Hey guys, I’m a trader and also a developer. So I get quite frustrated that in order to share/discuss my trading ideas, I have to send screenshots back and forth endlessly.
Because of that, I’ve built a collaborative chart platform from scratch and would like some of your feedback on them.
(I know it looks like tradingview charts but it’s not lol. Legit built it from scratch.)
So one of the ideas is that we should be able to link what we write with the stuff we have on charts. So I created this “linking” feature where you highlight a text and select an object on the chart. This helps provide context to the discussions we read especially when someone is referencing a certain chart object (like a trend line or an MA).
Another idea I have is to introduce real-time collaboration on charts. This would require us to track the edits of each chart just like how google docs does it (or figma for the designers here). Users can view what was changed and also roll-back where needed. Kinda like this (still in the works):
Anyway, this is largely born outta my frustration of the lack of collaborative charting and discussion tools out there. Figured I’d share it with you guys along with the progress. Let me know if you have other suggestions or wanna be super-duper early beta testers haha.
1 Like
Hi, and thanks for sharing. I had to spend some time thinking about use cases for this, and whatever I think of I can’t help coming back to collaboration principles. Two thoughts:
1 For real time collaboration I have made extensive use of Microsoft Teams, and some lesser capable predecessors too. In all cases (hundreds of Teams sessions with between two and two hundred attendees) the ability to share screens, or hand over control of what is presented to other participants has been powerful. But in the sense that it is a real time collaboration, and that only one user can take control at once. Of course that also requires agreement from all attendees, and the host (or facilitator for large participation groups) needs to be aware of the total cost to the audience - blended rate of each attendee x number of attendees - that can run into thousands where ROI is not tracked.
2 Cloud based collaboration of documents (word processing, presentation slides, spreadsheets) where each contributor change can be made by mark up or comments, and one owner chooses to accept, reject or further challenge input from all other participants.
It is the former case that I see a potential use case for a small but focussed group to get together and discuss entries, or management of existing trades. This is where I see value add for all interested parties. I liken this to some of the live streams I have attended recently on the subject of Crypto investment or trading.
For the latter case, without strict rules of engagement or agreement of host / facilitator, I could see this getting out of hand so fast (even discounting the flippant contributor who woull want to draw naughty shapes on your charts) that the true objectives may never be achieved.
I am interested in others’ opinions on this too. I had joined a Manchester Traders club about 2 months before March 2020 lockdown, and though members communicate sporadically via a Whats App group, I miss the focus of the monthly meetings that were scheduled for participants at a venue in town. I hope my comments are useful to your future development of use cases for your development effort.
1 Like
Thanks for your feedback Mondeoman! I lean closer to your 2nd scenario of cloud based collaboration of documents - to address the problem of potential chaos, I would introduce 2 types of permissions for anyone who has access to the charts:
“read” = just viewing without being able to edit
“read + write” = able to view and make edits
So ideally we only assign “read + write” permissions to people we trust. That would allow the people who are leading the discussion to have control over what appears on the chart and the rest of them can watch it while commenting on a side chat panel - what do you think?
In your experience with using microsoft teams - could I ask what kinds of behaviour you noticed? Do a lot of people want to take control of the charts? How do people ask questions especially when there are a lot of them - do they voice speak or type it out? How does someone make known that a certain level that is drawn is not agreeable with him? - does he take over and draw it out? Or does he share his own version of his chart? Would be very interested to know how mass collaboration works.
What do I think? Yes, the setting of user access permissions of read or read/write would contain the chaos. In this respect, you could have one or two trusted contributors that could amend the drawn content on the chart, and the audience (not trusted) could ask questions via a chat window. Be careful if that became successful, you could be inundated. I watched part of Bitboy Crypto’s one millionth subscriber live event yesterday, and the user comments were coming in at a rate of about ten per second. No chance of anyone answering those questions in real time. But offline analysis by an AI word capture could reveal the most often asked questions, so you could tailor post-event answers to the most often asked questions.
what kinds of behaviour you noticed? My experience is large corporate - public sector and private sector over the past two years with Teams - one government department and two FTSE 100 companies. So I am not sure my experiences would be directly relevant to your intended use case (Joe Public Forex learner). For the larger groups (say, more than 8 attendees), microphones would be muted by the host, and attendees would be asked to keep the chat window open on screen. There is a “put your hand up” option in Teams that allows any participant to ask a question. It is then up to the host (or facilitator) to choose if and when to allow questions - during or after material presentation. This use case would not normally be interactive between all participants, but it would certainly cater for your proposed scenario where you had a host and (few) contributors live. The host passes onscreen control to the requesting party, and can take back control from the contributor. In the second scenario, project team meetings, where there would typically be 3 to 8 attendees, the host would normally include published material to be discussed during the meeting in a pre-scheduled calendar invitation (as an attached or a linked file), so the attendees had the opportunity to review content before the scheduled meeting. At the outset of the meeting, with a published agenda and estimated duration of each agenda item, each attendee would know (or may need to be told) who might be expected to contribute and who would be expected not to take control of the presentation material. Teams also has a planner module which, in project mode, I have used extensively to progress tasks assigned to other team participants. This I have found particularly useful in progressing, especially when an Agile framework is in use.
How do people ask questions especially when there are a lot of them - do they voice speak or type it out? How does someone make known that a certain level that is drawn is not agreeable with him? - does he take over and draw it out? Or does he share his own version of his chart? Would be very interested to know how mass collaboration works. I have answered some of this in the paragraph above. Typically, participants can both voice speak and / or type it out in the chat window. This is particularly useful for conveying text information such as contact details, URLs and the like. If participants do not agree with what is being drawn, they normally speak up and if it is not an easy matter to describe, sometimes the participant is asked to take over control of the presentation material and draw / amend what another participant has drawn. I hope I have covered the scenarios you asked but please ask again if anything is not clear.
This may sound a bit geeky, but most of the satisfaction I get from my job as a project manager is to be able to resolve risks or issues that other team members have not been able to solve without project management intervention, especially when the issue is in the critical path of the project. Most often it is determined that governance (or directions from above) have been delayed, or not decided. This then starts the delicate negotiation of deciding how to tell the folks that hired you that they really only have to get off their a**es and make a decision, and that a PM is not a crutch to take all the decision pain away (joking really - I have never worked for people who can’t make a timely decision
)
1 Like
Whoa that’s a super in-depth answer, thanks Mondeoman! Let me slowly process it and get back to you - thanks once again for your generous sharing and insights! 
Thank you for your kind words. Don’t hesitate to ask again if you feel it will help in the development of a useful collaboration tool for Forex.