As a product creator, you are probably mostly focused on your own stuff, quite naturally. You don’t really have time to worry about other people’s stuff unless it somehow affects your stuff.  But sometimes, it’s fun to take a look at what other people are working on. I very often ask people “What are you working on?”  about 75% of the time they ask me “Why are you asking?”  They’re just paranoid I guess, but I really do have a genuine interest in other people’s projects.

Online we really can’t just verbally ask someone that. We have to email them and they may not respond. Or we DM them on Twitter and they never get the message.  So, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way to just see what people are doing? Maybe if they just shared what their current projects are? Guess what, there is!  It’s called Dribbble and this is going to be one of my new cool toys. Before I explain what it is, just know that my first thought was – oh now, I can see the spammers using this service for no good. But luckily this site accepts new members only by “drafts” – that means you must be invited (drafted) by another member!  So, we can enjoy Dribbble for a while, until they decide to change their business model.

Now, Dribbble is a site where people share screenshots of stuff they are working on.  What I felt was most relevant to product creation are those screenshots tagged with the word “book“. As I looked through those screenshots, I saw a lot of interesting new books being written and developed. It was nice seeing a collection of interesting products outside of the online business niche!

Someone’s creating a coloring book; another is launchin a book called HTML5 for Web Designers (he’s taking pre-orders now); another has her magic book in production; one guy is creating a sales page for his creative thinking book (I’m very interested in this one); and another is sketching out her children’s book project.

Other people’s projects are a great source of inspiration and motivation!