articles link to it . please introduce links to this page from related articles ; try the find link tool for suggestions . october 2013 cognician founded cape town south africa april 2010 headquarters cape town south africa area served worldwide industry e learning employees 24 slogan s think . chat . change . website www.cognician.com written in clojure alexa rank 1 838 164 february 2015 update 1 type of site online education available in english cognician is a web based e learning platform for personal development and organisational development produced by cognician software pty ltd. the company is located in cape town south africa and was founded by brothers barry kayton and patrick kayton in 2010 . 2 contents 1 overview 2 management 3 architecture 4 history 5 awards 6 pivot 7 references overview edit cognician is an online software platform that allows users to explore a particular topic by guiding them through an interactive question and answer process inspired by the socratic method and the theory of cognitive apprenticeship . content is packaged in applets called coaching guides or cogs for short . 3 each cog consists of two complementary parts a series of questions designed to provoke higher order thinking and a sidebar that contains supporting material in the form of text images or video . 4 users respond to the questions in the chat space which is designed to resemble an irc . however the chat is not a live synchronous chat . it is a pre scripted structured conversation which gives users a thinking agenda and enables them to develop their thoughts on the topic . cogs are similar to workbooks in that they bring structure to a complex activity but the experience of using a cog has the semblance of a live conversation with a person . management edit the cognician management team consists of barry kayton and patrick kayton who are ceo in usa and south africa respectively robert stuttaford cto and victoria skye grulke coo . cognician s employees include software developers responsible for the platform researchers writers and editors responsible for content development and graphic designers responsible for what users see when interacting with the platform . in this respect cognician is a typical digital content creation dcc business . architecture edit cognician s core business logic website web application and backend systems are implemented using clojure . cognician uses datomic a distributed database also built with clojure as well as memcached for transitory cache and rabbitmq for message queuing . cognician hosts on amazon ec2 and amazon s3 . 5 history edit the idea for cognician came from a seminar in creative thinking that barry kayton was running at the graduate school of business at the university of cape town in 2006 . 6 the kayton brothers worked part time developing a prototype of the cognician platform initially investing their own money in the project and later raising seed capital from angel investors . in january 2010 at the geek retreat in stanford the kayton brothers decided that cognician would no longer be a stealth startup . 7 in february 2010 robert stuttaford joined as cto and began building cognician as an adobe air application . in its earliest alpha version cognician took the form of a mind map and the company founders described the app as a kind of extended mind . 8 in april 2010 cognician was officially registered as a company in cape town south africa . the company has set up subsidiaries in the united states san carlos ca and the united kingdom london . awards edit in 2010 cognician received local and international recognition at the cape town activa awards 9 seedcamp johannesburg the seedcamp london finals 10 and by being named one of europe s top 11 startups at the techcrunch europas awards . 11 in august 2013 the kayton brothers were among 17 high impact entrepreneurs selected by endeavor to join its global network of entrepreneurs . 12 in october 2014 cognician s leadership accelerator program received the best soft skills solution award at devlearn s demofest in las vegas . 13 pivot edit cognician s initial aim was to work with publishers to adapt non fiction books into cogs for the consumer market b2c . 14 in march 2011 cognician launched their first book to cog adaption which was based on the the decision book by mikael krogerus and roman tsch ppeler . 15 but the company soon found traction selling to enterprises b2b and decided to pivot . in july 2011 the company signed its first enterprise contract with the allan gray orbis foundation for the creation of 120 cogs aimed at developing high impact leaders and entrepreneurs among its fellows . 16 other clients followed including de beers dnv gl incitec pivot limited lloyds register rodan fields diageo beam suntory dimension data cindy solomon & associates the allan gray orbis foundation allan gray limited rand merchant bank standard bank competitive capabilities international telkom standard bank and others . 17 references edit cognician.com site info . alexa internet . retrieved 2015 02 15 . cognician profile . crunchbase . retrieved 10 march 2013 . cognician an impressive new web based brainstorming tool . innovation management.se . retrieved 10 march 2013 . distefano dorothy . cognician productivity thought process expansion . app appeal . retrieved 10 march 2013 . stuttaford robert . cognician s new architecture with clojure and datomic . speaker deck . retrieved 21 april 2013 . kayton barry . the origin of cognician . interview on youtube . cognician software pty ltd. retrieved 10 march 2013 . kayton patrick . coming out of stealth . old mutual . retrieved 10 march 2013 . frey chuck . mind mapping and the extended mind . the mindmapping software blog . retrieved 10 march 2013 . city announces winners of entrepreneurship competition . city of cape town . retrieved 10 march 2013 . seedcamp week 2010 europe fires up the warp drive for the enterprise . techcrunch . retrieved 10 march 2013 . sa startup selected as techcrunch best new startup . tech4africa . retrieved 10 march 2013 . 17 high impact entrepreneurs from brazil egypt greece indonesia jordan mexico saudi arabia south africa and turkey join the endeavor network . endeavor . retrieved 6 january 2014 . elearning demofest 2014 . elearning guild . retrieved 10 october 2015 . atagana michelle . cognician a thought is a terrible thing to waste . ventureburn . retrieved 10 march 2013 . world s first decision making engine is launched . profile books . retrieved 10 march 2013 . an introduction to cognician . the allan gray orbis foundation . retrieved 10 march 2013 . cognician profile . linkedin . retrieved 10 october 2015 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title cognician & oldid 685095585 categories software companies of south africacompanies based in cape towne learningcompanies established in 2010hidden categories orphaned articles from october 2013all orphaned articlesarticles 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