On the train back from BarCamp Leeds today, Manoj Ranaweera and I were talking about various things. One of the points he made was that he found it very confusing what the difference between “Vagueware Ltd” and “vagueware.com” was.

In his head, Vagueware Ltd is a development consultancy, but vagueware.com was the idea bank, a place for people to share and collaborate ideas. He was convinced I should move the idea bank somewhere else and give its own separate identity. Give it a new name, a new purpose and have Vagueware as a consultancy and holding company for that site (and the others like Kagtum and Fluxish I’m hoping to launch soon).

At the start of the conversation I was adamant he was talking rubbish, but I reflected on it and within 10 minutes had changed my mind completely.

This then crossed over into another thought that Guy Dickinson led me to a while ago. Guy said the site as it was lacked focus, and it wasn’t immediately clear what type of ideas were suitable. He suggested narrowing it down.

So now the two ideas merge, and I’m thinking of something completely different.

What if you could have your own idea bank like Vagueware? What if for your company you were able to get customers to add ideas and let other customers vote on them? What if you could set up idea banks for open source projects, or private space for developing new product ideas with colleagues inside your company? What if you could have access to a clean idea bank in a few seconds? What if you’re running a BarCamp and you wanted to vote on talks as we did today (but ultimately abandoned as somebody was gaming the system)?

My vagueware ideas would have their own place, and that would be open. I might have a closed version for products I work on with clients in private, and I might have more public idea banks around specific products. You could get access to one if you wanted, and you could choose who has access and moderate it yourself.

This would all be under a new name (yet to be decided), and at the start it would be free.

Is this worth going on with? I’m now almost completely convinced a new name needs to be found, but what about a new kind of product?

Thoughts welcome in the comments. I’ll make a decision mid-week and by Friday “Decisions Will Be Made”, so speak up now or forever hold your peace.