Today is is a big day at ConceptShare. We released ConceptShare V2 for all our customers, and we’re really proud of the work we put into it to mature our tool so far. We also released CorelDRAWConceptShare, the first project in a 5 year partnership with Corel.

Our community has helped us grow and mature our tool for design collaboration, leading to over 100 improvements since we launched in January of this year. This is just the start of how we will engage our users, here is what’s coming in 2008

• More integration with products that designers use
• Making it easier to integrate other products with ConceptShare
• Helping connect designers with each other, and customers

Thanks to everyone who blogged, twittered, dugg and sent us messages of congratulations. Your support means a lot to the entire team. We always welcome your feedback too.

We’re getting really close to launching ConceptShare V2, the first major upgrade to our online tool for design collaboration. We’ve been testing it, but we know that we can’t possibly find every last bug ourselves. We’re setting up a testing account where you will be able to get a sneak peek. In return, we ask that you kick the tires and report any issues you find.

Please go to the ConceptShare V2 sneak peek page to apply.

A Few Things You Should Know

• We have a limited number of spaces, if you don’t get a sneak peek invite please don’t be offended.
• This account is for testing only, don’t use it for real work.
• There will be bugs, we’re inviting you in to help us find the last ones we haven’t found yet.
• We may close any workspace or end the test at any time.

We really want to make some cool shirts, and what would be better than to have a shirt designed by one of the amazing designers that use our product? We’re looking for something unique, something that stands out. Remix our logo, go crazy, be your creative self! Simply go to the tshirt challenge webpage and follow the instructions to download the assets and submit your design. You’ll also get to collaborate on shirt designs in a special ConceptShare workspace. Challenge submitters will receive a free shirt, and the designer of the shirt we love the most will receive an iPod Touch!

Tags: conceptshare, shirt, tshirt, design, fashion

We will be presenting a sneak preview of v2 of ConceptShare at DemoCampToronto15. It has been over a year since ConceptShare was first demoed at DemoCampToronto9, and the product has evolved a lot in that time. We’ve added features like activity summaries, approvals, video support, batch upload, project folders, drag and dropping concepts and the text tool.

For v2 our product team has been pouring over every detail of the interface, obsessing over how we can make ConceptShare more of a joy to use. The entire web management interface has been re-engineered from the ground up and put back together with a simple, clean UI, resulting in less clicks and a smoother workflow. The Workspace interface has more vertical screen area and is completely customizable. The new GUI improvements are part of major framework upgrade to allow us to more easily make modifications and improvements in the future based on your valuable feedback. So there’s much more to come after launch.

We hope we see you at DemoCampToronto15!

I’m happy to tell you that I’m joining the ConceptShare team as Community Evangelist. We’ve wanted to work together for almost a year now, and finally the stars have aligned. You can read Scott’s update about the ConceptShare team growing too.

This is probably going to be the easiest gig I’ve ever had. Evangelizing and building a community around a web application that people go ga-ga over is a dream for someone like me. People rave about ConceptShare, and they have good reason to. We have a great product that solves a real world problem, and a team of three guys made it happen. Scott Brooks has done an amazing job evangelizing up to today and will continue to do so along with me, but he’s also got a company to keep building!

This is going to be seriously fun. I’m going to get to work with designers of all sorts, creatives, artists, scientists, architects, engineers, worldwide advertising agencies and major league sports – to start. I could tell you how excited I am about this, but it’s hard to understand just how much without the backstory.

Four years ago, in my hometown of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island I was inspired by my super talented friends at silverorange to start my first web services shop. I looked up to them, and wanted to be like them. While I knew that they had the right idea by staying local and doing top notch global projects, I knew I would have to beat the pavement to make it happen for myself. When I moved to Vancouver and co-founded Raincity Studios their model of work and comradery was forefront in my mind. When I moved on from Raincity to join Flock, and from Flock to contract work for the last year, I learned what I wanted from my work was to be part of a small close knit team of people working on something amazing.

I visited ConceptShare HQ last week in Sudbury, and that’s exactly what I found. I’ve decided to move to Sudbury to join the team full time. There are also some other opportunites available to me with online video there, stay tuned for exciting news on that. And don’t worry – I plan to travel to Toronto regularly for commandN! I’ll be posting company news on the ConceptShare blog Thought Balloons too, so keep an eye out there for exciting announcements.

Tags: willpate, conceptshare, design, sudbury