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If a picture tells a thousand words, I’d love to find out how many words a video gets across, especially an animatics video in the deft hands of The Incite Group.  It is an incredible medium for story telling.

In thinking about our anchor video, there was no question that it needed to speak to the independent consultants and freelancers.  After talking extensively with these independent professionals about their world, we wanted to try and capture the intersection of their story with the story of Mavenlink.

We hope you enjoy our take on how Mavenlink supports the ever changing workforce.

This morning Nicole Black released a screencast (audio & video) review of Mavenlink’s comprehensive online collaboration platform built for the consultant/lawyer and their interactions with clients.

In the screencast, Nicole asks Roger Neel and myself questions about Mavenlink in general, walks through a demonstration of the product with us, and speaks to the specific applicability for the legal profession.  It is a short 15-20 minute screencast, and provides a great opportunity to hear firsthand our impressions of the technology.  In the screencast, you will hear about:

• How to invite colleagues/clients into a workspace
• Collaboration options within the workspace
• Upcoming Mavenlink features (Private Networks, Task Management)
• Pricing

As Projects begin to flow into the Mavenlink system, I wanted to share some initial first hand experiences and learnings from my first three Projects as a Client on Mavenlink.

1. Posting Projects as a Client can be almost addicting. It will change the way you think about interacting with external professionals and how you get work done.

2. Managing Projects within Mavenlink provides definition and visibility. I was able to keep tabs on my Projects and quickly share with other colleagues within Mavenlink how things were going, what my extended team was working on, and budgetary guidance for the effort. As Mavenlink roles out groups within the system in the near future, I will be able to provide direct visibility to the progress on my Posted projects with identified colleagues.

3. Posting Projects in Mavenlink is extremely simple, but every ounce of thought put in to the Post will be rewarded in terms of attracting Mavens and speeding the engagement process.

4. Don’t let pricing deter you. On two of my Projects, I needed help refining the appropriate budgetary guidance from the Maven population. Let the Mavens help you establish reasonable budgetary parameters once the Project is clarified and you have the ability to evaluate multiple proposals.

5. Mavens will take advantage of the up front messaging and collaboration opportunities within the system to clarify Project details. Help them help you.

6. Your level of responsiveness in the system is contagious. Just like in your offline relationships, actions speak louder than words. On two of my projects I made a conscientious effort to respond as quickly as possible, and noticed clearly that the Mavens were more responsive as a result. On a third project, I unintentionally dropped the ball and missed a message for nearly four days. You can imagine how hard it was to complain about my Maven’s lack of response for 24 hours.

7. Years of email inertia is hard to overcome. Especially on the first couple of Projects, I had to focus on uploading documents instead of sending emails (see 8 below).

8. Uploading documents and capturing the conversation with my Maven inside of Mavenlink pays dividends. Having all of the communication history, the agreed upon documentation, the interim deliverables and the final deliverables in one place came in handy. As Mavenlink expands the collaboration tools available to both Mavens and Clients, making it easier to never leave the site, this collection of information related to the engagement will become invaluable.

9. Notifications and Messaging are key. As we worked through these initial projects, it became apparent that the ability of Mavens and Clients to interact outside of the workspace is important. You’ll continue to see features rolled out to extend and improve the Notifications and Messaging within Mavenlink.

10. Payment within the Paypal system was quick and easy. Paying with Paypal is straightforward and instantaneous. Paying with a credit card is equally smooth as long as you have not exceeded your credit card payment maximum, as established by Paypal ($2000 during any 90 day period).

To Learn more about Mavenlink, please visit: www.mavenlink.com or on Twitter at twitter.com/mavenlink