Having read through this topic I am more and more curious as to why a dashboard competition was announced in the first place. I was also surprised at the range of experience people have - from not knowing what a dashboard was, to having some of the most intricate work I've seen in Evernote to achieve their aims. But, this feels like we are working for the system, instead of the system working for us.
My view is Evernote still has basic functionality that it is poorly implemented, or missing and these need to be rectified immediately. The behind the scenes work shows this is happening and kudos to Ian Small and team on this intent. My fear is that Evernote will succumb to scope/function creep. It comes back to the basic premise of "what is Evernote for?" I've seen almost every piece of software I've used go from being light and perfect, to bloated and messy. (Mailchimp being a perfect example). I think Evernote should focus on being the best knowledge management tool there is. And then partner with good PM SaaS offerings.
Many of the dashboards I've seen here are attempting to replicate PM software, e.g. Asana, Basecamp, etc. Evernote can't compete with these systems in terms of PPP management, workflow, dependencies etc. But, project delivery alwasy fails to adequate capture information generated through the project, especially when it has completed!
I'm sure the developers/UI/UX at Evernote don't need to be told how to build a dashboard. For me as a user in a system the dashboard should aggregate the information in the system and display it in a way that is useful, the way I want it. I would expect a Dashboard in Evernote to allow me to easily add the metadata I want to see, e.g. Notebook, Tag, Notebook+Tag(s), To-do lists, reminders, etc. It's almost the concept of putting selected Saved Searches on a front page. And link out to the SaaS projects.
And I would still like someone to clarify why this comp was for US residents only...?I would have hoped being a paying customer for 10+ years would have counted... @Ian Small