Finili Developer Summit 2016 Recap

The same as last year, the discussion at finds2016 on September 17 extended from the morning into the afternoon. Worrying over recent developments in the data warehouse space, developers agreed that our use cases to date may be too closely tied to one particular form of business organization. As one participant put it, user stories “shouldn’t be so corporate.” Finili may find the greatest number of users in places where there is no database infrastructure at all.

We agreed to add user stories based on the experience of the individual analyst. Suggested users included a consumer tracking progress on lifestyle and budget goals and an investigative journalist looking for signs of conflict of interest in public data. The latter user would want to be able to drag and drop data urls into the Pre library — there’s a data object and a user interface feature we hadn’t thought of before! The comparison to iTunes is useful here. Whatever form of music you start with, iTunes is ready to catalog it. Finili ideally ought to respond to potential input data with a similar kind of enthusiasm.

Logo Colors

Here is Patti’s reworking of the proposed logo. No one was quite happy with the RGB light theme or the black and white colors of the chequered flag, and Patti’s thought was that the colors were simply too clichéd:

We have to be willing to set forth that what we are doing is more important than the thousand pizza restaurants that boast the black and white chequered flag. “Finili” means finish line and the chequered flag announces that place, but we also have to show that we are agents of change. Why not sweep the past away with the colors of radical change, which undeniably in this moment are pink and black?

I would just add that the pink horizontal stripe might represent the idea of the finish line itself, a bold line painted on the ground. That’s a motif we thought to include in the logo, but our artists took it out of the previous black-and-white-RGB-colored versions because it didn’t fit. Here, it’s pretty subtle but I can see it and I think it works. I have to say that these few small changes make quite a difference in the way the logo comes across.

Edit, June 17: Uploaded a minor revision to the logo which adds a splash of horizontal glare to the star/street light.

Logo, Take 1

One of the takeaways from finds2014 was a verbal description of a logo: “finili” in all lowercase letters in a bold typeface with a “factual” connotation and an “fi” ligature, with the colors blue, green, and red, respectively, “emerging” from the three dots. The roadmap says we will have an actual logo by year’s end, one that people would want to wear on T-shirts. Our volunteer designer has created a mockup of the proposed logo design for discussion purposes. To reiterate: this is only a mockup. It is not meant for use as the actual logo.

Note that the dots are an optional feature of the logo, and that in black and white print and where a simpler design is needed, the logo will not include the colored dots, but will be a simple text shape for rendering in any available color. This means, for example, the Finili logo could be rendered as light blue-gray letters on a black background.

Update, 24 hours later: Thanks to some quick feedback we now have a second mockup, shown below. Again, this is only a mockup for discussion purposes, and it may or may not ultimately be considered better than the previous mockup. The changes are: tighter letter spacing; larger dots (to lend more emphasis to the letter i); green color made less bright; chequered flag. The chequered flag symbolizes the finish line of a race, recognizing that the name Finili means “finish line” in several languages.

Update, at 48 hours: I am happy to see so much participation on this important question. Here is another alternative suggestion, combining the chequered flag with the lettering. It is undeniably harder to read, yet perhaps simpler and more distinctive. Keep the suggestions coming!

Finili Developer Summit 2014

At the risk of conflicting with the start of the academic year, we’re planning the Finili Developer Summit for this Saturday, August 30, 12:00-6:00 p.m. in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Tentatively we’re planning to look for a spot in or near the Taj Mahal Casino Hotel, which shouldn’t be too busy at that hour (update: back in the usual board room at Plymouth Meeting, since people couldn’t make it to Atlantic City). I think we’ll be inspired by the change of scenery (uh, same old oversized logos on the walls) and have some new ideas and fresh perspectives. That is especially important as we try again to address the important issues of market positioning, image, and T-shirts, and perhaps also as we try to sketch out our first real development roadmap.