Zach's PEN #51: Introducing Markee
2021 Week 28: First quick video tour of Markee courtesy of me and Newton
Dear PENpals,
My friend and colleague Newton and I recorded our very first intro videos to the product that is Markee. So much work has gone into this thing over the past year and a half and it's hard to believe that we're finally and the same time already and at the same time just getting started.
Markee is a set of tools that let you easily spin up fully-branded places on the internet where you can meet people and put whatever you want. Here's a mashup of our screencasts. You'll get the gist in the first minute:
Rather than generate a Zoom link that looks like zoom.us/jpz09709gobbledywobbledy8759 you can invite people to something like https://janicelovestea.com/tea-room. And in that room you can have anything you like. And when you want to meet again, you can go back to that same room and everything will be just as you left it.
If you have an online course, your students can ask each other questions through chat and direct messages. They can collaborate on homework and documents.
If you have a team that works on multiple projects you can have a room for each project with everything associated (files/meeting agendas/task lists) nicely organized.
You can fully brand the space from logos/fonts/colors/CSS (web styling language) all the way to the domain you use. The word "Markee" will never show up anywhere for anyone who meets you. Markee is a tool centered on the people using it, not on itself. Slack is all about Slack. Zoom is all about Zoom. When you use Markee, people come to your place. Markee just provides the tool for you to build it.
I'm hoping to get lots of friends and family using Markee. As a longtime early adopter of software, I can tell you that there's something special about being part of an app as it's being built, providing feedback to the people making it, and advocating for a group of users that you represent.
A demo would be a great opportunity to catch up with some of you, and if you'd be open to it, I'd like to record some of them the way Newton and I recorded the video above. I could then send it to others.
Holler at me.
Much love, PENpals,
Zach
P. S. Just found out that Biz Markie has died way too young at 57. One of my favorite memories of him was years ago when he was the musical guest on a late night show and played a cover of Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” But here’s the thing: He just played a faithful cover of the song. So unexpected. So real. So fun. Absolutely delightful artist. Related to Biz: Naturally, our Markee internal team place is at biz.markee.io. I also need to credit Biz for some portion of why everyone seems to know how we intend them to pronounce Markee.