The document provides an overview of leveraging cloud technologies and startup methods to boost a startup or library. It discusses using startup business practices and tools to help eliminate costs and operate like a lean startup. Specific tools and strategies are presented for areas like project management, communication, email, hosting, monitoring, ticketing systems, and funding resources. The overall aim is to help libraries and startups lower costs and scale efficiently using cloud and lean startup approaches.

1. Leveraging Cloud Technologies
To Boost Your Startup
Brian Pichman
Evolve Project

2. Thinking Like A Startup
This session will drive into the methods and tools to use to help limit or eliminate residual costs on software and hardware to help your
patrons or your library operate like a lean startup. Using startup centric business practices and six sigma principles you will learn how to
analyze your implementation and continually monitor you bottom line. At the end of the session you will be able to make an immediate
financial impact upon your library or develop a program to help your patrons launch their ideas.

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What’s the impact?
Why is this important?
Growth Being able to scale is always a startup challenge – so we will focus on the proper
way to plan your business, the processes and tools used in management of projects,
and tools to be successful to scale rapidly without hurting the bank.

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What would you DO IF YOU HAD….

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The Art of Asking
“Don't make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk
that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot
Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.” – TED Talks
Amanda Palmer – The Art of Asking

6. 6
The Start Up Model
Brainstorming to Branding to Marketing to Social Media to Funding

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Branding
What “value add” do
you provide?

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A brand is the essence of one’s own unique story. This is true for
personal branding as it is for business branding. The key, though, is
reaching down and pulling out the authentic, unique you. Otherwise,
your band will just be a façade.
- Paul Biedermann
Think of your brand as a person
Branding

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Brand as a Personality
“Brand personality is a set of human characteristics that are
attributed to a brand name. A brand personality is something to
which the consumer can relate; an effective brand increases
its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits that a specific
consumer segment enjoys.” - Investopedia
There are five main types of brand personalities: excitement,
sincerity, ruggedness, competence and sophistication. Customers
are more likely to purchase a brand if its personality is similar to their
own

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Building Relationships with Your Brand
Consistent tone of voice | Strong customer service is key.

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Brands should be Experiences

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Implementing This In Library Space
Putting It To Practice
• Patrons want space to work on ideas (whiteboards)
• -Bonus - Smartboards
• Access to different pieces of software to document out their
ideas
• Telepresence – able to video chat with people from
anywhere in the world
• Host workshops on Business Models, Branding, and
Marketing. Ask local community members to run the
workshops
Brainstorming and Branding

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Marketing is About Building Relationships
• Meet vendors/companies for
breakfast/lunch/dinner. Talk to them
about your Brand and Pitch
• Share ideas and visions
• Brainstorm and collaborate
• Become friends (with set boundries) with
your vendors/companies.

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Expanding Your Circle of Influence
We all have a circle of influence
My friends / colleagues who like the work I do
They have a circle of influence
Those people are the ones who like the work my colleague does
Chances are, I don’t know most of them
That group of people also has a circle of influence of people who
trust them
Chances are, I don’t know any of them
^--This is your audience, the people you need to introduce
your BRAND too.

20. https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/

23. https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/what-is-social-media-management/

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Analytics
You should schedule updates and posts
about you/library/project so your
followers may remain informed, and
share those updates with others.
Use graphics and videos!
Commun.it is recommended – free
limited, but worth paying for the plan.
HootSuite is good – but they have been
limiting the free version more and more.

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Implementing This In Library Space
Putting It To Practice
• Access to software such as Adobe Creative Suite to create
multimedia.
• Rooms to film and record content
• Equipment that can be checked out to create content
(cameras, video cameras, lighting etc.)
• Host workshops on Marketing, Social Media,
Photography/Video/Editing
Marketing and Social Media

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Project Management

27. What Projects Are You Working On?

28. What If You Are A ”One Man Band”
• Keeping yourself on task is important regardless of if it’s a personal
project for yourself or you are working on the project solo
• Keeping yourself (or others) accountable is crucial to successful project
management
• Creating a schedule and sticking to it

29. Definitions
• Project
• Sequence of tasks that lead toward a singular goal; requires time, people and
resources.
• Deliverables
• Results or the outcomes of parts of the projects (plans, documents, etc.)
• Deadlines
• Each task and phase of the project has a due date. Deadlines keep a project on task
and focused
• Scope
• Involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals, deliverables,
features, functions, tasks, deadlines, and ultimately costs. In other words, it is what
needs to be achieved and the work that must be done to deliver a project
• Scope Creep is when during a project new “ideas” or deliverables are suggested

30. https://medium.com/@nishagashmeer/project-scope-management-111b334a53a4

31. Resource Determination
• Scheduling Phase
• Managers decide on
• How much time each activities takes
• How many people / material required
• The order in which these activities need to take place
• Assign Resources to the specific activities
• Add “Buffer” Time
• Document actual hours spent on the project while running – this can
help you benchmark for accuracy for future projects
• Also useful when you believe one resource can do a task in X amount of time,
but all the tasks are 2X amounts of time, you can quickly work to adjust the
project timeline/resources

33. Estimating Time Accurately
• Understand Requirements
• Business Requirement Analysis – Process in which you interview steak holders
document their priorities and estimate based on what they find important
• Work Break Down Structures – Hierarchy of how parts of the project are split
down into work buckets and how they funnel to the solve of the project
• GAP Analysis – Comparing actual performance with potential performance
and the needs to get to the final future state.
• Drill Down – Writing Down the problem on one side of the page and then its
components of the issue to the right of that. Other variations is the funnel
where you break the project down in stages to the smallest parts.

34. Gap Analysis
Drill Down
Work Break Down Structures

35. Making Estimates
• Once you’ve broken down the project a bit more, estimate the time for
each of the tasks and not the project as a whole
• List all of the assumptions, exclusions and constraints that are relevant –
and note the sources (people/process/things) that you will rely on
• This is important when estimates are questioned and risk areas for project delays
• People are often over optimistic when giving you timelines, and may
underestimate the time needed
• Assume that your resources will only be productive for 80 percent of the
time.
• Build in time for unexpected events such as sickness, supply problems, equipment
failure, accidents and emergencies, problem solving, and meetings.

36. Project Methodologies
• Agile
• Allows you to break projects down into separate manageable tasks, which can be
tackled in short iterations or sprints (hour or two segments)
• Agile is much more fluid and collaborative with quick production cycles and lots of
feedback and iteration
• Waterfall
• a hierarchy of sequential tasks that ends with a big product launch – works well when
all tasks are predetermined and there isn’t a lot of need of discussion throughout the
project
• Six Sigma
• Is business methodology that aims to improve processes, reduce waste and errors,
and increase customer satisfaction throughout an organization. Driven by data and
statistical analysis, Six Sigma provides a way to minimize mistakes and maximize value
in any business process
• You can get certified in this process – highly recommended. Really good toolset to
master if working with a team that is more about data and ROI

39. Not All Projects Obtain The Goal

40. Project Focuses
• For Projects Impacting Patrons or Employees
• Put an emphasis on the the entire experience
• This can include training, on-boarding,
announcement of the project, and so forth
• No one likes a surprise – overcommunication to
end users or impacted parties is crucial.
• Allows you to get in front of issues or the rumor mill.
• Central Location For Information
• Don’t have some files on OneDrive/Google
Drive, others on a shared drive, and others
buried in an email thread.

41. A Good Project Plan
• Answers  Project Goals and Outcomes
• SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Based)
• Identify Risks and Potential Problem Areas

42. Setting Expectations (And Sharing Them)
• Clarity of Risk and Expectations avoids disappointment
• Example: If the vendor doesn’t mean the deadline by DATE we will be delayed
by X many days.

43. Collaboration Documents – Google Drive

44. Collaboration Documents - OneDrive

45. Meeting Tips n Tricks
• “Parking Lots” – don’t get stuck in the weeds, schedule a sticky topic
between individuals outside of the meeting
• Meetings are not for communicating updates (do that in an email)
• Meetings are Discuss and Decide
• Everyone who leaves a meeting should have action items
• If they don’t – then this shouldn’t have been a meeting
• Designate a note taker and stick to an agenda
• Put these in the same location as all the other project
deliverables
Says no one ever 

46. StartUpTool Kit

47. Starting aStart
Up

48. Team
 A strong team should be well educated
 Medium
 Blinkist

51. Team
 A team should be encouraged and rewarded.You want to build
passion for the work they do.
 http://kudosnow.com
 https://www.growbot.io/ (works withTeams and Slack)
 OfficeVibe.Com - Employee Feedback

56. Eliminate
 Not all ideas are good
 Run Surveys to find what ideas work / what doesn’t.
 https://www.typeform.com/

59. TakingAction
onSurveys
 If an idea is bad….scrap it
 If a process fails, remove or fix it
 If you’re spending money on something that isn’t be used, then
stop it.

60. Schedule
Efficiency
 Scheduling the correct amount of resources is difficult.
 Multiple Hats
 Identify the minimum resource for optimum efficiency.
 Humanity App (ShiftPlanning)

62. Calculations
 How many patrons do you see a day?
 How many people check out materials?
 You can pull this through a report
 Break out interaction volume by hour for each day.
 How long does it take per interaction (average).

64. Outsourcing
 Using outsourced resources to get things done faster / efficiently.
 Fiverr
 HiByron

67. Tool Box
Communication
 Communication is crucial to the success of a start-up (and a library).
Being able to provide timely and sortable information, conversations,
and embodying team work is important.
 Facebook at Work
 Excellent internal social network for work use
 Price: Free
 Slack
 My personal favorite
 Price: Free and paid plan starts at $6.67 per user/per month
 Discounts for education/non-profits/more

70. Slack Features
• Channels and Direct
Messages
• Allow for Organization
of Conversation
Threads
• Keep Individual &
Restricted Group
Messages Private

72. Integrations Galore!

73. Integrations!
• If integrations or plug-
ins don’t exist, leverage
custom programming to
build your own
integrations from your
work apps.
• Open API & Email to
Channel Integrations
allow for many apps to
be connected to Slack.

74. Collaborate With Outside People
• Guests can:
• View message history
and access files shared
in the channel(s) they
can access
• See and direct
message or group
message team
members who are in
the same channel(s)*
• See other team
members and their
profile information

75. Drop some more knowledge about
SLACK.
• Things you can do with Slack:
• Setup notifications based on departments
• Setup alerts according to channel importance
• Have patrons email brookrequest@yourlibrary.com email will go to
Slack channel to notify staff of need.

78. Using Slack to Keep Track
• Emojis!

79. Tool Box
Email
 Having email is usually a costly service. Considering hosting with
Google or Office 365.
 Google Apps
 Gmail and has more products within.
 Price: Starts at $5 to $25 per user per month
 Office 365
 Microsoft products integrate easily, expensive minimum price.
 Price: Starts at $4 per user per month without apps, and 12.50 per
user per month with the Office Suite included.

81. Tool Box
Email -Apps
 Use apps to make emails better!
 Google Apps
 Boomerang – Schedule Emails / Return Emails / Keep Inbox Clean
 Assistant.to– Schedule Meetings with Ease
 Calendar.help - AI Schedule

82. Boomerang

85. Calendly – Schedule Meetings Based On Your Availability

86. Tool Box
Project
Management
 Keeping track of ideas, suggestions, projects, timelines, and updates
is tiresome. Use some of the apps below to keep things in line.
 Asana
 Exceptional UI, solid for large teams.
 Price: Starts free up to 15 members
 Trello
 Great for those who like the idea of separated projects and action
items for each project.
 Price: Starts free and ProVersions
 Wunderlist
 Good for small teams, fastest among the three, best for individual to
do lists
 Price: Free and ProVersions

87. Trello

88. Kanban is a concept related to lean and just-in-time (JIT)
production, where it is used as a scheduling system that
tells you what to produce, when to produce it, and how
much to produce.

89. Asana

91. Tool Box
Site Hosting
 Host services/servers/apps off site. This could help save money and is
easier to scale on demand when needed
 Google Cloud
 AWS Web Services
 BlueHost for websites *
 There are some issues with reliability

93. Cost Saving Factors

95. Comparisons
https://www.cloudorado.com/cloud_server_comparison.jsp

97. Tool Box
Monitoring and
Reporting
 You will want to ensure uptime of your various services (servers,
websites ,etc. )You can receive outage alerts before your users are
aware in some cases, and prepare and mitigate an outage because of
a better response time.
 Pingdom
 Pings different websites by checking to see if it is available on the
world wide web.
 Nagios
 For internal checking of services. Open Source and does require some
technical know-how to get set up.
 Google Analytics
 Monitor site activity and traffic flow to and from your website.

101. Tool Box
Patron
Interactions
 By keeping track of patrons comments/questions/concerns allows us
to better serve our community. Have you thought of creating tickets?
At the same time, how about tickets for internal staff use?
 Freshdesk
 Competitor to Zendesk
 Price: Free for up to three “agents”
 Useresponse
 Affordable and used for smaller support teams
 Price: Starts at $10 per agent per month
 Zendesk
 The most common ticketing system of choice.
 Price: Starts at $5 per agent per month

103. Other
Resources
 Angel.Co – find jobs with start-ups, investor options, etc.
 LinkedIn – Leverage your network, share connections, get
introductions.
 Kickstarter/Indiegogo -> Usually requires having a strong network,
substantial money is needed to launch a Kickstarter. It’s usually
used to drive pre-orders or test market viability.
 Seedinvest,WeFunder, and others offers opportunities for funding
or investment options.

104. Co-Working
Spaces
 WeWork, and many others offer shared desks, private spaces, open
conference rooms, small meeting rooms, food/snacks, etc. for the
users.
 Through this, interact with other start-ups to share resources, ideas,
challenges, and solutions.

107. Staying On Task
• Status Email (or if you REALLY need to, a meeting during tighter
timelines)
• Shift resources where they are needed such as a critical task needing
to be completed
• Understanding KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

108. Building Dashboards

109. Hope is NOT a Strategy
Hope Means
• I hope we can get the website
done by the weekend.
• I hope our 3D Printer works for
the 3D Printing Program
A Plan Means
• If we have to launch by the
weekend, feature A, B, and Z may
not be included.
• If our printer doesn’t work, we
can borrow one from someone.
Every project needs a plan. - Every Plan-A needs a Plan-B, with the resources ready if needed. Hoping you
will not need a Plan-B is not the same as having a Plan-B

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Implementing This In Library Space
Putting It To Practice
• Teach patrons and users the different tools and software that
is available and how to use it
• Set up Project Management, Employee Management,
Survey, and other classes so patrons can learn the skills
they need.
Tools

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Always Have Fun

113. CONTACT ME
lets continue the conversation
Brian Pichman
bpichman@evolveproject.org
@BPichman