Cozi $500 Facebook Contest

I’ve been a user of the Cozi online organizational service for well over a year now. In fact, I have two accounts set up, one for personal activities, one for blog organization. Not only is the Cozi service very easy to use, but perfect for the stay at home mom’s budget…FREE.

So what is Cozi?

Cozi is a FREE online family organizer that helps you manage the family calendar, organize your shopping list and to do lists, share favorite memories in a family journal, and enjoy family photos—all in one spot. With Cozi’s mobile access, your information is not only available from any computer with an Internet connection, but also from any mobile phone.

Among the many features of Cozi, my favorite is the family calendar. With a large family of 5, keeping everyone’s schedule organized is no easy task. Cozi allows me to quickly add in appointments for each family member with their own unique color to easily glance at the calendar and know who has what going on that week. My next step is to get this hooked up with mobile access from Cozi to use on my Blackberry.

How Would You Like to WIN $500 for Your School?

In honor of our kids heading back to school, Cozi will sponsor the PTA/PTO’s of three North American grade schools for $500! Yours could be one of them! Anyone can enter. Here’s how:

1. Ask all your friends and school contacts to join the Cozi fan page (http://www.facebook.com/cozifamily)
2. Have them leave a comment below stating the name, city and state of your school

That’s it!

The more entries your school gets, the greater its chances of winning! Just imagine what your school PTA/PTO could do with an extra five hundred bucks!
Each entry counts once, and we will choose three winners at random.

The opportunity to enter and win lasts just two weeks, so SHARE this post on your own Facebook page and ask your friends to pile on the entries for YOUR school right now. Good luck to all our schools!

NOTE – Do not leave entries on this post. Please leave them in a comment on the Cozi Family Facebook Wall.

The Father behind Cozi

When using a product or service I often wonder what the creator was thinking when they created it and I was fortunate enough to be able to briefly pick the brain of DEO (Dad Executive Officer), Robbie Cape of Cozi. And here is what he had to say…

How did the idea of Cozi come to be and what steps did you take to make it a reality?

Jan and I had the idea around a “fanatical focus on families” just a few weeks after we formed the company in March of 2005. When we decided to build a company together, we actually had no idea what we would do. All we knew was that we wanted to build consumer facing software/services. The first step we took after we opened our doors was to interview/talk to as many consumers as possible, in their homes. It didn’t take us long (like maybe 2-3 visits) to realize that there was this HUGE unmet need around helping families in particular manage the chaos of family life. We noticed that there were no other services of note in that space and that we could create some significant value here. So bottom line: the idea of Cozi came to be by Jan and I talking to consumers and finding out where there was opportunity for technology to add significant value to their lives.

To make it a reality, we simply executed on the focus. We decided early on that we would have the one-dimensional focus on families and once we had that, we prioritized the problem we could solve and then started hitting them, one at a time. We started with the screensaver and put that out there. Then we added the calendar and shopping lists, and got that out there. The screensaver spoke to an “emotional” connection we wanted to create with families. The calendar and the shopping list spoke to the two most significant pain point that we knew families had. We worked around those in that order.

What feature of the Cozi service do you use the most and how does it help organize your own busy schedule?

You’re probably better off asking my wife, Bonnie, that question since she is the Cozi power user in our family. Much like you, Bonnie has decided to stay at home to be a full-time Mom. She manages our family calendar, logistics, social life, and our food. She holds it all together and even with Cozi, I still don’t know how she actually pulls it off.  She would be in the best position to tell you which features she uses the most and how they help her.

For me, the most powerful part of Cozi is the Outlook integration. I spend my day in Outlook. It’s where I do my mail and it’s where I manage my calendar. I would bet that at least 60% of the time I spend sitting at my desk is spent in Outlook. The ability to see the APPROPRIATE items on my family calendar in Outlook is HUGE for me. Whether there is family thing going on during the day or at night that I need to be aware of, it just shows up in Outlook. The reverse is true. I get incredible piece of mind knowing that stuff I put into my calendar that is relevant to family life (early morning meeting, evening meetings, or travel) is automatically and immediately reflected in our Cozi calendar. So without having to remember to send Bonnie mail she has a reminder of it. Even if I did send her mail, you just know that unless she put it in the calendar, she would forget about it. The Outlook integration solves these TWO problems. It prevents me from having to send her mail or remember to tell her about it AND it represents a permanent reminder for her of that item.

The Outlook Toolbar capability to appropriately keep my work and family calendar connected helps me all day every day!

A big thank you to Robbie for taking the time out of his very busy, yet organized schedule to shed some light on the inner workings of Cozi! If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for a free Cozi account online and check out all of the features to find what works best for your family.zvcb[