Rallly by Luke Vella – Meeting Polls made simple.
I used to use Doodle with a group of random folks from different organizations to herd cats and try to find a time that we can all meet.
It’s a simple program. You Create the Meeting Poll and give it some dates and times you are available. Then you email the link to others and they can see your options and mark the ones they are also available.
Then you pick one with everyone available or with the most available or key persons available.
It’s very cool and saves a lot of emails and back and forth.
If people use a shared calendar in an organization such as Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar then it’s easy to find a meeting time with people in the same org as long as everyone keeps the calendar up to date.
You won’t be able to see what they have on their calendar but you can see they have an opening. It’s not taking into account travel time or where the folks are for in person meetings but it’s’ very helpful.
Doodle works great for people that do not belong in the same organization. They do not have a shared calendar. I use it a lot on the non profit boards I serve on.
But unless you pay you get ads all over the calendar and the ads are very distracting and many times not work appropriate. The number of advertising and tracking cookies is ridiculous. 144 partners? No thank you.
So I stopped using it. Yes I can opt out, but your missing the point. We need to stop using “free” software that sells our information and expects us to stop them by opting out.
I looked around for a free replacement solution, with no ads and was super easy to use for everyone and I found one.
Rallly, is awesome.
It works well, easy to setup , share and fill out. It’s FREE and there are no ads.
I love it. The system is simple, clean and easy to use. I highly recommend it.
The more I used it the more I loved its simplicity.
I ran a cookie check on it using https://www.cookieyes.com/cookie-checker/ (BTW Cookieyes.com has 19 cookies and only 1 is labeled as necessary – funny huh?) and here are the results.
So I sent a thank you to the developer and he reached back.
I asked if I could interview him for the journal and he agreed.
He and I chatted about his journey on a Sunday evening my time. He was in Chiang Mai (Thailand) with his girlfriend traveling and working.
Luke Vella is 32, a soft spoken software developer from Malta, studied computer science, worked for someone else and doesn’t want to do that anymore. So he dusted off this idea and spent a couple of months getting it where it is, while traveling.
He doesn’t do any marketing. It’s growth is all organic. He has over 45,000 registered users. They have created over 100,000 polls. It supports 10 languages so far and No login is required.
My point is, this one man, traveling the world and having fun with his supermodel girlfriend, decided to write free software that fulfills a major global need and does it well.
I will subscribe just to support him. I encourage everyone to.
I took a step back after the interview and stared at the solution. How did one man do this?
It’s easy to use learn and use. It’s well designed without being overly designed. It works. It solves problems for millions all around the world. And it’s free.
So I thought, how can I do this? How can I come up with a solution that potentially helps so many people and is free, easy and simple with an option to pay.
If I could get 1,000 users paying $100 a year that would total $100,000 and it would cost me only my time and some hosting costs.
What if I got my company, Project A, to create 10 such solutions. What verticals could we do this in? What would the software be?
I asked him what he wrote it in and he said JavaScript. My jaw dropped.
So now I’m dreaming again and wondering how to reboot myself to think differently. I could travel the world with my supermodel (Dena) too and change the world from anywhere.
Just like Luke Vella did.
Jim Teece
JimTeece.com
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