.

With that, what do you think, like the changes, maybe outstanding, great, good, ok, bad, or simply another step for some type of ongoing work in progress?

It usually starts off as something very complex trying to tie so many things together, then after much polish, reviews, more polish, re-arrangements, tweaks, always making easier to use while at the same time trying to continually add new features and more complexity.   That said, there’s reasons that it always makes sense and is something to strive for, here’s a few:

1. Move Faster

If things are simplified, you can move forward more quickly.  On your network, this is spending more time creating and sharing your content, less with trying to organize or manage your content.

2. Less Distractions

Distractions can be like unwanted detours when trying to get something done.  Some are a needed pit or rest stop, most are not.  With your own network, you can make sure distractions are kept to a minimum and focus is on the present.

3. Easy to Share with Others

Having things simplified makes it easier for others to understand, and likewise for them to pass it on as appropriate, some could call it the 100 monkey rule.  Whether true or not, it seems to make sense and as with many other philosophical/psychological teachings or examples, just because they may seem old or primitive, doesn’t mean they’re wrong.  Aesop’s Fables could be another example of the impact of making things simplified.

4. Easier to Believe

Or accept, whatever you wish to call it.  If things are simple, from being easier to understand, can accept it and move on.  If too complex, the process itself will be the hurdle, not any actual problem or project being worked on.  Similar maybe to cruising down a road and all of a suddenly reaching a crossroads of a dozen different directions, good luck.

5. Better for Interactions

If simplified, you don’t feel like an idiot for every question as the questions can be very focused.  This versus something more complex, the difference can be too great and you don’t where to begin.

Yeah, keeping things simple is definitely the way to go if you can pull it off.  What do you think, other benefits and advantages from going the simplified route?

Working with Customers/Clients:

For small businesses or freelancing, you can share a network with a customer, including presentations, proposals, contracts or other files in documents, project tasks or milestones needed in actions or new ideas in a note.  Adding the customer as a Reader allows them to review any work you’ve done, give feedback or send you a quick email notification for a more urgent question, but cannot do other things such as create a sub-folder, add new items to applications or delete any of your content.  If they would like a place to add their own input such as new ideas in a note or listing out different actions needed, you can always create a new sub-folder for them, giving them Editor permissions and they can add content to their hearts content, all while not disrupting the folder, content and organization that you’ve already setup.

Or, for Sharing Hobbies and New Creations:

Whether for freelancing or showing off something you did instead of watching tv, you can use your network to share your new creations with a small group that you trust to give you feedback, appropriate of course to where you’re at in the endeavor.

Sharing Photos of Artwork: Upload photos of your creations into documents, add others as Readers so they can view in slideshow mode and add a comment or two.   This is a case where you’re showing off a private gallery so to speak, no need to even have the possibility of others accidentally altering what you’ve shared.

Sharing Music Files: A twist of the previous example but with audio files, the intent being the same, what you’re sharing is your creation and you’re just setting it up for others to easily review and give feedback.  Audio files additionally can be played directly from your network.

The Process:

Setting it up is easy, just create a new folder and add everyone else as a Reader.

After you’ve uploaded your content, inform others with a quick email notification, either of the folder itself or from a specific application item, such as the name of the document (office file, photos and audio).  In the email the recipients receive, there will be a link to go directly to the file in your network to review and add feedback.

Lots of different ways to use your network, just have to get a little creative sometimes for the specific situation.

Of course, in going through your daily activities, say over the course of a week or month, you’re not relegated to a single perspective or network.  You have many and each has a value or purpose in its’ own right.  There’s your family, friends, work relationships, neighbors, and yet other groups for new interests and hobbies.  Within each of these could branch out to 3, 4 or more networks, giving you a range of maybe 5 and 20 networks that you could be regularly involved with.

By keeping them separate, they maintain their focus and can move along comfortably at their own place, whether slow, fast, or plateau no matter.   So, while having one network to just integrate everything may seem nice and convenient, at the end of the day you end up sacrificing focus and quality.  People aren’t as free to share and collaborate in environments they don’t have control of.  Maybe why you hear so many stories of great ideas first being transcribed on napkins instead of the classroom, ironic but the fact it happens so often means the environment has at least a little to do with it.

As 5, 10 or even 20 networks might seem crazy and repetitive for more public networks, with private networks, it’s completely manageable and as you’re always in control, you’re always building for something more.  Sure being part of a network with a gazillion followers might seem like an interesting ego trip, but actual collaboration and sharing, giving and receiving from others will always be more valuable, as you have a stronger balance to go forward with.

To change from one network to another, just click the “Switch Network” link, as shown below:

As noted, you can also have multiple networks open in separate tabs, helpful in working with a couple simultaneously, but with little more focus than all jumbled together.

How about you, how many networks do you think it makes sense to go with?  3, 4, 12?  And if you don’t already having your network for them, why not?   Sure, while it’s not free (except the Spark network), the other plans go from +20 to 100 people at prices negligible compared to having your own place on the web to comfortable communicate and collaborate with. Or, most likely negligible compared to a single event or activity with the group, but with having your own network, you can take advantage of anytime you want. Plus, some networks will be free as they’re just starting (the Spark networks), others you’ll be a member of, and maybe just 1 or 2 you’re actually paying for.

Try it out for yourself with the Spark plan, let us know if you need help getting started.

Such is the case with your morning cup of coffee.  During that initial 30-60 minutes or so that you’re using to get caught up, clean up some emails and get your day planned out, you can also use your Odysen network to go through a number of news feeds, similar to the traditional morning paper, which hardly anyone still uses anymore, but nevertheless the point of it remains, getting a quick reset or update of any changes before the rest of the day begins.

You can organize your news feeds or blogs in different folders, here’s an example of setting it up and going through it:

1. Initial Setup

Starting with an initial main folder, call it Marketing, create a different sub-folder for each niche that your product or service can be involved with, of which you’ll be adding news feeds or blogs.  This can help to be more aware of what’s really happening, both from the actual blog as well as the follow-up comments.   If you’re involved with 10 different niches (or one larger niche with many smaller areas), you could add 5-10 blogs to each, giving 50-100 in total.    This may seem like a big number to initially create, but making a point to add ~5 per day, you’re ready to go in 2-3 weeks, able to use or share with others with no extra work needed.

2. How to Use:

Once set up, just log into your Odysen network, go to your Marketing folder and click the News application tab.   The initial view you’ll see is the most recent article from each source and the date that it was posted.   You can view all your news feeds at once, or click the Hide Sub-Folders button to see only the news feeds from that folder.   If you see an article of interest, such as a change or something you think you could learn from, just click the name of the article and it’ll be opened in a new browser tab.

By the time you’ve finished your coffee, you’ve gone through your own self-created morning newspaper, tailored just for you.   Afterwards, you can also have a folder for other marketing activities, such as adding website links for your own website, blog, other promotional networks, or moving on to yet other folders or application tabs as appropriate.

Additionally, with the smaller display options, if living in the city you can comfortably use with your iPad or other tablet at your favorite coffee shop, add in a little outside/neighborhood perspective.

What do you think, other ideas or ways to help start the day with?

From that, clearing the baggage so to speak, here’s what you won’t find when having your own network.

What You Won’t Find:

1. Never Ending Ads: With your own network, all you see is the content from you and others in your network.  This means no banner ads, no pop-ups, no audio ads, no scams, no taking your content and placing it in an ad, gone, vanquished, liquidated, roaming elsewhere.

2. Lack of Humor: On more public networks, one has to be a little careful of sarcasm, anybody taking everything at face value.  With your own network, the intent is understood, being a fool is cherished and punch lines are free to flow.

3. Taking Ownership of Your Content: It’s your network, you control the content and what’s done with it, obviously helpful with people in any business or freelancing environments but also for groups and personal not wishing to have their content used in someone else’s ad, otherwise becoming known as derivative works.

4. Lack of Support: With some networks, getting support can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, good luck.   With a private network such as Odysen, as you’re the customer, customer support is aligned to you, the ones using the product.  If you think this or that feature would be helpful, let us know.  If you need help getting started, all you need to do is ask, through either Support or the Help Desk.   We’ll get back to you within 24 hours with a detailed response or if needed, can schedule a chat or phone call to further clarify.

5. Unwanted Changes: As again you’re the customer, any changes are made only for your benefit, assuring quality improvements without having to scramble in adjusting to a change benefiting someone else, such as a third party or advertiser.

6. Stalkers: No worries of posting content, or names, that could be used to attract unwanted attention.  Nothing like meeting someone for the first time and finding out they know all about you to get quick refresher on the value of privacy.

7. Distracting Games: While games can be a popular way to unwind, they also can end up sucking up way too much time and after awhile you realize life is just too short for games, games and more games.  Plus, most of the time life is weird enough, nothing extra is really required if paying attention.   With an Odysen network, you get applications that are practical and useful, helpful for working on a project in a work setting as well as with a personal environment, with content focused on shared photos, favorite websites and blogs or scheduling important events.

8. A Single Identity: Life is not as simple as a single identity, we are different roles or perspectives for different groups and environments.  By setting up multiple networks, you can keep those perspectives in their appropriate places, whether this is as colleague in a small business, organizing projects for freelancing activities, involvement with groups and organizations or sharing content with family, friends or hobby activities.

9. Spam Mail: On more public networks, you can much more easily get exposed to a variety of unasked for solicitations, sometimes ok, most often not ok.   With your own network, it’s similar to having people in your business office or home, updates or changes are from people you trust, keeping the quality of communications as high in your network as your own preferred environment.

10. Fads: Here today, gone tomorrow, such is the nature with latest and greatest in the face of time, constantly bringing on the new.   With your own network, you’re not looking to join what others are doing, but rather focused on communication or collaboration with a network you already have and in all likelihood will continue. at least beyond the length of the latest fad.

What You Will Find:

When having your own network you get to axe loads of baggage and get back to valued communication.  Or to flip the list from above, what you do get:

1. Only content from your network, no ads.
2. A comfortable network to embrace the fool.
3. Ownership of your content.
4. Quality support, 24 hour response.
5. New features or changes are aligned to you.
6. A trusted network, no stalkers.
7. Applications to help focus on activities and projects.
8. Ability to use for different types of groups, using multiple networks and display names as appropriate.
9. Quality communications, emails only from those in your network.
10. Focus, how to work better with your existing networks.

In summary, with having your own network you can drop the baggage and keep the hassle free communication and content sharing.  Try it out for yourself with the free Spark plan, can include 5 people, use of all the applications and 1 GB of storage.  For larger networks, you have economical plans to expand as appropriate.

What hobbies?  Given it’s summer, probably a little focus on the outdoors would be a bad place.   Here’s twenty, of course in no particular order, with a little example for each:

1. Napping:  Create a list in a note of all the best places to take a nap in the summertime, nap them all.  Granted this probably isn’t the most ambitious of the list, but have to start somewhere, baby steps.

2. Plant a Garden:  Big, small, start with a crawl, add events for new plantings to be done, upload photos into documents of the progress to share with others.

3. Geocaching:  Add websites of favorite geocaching maps, photos of your discoveries.

4. Fishing: Add a supplies list to a note, websites and blogs of the hot spots, share the folder only with others in the know.

5. Camping: Schedule the event with others, add actions for extra equipment needed.

6. Picnics: Add a website of the location, actions for a potluck.

7. Read a Library:  Well, maybe not quite but add a note of a slightly smaller list of books you’d like to learn or go through, share with others in your network a review of each.

8. Playing Music: Catch the summer creative spirit and record a few tunes to upload and share.  Others can play directly from your network or download to their preferred music player.

9. Road Trips: Schedule the longer event and share with others to let them know when you’re leaving/returning, share notes and photos of your experiences.

10. Writing: Get around to that short story or novel you’ve been thinking about.  Upload backups into documents, get feedback of drafts from others in comments.

11. Volunteer Work:  Help yourself by helping others in Patch Adams style, schedule events with email alerts and websites or blogs for areas of interest.

12. Barn Building: Well, maybe not exactly but you can use actions to organize a larger community or neighborhood project.

13. Cooking: Take advantage of all the fresh produce with new meal creations, share your recipes in a note, add photos for proof.

14. Summer Drinks: Need something to wash down the food with.   Can try with a simple Mojito or get more adventurous with your own Meade, ready to go in as little as five days, perfect on a hot summer day when chilled. Share the secret ingredients and instructions with a detailed note.

15. Outdoor Concerts: Add websites and blogs of main venues, schedule an event with an email alert for a little extra preparation, share photos with others afterwards.

16. Paint a Picture: Make a list of supplies needed in a note, once done, take a photo and upload to show others, start taking bids, .

17. Hiking: Add a few websites of useful online resources, such as those with trail maps, weekly get-togethers, or other tips and suggestions.

18. Learn Astronomy:  Take advantage of the warmer summer evenings.  Add blogs from experts to help you pay extra attention to changes happening, never the same exact sky twice.

19. Photography:  Take up more than a passive interest and really become aware of your environment.  Share some of your photos with others in your network in documents.

20. Hone a Craft:  Call it scratching your Artisan itch.   Make up a plan in a note, add websites of where to get supplies needed and share photos of work completed.

What are the Advantages with using in your own network?

Well, besides the application examples, far and away the biggest advantage you get is assured privacy.  This opens up your communication to be ok for sharing when your going to be on a trip, photos from special events or occasions, or organizing content or resources for your own creative activities.

If you have some extra time over the weekend, try out it out for yourself with the free Spark network.

As you can see, clicking Hide Folders, #1, will minimize the folders as displayed in the 2nd screenshot.  The following options are ways to further customize your views:

• Sub-Folders:  Allows you set up a core list of main folders with a myriad of appropriate sub-folders, intuitive for scaling and organizing your network.

• Hide Summary: This allows you to hide the summary of the folder, including the name, description and who’s included (as an owner, editor or reader).

• Hide Sub-Folders: For filtering content shown in the applications, by default it will show all the content for both that folder as well as any sub-folders, just like the All folder.  Helpful for seeing an instant big picture perspective.  To see only the content for that folder, click the button Hide Sub-Folders and the filtered content will be displayed.

To summarize, if working with a smaller display, you have lots of options to adapt your Odysen network for your preferred environment.   Learn more about the folder options or give it a try with the free Spark network!

Well, at least relative to the previous incarnation.  Why the change?

Too many people we talk with that use the network and really like it but complain about how hard it is to describe exactly what Odysen is or everything you can do with it.

Typical Conversation:

Here’s a little parody of one of these, or at least the general idea of it.

Them: “I like using the network I’ve set up, but when explaining to others, have a hard time for some reason explaining what it is, because well, I use it for a lot of things.”

Me: “Well.., that’s sort of the idea.  A network that’s flexible for a wide range of interests or perspectives, just like real life.   You have one group that you’re born with, your family, others that happen over the years such as different friends and colleagues, others that you’re currently involved with and yet others that are for new interests, places you might be going to.  With Odysen, you can set up a different network for each, allowing each group of perspectives to take its’ own course.   Some might be more interested in one set of perspectives and it’s a network full of just those, but with focus, or even intensity.  Others will be different, but each are generally started with something they already have in common, could even call it a purpose, and are starting at a higher level, at least versus a more public network where everything has to start at much different level, to make clear for a much wider range of audiences or perspectives.”

Them: “So, you control who’s in your network.”

Me: “Yeah, but not only that, you can set up different folders within the network for even more diverse levels of collaboration.   Such as a small business setting up different folders for people working in different areas, such as for marketing, sales, development or your operations and financial activities.   Or for a group or organization setting up some folders for those helping to manage and organize activities, while having other folders for the actual members of the organization.”

Them: “In other words, you control what they see.”

Me: “Exactly.  Additionally, there are more options for different types of users.  For example, you can add other people to your network as an Advanced or Basic user.  Where Advanced users can create new folders on your network and Basic users can’t, but can work with any of the applications within the folders that have been shared with them.  This can be helpful for when in the small business example, adding full time employees as Advanced users and part time employees as Basic users, to check in on activities or projects being worked on, but not spending extra time organizing and setting it up.  Likewise with the organization example,  you would add people that are helping to organize activities as Advanced users and other members as Basic users.   Plus, when sharing a folder, others can be added as an owner, editor or reader, regardless if they’re an Advanced or Basic user.   This gives a little bit of order when sharing an actual folder.   Owners can share the folder with others, editors can work with the applications and readers can only view or add comments.”

Them: “So basically, you control what they can do.”

Me: “Yeah, but not in a bad way.   I mean, this is your network after all.  Maybe similar to your home or your place of business.  While sure, you’re open to people stopping by, even inviting them, and being as gracious a host as appropriate, at the same time it’s not giving free reign to do whatever they want, and a certain set of unwritten rules are adhered to.  So it’s just like saying here’s my house, you’re free to hang out in this room or that one, but the baby is sleeping in this other room, so it’s off limits.  Or with a business, this is obviously a closed network for many reasons, as what is officially produced or published usually has a certain amount of polish, where you don’t see or need to see everything that went into it, the secret sauce if you will, some might call it copyright, which is the ownership of your content, just like the items in your residence or you could even say ideas in your mind.”

Them: “No kidding.  It’s your network, your contacts, your content, you should control it!”

Me: “But how to summarize all that in a sentence or phrase is beyond me.”

Them: “How about, Take control of your network, Today!”

Me: “Bingo, nothing like the present, you nailed it.   Sounds a bit like an ad though, which is probably the last thing anybody wants to get near to or even have a sniff of from other experiences and with an Odysen network, as you’re the customer, no need for ads.  This means no profiling you as much as a possible to serve you up the latest and greatest something of which there is no need, just random distractions.   No pop-ups, spam mails from somebody you’ve never met, and not saying that’s bad, it’s great to meet new people but when it gets to 20-30 per day, a person can’t keep up.   Not only that, but I’ve heard some ads just grabbing your content and using it to hock their wares, without your permission or anything. “

Them: “I hate that, No Ads”

Me: “But who can blame them, I mean, if advertisers are their customer, they’re just doing whatever they can to support the customer.  Of course, that’s what you get for free, not really free, with the cost being all the distractions you have to put up with.   If you don’t value your time very much, maybe no big deal.  If so, then it’s something you then have to figure out.  Only problem is, by the time you do, it’s probably already so obvious that by that time you’re paying an arm and leg and who knows what else.”

Them: “Maybe another way to put it, Odysen is hassle free collaboration.”

Me: “Yeah, that could work.”

Them: “Or, as secure as you want it to be?”

Me: “That too, as least as far as not being completely public, it’s all up to you.”

Them: “Seems simple, what was the problem again?”

…With that, or something close to that, you have the new Odysen home page, hope you like it!  If not, no big deal, give it a week or two and no doubt it’ll change to something new…