The Story of Web Summit 2020: How Collabio Spaces Participated in the Conference
Hi dear readers! As you might know, Collabio Spaces team took part in the Web Summit 2020. Let us share our impressions and results with you!
We held two roundtables about which you can read more here:
1. Co-authoring Documents. What’s Good and What’s Still Missing
This one was held by Egor Goroshko, Development Director at XCDS. He spoke about why teamwork on documents should become faster and better, why it still needs some improvement, which tools there are now and what’s still missing.
2. Under the Hood of Cloudless Collaboration
This roundtable was held by Heorhii Azarov, Engineering Lead at XCDS, he uncovered how to enable team collaboration in a simple WiFi network and make your iPhone the nexus point of documents for co-editing, all without any external server.
We were glad to share our app — Collabio Spaces — with the public, meet new people, discuss the burning questions of the technology world, and just to be partners of the largest tech conference in the world!
So, why did we decide to dedicate all our roundtables to collaboration issues and solutions to them?
First of all, there are still some concerns about documents editing regarding both collaboration and individual use.
1. Privacy concerns
We all know how robust and convenient modern cloud infrastructure is.
Still a number of CIO polls and conducted market researches, show that concerns about privacy and security remain amongst the top 3 blocking factors for moving organisations completely to cloud based infrastructure.
Users want to enjoy cloud convenience but many of them are reluctant to upload their data to public clouds. A number of recent data-leakage cases only adds fuel to that fear.
2. Document organisation complexity
What’s easier? To write a new document or to re-use a previously created one? About 86% of users can’t find the documents they need quickly and 83% of them often end up recreating documents.
3. Connection issues
We are all used to good Internet connection. Good WiFi can be placed almost, at the top, of the modern Maslow needs hierarchy. But is it good everywhere? Will it always be good?
This is why a number of users are interested in a cloudless local first approach to collaboration.
A number of applications address this approach today: Firechat, Underpass, Feem, and so on.
And so, let’s talk about applications which enables cloudless co-authoring of complex documents.
Collaboration. A separate field with its own issues…
Modern technologies let us co-write, co-edit and collaborate, but any team work requires good organisation. There is plenty of great tools for working with texts and spreadsheets, but all of them require a constant access to the web. What if access to the Internet is not available — for example an electricity blackout for technical reasons or during serious political-related riots (who knows, 2020 has not yet ended :D), or when you travel across country and the connection is not very good.
You may be surprised, but according to the 2020 BroadbandNow research, some states in the US, which seem to be almost fully covered with Internet, still experience troubles with connection. For example, the worst speed/price/coverage can be found in Alaska, Montana, New Mexico, Nebraska and Vermont. People also report issues with the connection speed in South Dakota, Iowa and Maine. The best covered states are New Jersey, New York and Maryland, but the connection to the web, costs much higher there. Unbelievable but true! And we’re not yet discussing 5G and other tech innovations, just access to the Internet and the ability to use cloud services.
So, with many cases of various technical issues, we are still dependent on our common infrastructure. There is more information on that in the two articles, links to which you can find at the beginning of this post. ;)
Our solution is a local-first offline collaboration tool!
We introduced Collabio Spaces — a comprehensive document editor which enables real time co-authoring without Internet access.
This app unites the concept of a robust text and spreadsheets editor, convenient document organiser called “spaces” and, of course, our main highlight — local P2P collaboration technology. All you need are your teammates around with their Apple devices.
A team of 5–10 people can work on a mid-sized document simultaneously! Connectivity distance is limited by your device’s hotspot WiFi range.
So, you can enjoy the smooth cloudless co-editing wherever you are — even at the international space station! ;)
What are we up to next?
So, we got lots of positive feedback at Web Summit and are very happy that we took part in this event. We came closer to our users, and our users came closer to us!
We plan to attend it in 2021 too, so if you’re into it, follow our pages on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Also, there is a special offer for the occasion of our participation in the Web Summit 2020: a 3-months subscription with a 14-day trial. Hurry up to get Collabio Spaces app with a free test-drive and leave your feedback in the App Store! ;)
