Website Spotlight: Kona

Kona is a social platform to bring all the components of people’s busy lives together into one manageable space, suitable for use in the living room, class room and community hall.  Whether or not a parent is “tech savvy,” Kona’s easy-to-use interface allows individuals to quickly understand the platform and begin using its many tools and resources.

“My friends tell me that I am a pretty busy mom, but I don't really think that I have more going on than anybody else. I was skeptical about introducing a whole new piece of technology into my life, but using Kona is so intuitive and easy-to-use,” said Meredith Kent. “I can access it anywhere – on my phone or on my computer, it's available to me at all times. Using Kona allows me to organize my life in a way that works for me.” (Hear more from Meredith and others in this video: http://bit.ly/WatchKona .)

Kona is available for free online at Kona.com, in the App Store and for Android devices on Google Play.

Parents can utilize the Kona platform to:

·         Organize carpools, play-dates and sports team activities through the interactive calendar, so that everyone participating knows what day they are driving, whose house the children will be at on a particular day and time, and when and where practice and games will take place

·         Plan parties and organize multi-family vacations through the ‘conversation’ , ‘task’ and file sharing features

·         Coordinate, organize and execute professional, personal and volunteer events (PTA fundraisers at school, book clubs, Girl Scout activities and more)

·         Create virtual to-do lists with the ‘task’ feature for hosting a dinner party with friends and managing household projects (like painting the nursery or building a new deck)

·         Stay synched on decisions and progress with a spouse, realtor, builder and banker while building a new house

 

I had the chance to interview Scott DeFusco and Jeff Eckerle, co-founders or Kona, about the site.

1) What inspired the development of Kona?

The vision for Kona emerged from the experiences of co-founders Scott DeFusco and Jeff Eckerle with thousands of businesses over the years and the inefficiency caused by team underperformance. Scott -- Deltek VP of product strategy & management-- was frustrated by the overall collaboration process, which primarily consisted of e-mails and attachments. The lack of engagement sparked the concept for Kona with Jeff (also part of the Deltek team -- a 30-year old leader in ERP software solutions for over 16,000 customers).

 

Scott and Jeff saw how engaging sites like Facebook and Twitter were and wondered if there was a way to make enterprise software just as engaging. They wanted to focus on projects and tasks — a project management tool for people actually doing the work. The beta solution was created internally. Once they stated showing the it to potential customers, they hit a nerve that evolved into the next big idea.

 

Regardless of the work focus, people continued to highlight how hard it was to get things done with those outside of of the office (partners, contractors, customers, etc). They also noted how Kona was ideal for other groups across their lives -- from volunteer organizations to church groups, children's sports teams and more. The team focused their attention on making it easy to use Kona for managing both personal tasks and work functions in different “spaces,” centered around conversations rather than simply tasks.

 

Kona is now one of the most robust social collaboration platforms available today ... allowing people to get connected, get organized and get things done together with the various groups in their lives in one centralized place -- by computer, tablet or mobile device.

2) Where did the name come from?

The original code name for the project was TeamBook ... an obvious play on Facebook for teams. The idea was pitched to Deltek's CEO and he was extremely supportive -- but insisted on a better name.

The design team was brainstorming on early product concepts one day. During a break, one of the team's designers (who was a triathlete) discussed the upcoming epitome of all triathlons in Kona, Hawaii. Then one of them said, "Wait... Kona -- that would be a cool code name!" They ran it by the CEO and he loved it.

 

As they started to use the code name, it became obvious that there were undercurrents to it that had strong brand implications.

• The calm and tranquility of Hawaii.
• A reward for a job well done and a well deserved break.
• The triathlon -- representing the best in the world.
• The biggest of all challenges conquered.
• The coffee and coffee shop vibe, symbolizing the casual gathering place where it's still possible and productive to work.

At that point, they realized that the code name WAS indeed the product name. They aggressively went after the website address and the rest is history. The team and company built an extensive brand and visual product design around the feeling people had when they heard "Kona" ... and Kona.com was born!

 

3) What are the advantages of using Kona over things like email lists or other social collaboration sites?

Rather than the typical activities centered around email lists and other social collaboration sites, Kona is conversation-centric. While task management apps revolve around keeping track of to-do items, Kona focuses on the interactions and discussions between people. You can of course track tasks in Kona, but it's designed to better facilitate the actions and communication that typically happens in email.

Kona is all about keeping conversations and files in the context of a task, discussion or calendar event that a group or project team may be exploring or collaborating on. For a person involved in many different groups, Kona organizes all of these communications, tasks and calendar events within each group -- but centralized in one place. Each Kona space serves as a common meeting spot for the whole group to stay organized together -- rather than each one keeping track of everything in their own way.

4) How does Kona protect users' privacy?

Kona is social -- with a purpose. Unlike Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, Kona was built with one primary goal: to help people at work and home get things done … together. For that reason, everything we do is social — but private. The information is and always will be safe and secure with Kona.

 

Kona was designed for privacy. Most social networks make the information you share public. Kona was designed to only share information with the people that users are connected to in business and life — then in their Kona spaces. Kona’s user interface was designed to provide participants and companies with piece of mind and trust. So, all of your connections are secure — always.

Any information in Kona is considered classified. The information is never migrated or used outside of the live Kona network. We never share your information with third-parties; details are never sold for use in other data mining activities. All files in stored on the Kona servers are protected through encryption.

 

Cloud computing, mobile connectivity and social foundations are the new norm. With Kona, these elements are built into the offering -- along with security and privacy for all users.