An Idea

After writing extensively about "do you really think THAT's the way Filofax should go? And have you considered doing something else with you life? Say like something you ACTUALLY know how to do?", I was thinking about what would I recommend filofax to do to step it up and keep up with the tendencies while not whoring out their product or selling their souls to the highest bidder. And so what came to my mind was the proposal of an actually smart, functional collaboration: developping a joint product with Livescribe.

Source: Google and Livescribe

Livescribe is an American company (I believe) who developped a smart pen, which is basically a pen with a camera and a recorder, available with a 4GB to 8 GB memory, and most likely developping larger memory capacity. This pen is a success for taking notes - and you know how filofaxists love to take notes - because while you write you can also record what's being said (if you choose to), and all the notes you take you can then upload them easily to your computer, turn them into text, share them online and even let others see and here for instance as you draw a graph and explain what's about.

How would this work with filofaxists? Well, this smartpens requiere a special type of paper, called dotpaper. This is because the camera in the pen reads the dots in the paper to know where the lines and letters are traced. The margins of the paper also include a series of "tools" which you tap with the pen to start recording, pause, stop and go through the pen's menu. Here basically what filofax and Livescribe would need would be to develop filofax inserts in this dotpaper and adjust the penloop on some binders - or creating a brand new line aimed specifically aimed for smartpens.

The point with this - and this would be the tricky part - would be also to develop a software such that allows you not only to upload the contents of your filofax up to your computer - thus giving you an automatic backup (if you regularly hook your pen to your computer) - but also allow you to sync your filofax with your computer (most such softwares already include calendars, contacts, to-do lists and notes, and fixing your financial pages to upload as Excel sheets shouldn't be so hard), from where you can then sync all your devises. Livescribe allows you also to send pages by e-mail, just by writing a special command on the page. The page then gets sent the moment the document gets to a computer and this is hooked to the net. Just imagine the possibilities! You are on YOUR filofax, commuting in the metro - where there's seldom good mobile signal - at least not in Hungary - and you remember you had to send an e-mail. So you pull out your filofax, don't have to start it, unlock it, get online, find your e-mail account and send it, or compose the message, punch in the number of find the contact and send it, you just open the filofax on "Notes", "Work", "E-mails" - it's your filofax, so you name it! - write down the e-mail and write the command on the bottom, the top and once you get home, or get to the office, you hook your smartpen on your laptop and there it goes!

Now, you can do that right now with your Livescribe smartpens, and maybe you can get yourself an A5 size filofax and tuck the Livescribe notebook or journal in the back, but wouldn't you like it better if you didn't have to? Wouldn't it be wonderful if the software were developped so that you could write appointments on your filofax and get an alarm on your phone, for instance? "Meeting with the Clients in 30 minutes", "Pat has football practice today", "Pay the bills". You know, the best of both words.

Would it appeal to a new segment of the market? Well, what do you think? Would the current filofaxists love it? I know a couple that would, though to implement this filofax should have to make a serious market study (may I suggest at least 50% of the sample to be composed by current filofax user? After all those who come after - and are here to stay - will probably tend to copy and adapt the techniques and habits of the seasoned filofaxists) about what do people use their filofax for, and what digital products consider they closest to these uses. Focus groups would also be a success - these with a higher percentage of current filofaxists - to get a good hold of filofaxes out there in the real world.

However, this wouldn't be enough to solve other issues such as the slumping quality of the products several filofax users have complained about, or the communication issues with the clients.

There's much ahead, mistakes can be made in the process, but as long as we correct them and go back on track, focus on what's really important, on the core, nothing can really go wrong, right?