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OrganizedWisdom featured in the Economist

We kicked off a great week with great coverage of OrganizedWisdom in this week's Economist in great article on Health 2.0
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9719054

Beginning this week, we're at TechCrunch40 and Health 2.0. We're also speaking at the URAC Conference in Las Vegas on October 4th and then the Information Therapy Conference in Park City on October 10th.

Stay tuned for our big announcement on Monday.

Health Seekers Get Their Own Social Networking Site

Former iVillage and Privacy Council Executives Launch OrganizedWisdom.com to Help Families, Groups, and Health Care Professionals Collaborate and Share Health Knowledge

New York, NY – OrganizedWisdom, LLC today announced that it has launched the first health-focused social networking site, where consumers, health care professionals, and health organizations can collaborate and share health knowledge on more than 6,500 health topics. OrganizedWisdom.com was founded by Internet industry veterans Steven Krein and Unity Stoakes to improve how people find and share health information by linking trusted, evidence-based information with practical user-generated health advice, ratings and recommendations.

The company’s patent-pending technology makes it easy for users to contribute their most important experiences and recommendations on any disease, medication, treatment or health issue. In addition, through the company’s SponsoredWisdom™ program, health care companies can contribute educational research and patient advocate wisdom in a credible and safe environment. OrganizedWisdom is designed to clearly identify the source of all health information (doctor-reviewed, user-generated, and industry-contributed) for consumers and physicians, as well as to help health care companies avoid many of the risks that currently limit their participation in online communities.

“By organizing the collective wisdom from millions of people who have personal health experiences, and aligning it with professional knowledge and doctor-reviewed content, we can help the public make better informed decisions,” said Steven Krein, CEO of OrganizedWisdom. “Because the content is community-rated, segregated by source, and structured by topic, this one-stop-shop approach makes it easy for anyone to quickly learn what the doctors have to say, what people with life experience have to say, and what the industry has to say on any health topic.”

“With 80% of Internet users searching online for answers to practical health questions*, it’s not as easy as it should be,” said Unity Stoakes, President of OrganizedWisdom. “There are too many cluttered message boards, distracting banners and generic health information on most health sites. Our goal is to make it easy to safely connect people who need information, advice and support with a health community who can help them. In one-click, users can save, recommend or email any information found on the site to family members or friends who might need it.”

Through a content licensing partnership with the non-profit evidence-based health information leader, Healthwise, OrganizedWisdom is able to leverage one of the most comprehensive health and drug information resources available. More than 75 million times a year people use Healthwise information to help them make better health decisions.

“I like the concept of organizing wisdom and connecting it with scientific information,” said Healthwise CEO Don Kemper. “Giving people accurate, up-to-date medical information is hugely important. Giving them access to the experience of others adds another valuable dimension.”

MANAGEMENT TEAM
The OrganizedWisdom team has worked together building companies for nearly a decade.

Steven Krein, co-founder and CEO, was also co-founder and CEO of Internet marketing firm Promotions.com and its Webstakes subsidiary from start-up in 1996 through its IPO on Nasdaq in 1999 and its subsequent sale to women’s media company iVillage. Krein served as a senior executive at iVillage after completion of the sale in 2002.

Unity Stoakes, co-founder and President, was the Chief Marketing Officer of Promotions.com through start-up and IPO. Stoakes went on to become VP of Marketing at The Privacy Council, a privacy compliance software company helping companies manage HIPPA and data management issues.

Gregg Alwine, Chief Technology Officer, was also the CTO of Promotions.com. Alwine is also CEO of Corsis, which provides technology services to some of the world’s largest companies including McDonalds, iVillage and NBC.

Adam Ingberman, VP, Product Development, spent eight years as VP, Application Development for iVillage. Ingberman is also the VP of Product Development at Corsis

ABOUT ORGANIZEDWISDOM
OrganizedWisdom is a health-focused social networking site that enables consumers, physicians, healthcare professionals and health organizations to collaborate on more than 6,500 health topics. The company, founded by experienced Internet entrepreneurs Steven Krein and Unity Stoakes, aligns doctor-reviewed and user-generated health content to help people make better informed health decisions. Its patent-pending technology and unique organizing structure makes it easy for people to transform their health experiences into valuable wisdom to help others. Visit http://www.organizedwisdom.com.

*Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project.

CONTACT: 
Unity Stoakes 
unity@organizedwisdom.com
646-290-6420

OrganizedWisdom Launches

OrganizedWisdom is live! We're still working on a number of features but you now start searching for health wisdom and sharing your own wisdom on any one of more than 6500 health topics

http://www.organizedwisdom.com

Startup Wisdom!

It was ten years ago this month that Dan, one of my best friend's from high school, and I were putting the pieces in place to launch Webstakes, an online marketing and technology company which would later become Promotions.com. Between December 1995 and December 2002, we got to experience the entire company life cycle -- from start-up with no revenues to growing to $27 million in revenues with almost 200 employees to going public on Nasdaq and seeing a market cap of more than $500 million to ultimately a successful sale to iVillage, another publicly traded company.

I took away a ton of amazing wisdom from the experience that I'm going to begin posting about but today I wanted to address something timely, given the New York City transit strike.

When we were first launching Webstakes, we couldn't have done it without a physical office. For meetings. For a place to house our servers. For the ability for us to collaborate. For a place to log on to the Internet with broadband connection instead of the dial up we had at home. For a place to hang the white board with the milestones which were critical to launching version 1.0 of Webstakes. For a place to make and receive phone calls. For the ability to say "we have an office."

Today, I'm building my new company, OrganizedWisdom, as a virtual company with a team of extremely talented people each in different locations. I'm proud to say "we don't have an office."

Everyone is working together remotely on getting the first version of OrganizedWisdom ready for launch in early 2006. Our collaboration is done online using a great product called Basecamp where we post documents, manage deadlines and post messages.  If we need meetings in person, we're doing it in "third places" like Starbucks. We have dedicated servers located at godaddy.com. We use Typepad for the corporate Website and this blog. We access the Internet from home with broadband connection using Road Runner. Everyone has cell phones and we have unlimited phone calling with Vonage and are able to receive calls anywhere using Skype.  Instant messaging using AIM.  The cost of this launch will be a mere fraction of the cost that we incurred when we launched Webstakes back in 1995. The convenience factor is equally appealing.

So, why I am writing about this today. Unlike most people who work and/or live in New York, our work day is completely unaffected by the fact there is no subway, bus or transit service (this is not to say that it doesn't matter that there is a strike because it does negatively affect so many people around me). It does, however, underscore how much easier it is for certain businesses to allow people to work remotely so as to not be affected by transit strikes, weather or long commutes.

There was in an interesting article in BusinessWeek two weeks ago about the trend of companies allowing people to work from home called "The Easiest Commute of All". It talks about the increasing percentage of people who are working from home...and how companies are finding that allowing workers the flexibility to work remotely actually contributes to increased productivity. (Sun Microsystems says "its virtual workers are 15% more productive than their office-tethered brethren. Our people working these remote schedules are the happiest employees we have, and they have the lowest attrition rates." More than 50% of their workers are able to work from home.

I believe that the one positive thing about this transit strike is that it will cause more businesses to consider allowing their workers to work remotely from home.  I'm not sure how long we'll be able to build this company with no office at all but I'm a believer that, as the article says, "the future of work belongs to those who will log their hours when they want, how they want, and, most important, where they want. Companies will hire brains, not bodies."

Free Day Wisdom!

I'm taking 5 of my 155 annual Free Days and going to South Beach with my brother Howard. I received several emails from people I know asking me about my previous post on Free Days. 

I found a few great articles on The Strategic Coach web site that goes into them in a little more detail:

1. Free Days: Booking time to rejuvenate before — not after — your productive periods.
2. The Freedom of Free Time
3. Taking Great Free Time - Obstacles and Strategies
4. Freedom and Rejuvenation

Share What You Know!

So, I've told you in a previous post about the purpose of my personal blog, TheWisdomBlog. Well, now I want to share my mission with you and the new media company I am building.

If you know me, you know that I enjoy helping others. Especially when those "others" are helping "others". In other words, I really like helping people who help other people. It's the multiplier effect. I help two friends and I know that they, in turn, help two friends. Then those friends help two friends...and so on and so on until finally, it starts to look a lot like a 1970's Breck Hair commercial.

Using that same theory, I want to inspire 10 million people to share their first-hand experience with others. My new venture, OrganizedWisdom™, is an open-source media brand devoted to inspiring people to share their first-hand experiences with others so that anyone can access the resulting wisdom and be able to make better judgments and decisions for themselves and for their families.

This will not be a traditional media company where professional editors, writers and producers create the content.  Searching, reading, listening to or watching OrganizedWisdom, you'll access the world's "wisdom" from an open community of contributors that will include both experts and ordinary people who are committed to sharing, teaching and inspiring others by sharing their first-hand experiences. We'll be combining a searchable database of wisdom with blog-style, user-created editorial and also feature innovative audio and video podcasts via iTunes.

OrganizedWisdom is about sharing. And much of it comes straight from you.

It's commonly referred to as user-created content, or open-source media, and it's created in The OrganizedWisdom Studio, where we make it simple for people to transform the useful elements of first-hand experiences, and infuse them with the insights and confidence that only comes from having “been there and done that.”  While anyone, from an ordinary person to a health care professional, can submit content for OrganizedWisdom, whether or not something is "wise" will be determined and filtered by you based on its popularity, the credibility of the source of the wisdom, how long it has been around and its ability to help predict future events. 

Health & Health care
We will eventually cover many important topics that affect peoples lives, however, for now the focus is going to be on organizing the world's wisdom about health and health care.

Rather than focus on standard medical news or generic information, or negative things like how bad the health care problem is in America, we want the focus on themes of how things are progressing, new innovations in medicine, insurance, new leaders, new ideas, new solutions, new cures and people's life-altering stories. This is not a place to get medical advice or a substitute for professional care but simply a way for people to have access to the health-related "wisdom of the crowds."

By providing organized health-related wisdom, our programming will be designed to help people find the right treatment, the right doctors or health care providers, the right insurance plan or the proper emotional support.

So just to recap, the difference between TheWisdomBlog and OrganizedWisdom is that:

• TheWisdomBlog™ is my personal blog dedicated to sharing my wisdom and the wisdom of others who I find valuable and interesting.
• OrganizedWisdom™ is my media company focused on inspiring others to share their wisdom to help other people. Check back to the site early next year for the launch!