Chapter 1 Tuesday, October 25th

Hantown University Staff Quarter.

Yu Pingan got out of the taxi, took out his phone, and looked at the specific address and house number.

Today, he was going to pay a visit to Kong Zhemin, a highly respected old professor in the Literature Department of Hantown University.

Professor Kong Zhemin was born in 1946. He is a Level 1 Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences and a doctoral supervisor at Hantown University. He also serves as the director of the Institute of Chinese Language Education at Hantown University, the editor-in-chief of primary and secondary school Chinese textbooks, and a member of the Basic Education Expert Committee. He previously served as the editor-in-chief of Hantown University Press and the convener of the expert group for revising the Chinese language curriculum standards.

In short, he is a well-deserved master in the liberal arts colleges of Hantown University, and even in the entire domestic academic circle.

Yu Pingan had seen many wealthy company executives, so he wasn't nervous about that.

But meeting a true master like Professor Kong Zhemin was completely different.

Before going upstairs, Yu Pingan calmed himself down and carefully reviewed the preparations for the "Useful App".

He was here today to invite Professor Kong to come out of retirement, but that wouldn't be easy.

After receiving the "Useful App" development task from President Pei last time, Yu Pingan immediately began to re-plan the entire department's business and optimize the personnel structure.

Some people continued to develop and improve the various functions of the Tengda Life App, while others were drawn out to form the "Useful App" research and development team.

When he received President Pei's task, Yu Pingan was confused.

Because in his opinion, the "Useful App" had too long of a development cycle and was extremely difficult to profit from, so it really wasn't a very good project.

However, he still strictly implemented President Pei's requirements and began to prepare earnestly.

Because Yu Pingan was very clear that President Pei emphasized one thing when making software, and that was "iteration"!

From the development history of his own department, it could be seen that from "Study Master, Come Quick" to "Tengda Life," this App had been revised several times, the content was constantly adjusted, and the target user group had also undergone tremendous changes.

It could be said that without President Pei's constant promotion of "iteration," there would be no success of the current "Tengda Life App"!

Therefore, even if the new project "Useful App" that President Pei wanted to do seemed unreliable now, it would always reach President Pei's expectations and achieve great success after one iteration after another.

Yu Pingan had no doubt about this.

However, in the process of starting to develop the "Useful App," Yu Pingan encountered far more problems than he had imagined.

President Pei had already given the basic structural framework of this App: it was a content production platform and should be a tree-like structure.

The trunk part was a bit similar to an encyclopedia website: the roots were keywords and basic concepts, the branches were concepts and explanations derived from this keyword, and the leaves were questions and answers for a specific derived concept.

And the entire structure of the App was like a forest composed of trees: key basic concepts would be interconnected, supporting mutual jumping within entries, or classified retrieval within a large category (such as literature, physics, games, etc.).

In other words, the encyclopedia model was grafted with the question and answer model. Only a slight micro-innovation was made in form, but it could greatly improve the efficiency of users obtaining information.

But to achieve the basic structural framework that President Pei needed, it still required a lot of time and energy to work together on details and content.

For example, how to design each level of the App's sub-interface, how to arrange the page layout so that users could see key information at a glance, how to allow managers to freely add, delete, or modify entries or the entire tree structure...

These were all key issues that product managers needed to worry about.

In addition, there was the issue of content production on the "Useful App".

Since the "Useful App" was a content production platform, whether it could become popular or not ultimately depended on whether the content on it was good or not.

Specifically, there were only three points:

Whether the content was accurate and free of errors;

Whether the content was concise and free of garbage information;

Whether the index was convenient and could quickly find the content you wanted to search for.

In the final analysis, it still depended on people.

If the content producers on the platform deliberately released false information and garbage information to cheat traffic, then this platform would definitely not succeed.

Even if there was supervision, it could only be done by excellent producers supervising those who were not so excellent.

When it came to some professional concepts, it was definitely necessary to have professional big shots come forward to accurately determine whether it was correct information, incorrect information, or garbage information.

So, where to find these excellent producers?

The first thing that Yu Pingan thought of was universities.

Inviting big names from various industries was certainly possible. For example, when it came to issues related to the Internet industry, inviting some high-level executives from Internet giant companies. These people must also have real talents and practical knowledge.

But the problem was that these big names were all successful people, and they had to be busy with their own jobs and careers. They might not have time to do these trivial things.

Moreover, there was a big difference between mastering knowledge and explaining knowledge.

The "Useful App" was more like a platform for explaining knowledge. The encyclopedia model, when developed to the extreme, was actually a textbook. And those questions related to encyclopedia entries were actually detailed explanations of textbooks.

Therefore, graduate students, young lecturers, professors, etc. in universities were the most suitable candidates and the backbone of this App.

Big names from various industries could only serve as a supplement.

And since the "Useful App" was all-encompassing, how should this Yugong Removes the Mountains-like task be started? (Yugong Removes the Mountains: An idiom meaning to be determined and persistent in the face of seemingly impossible tasks.)

The first thing that Yu Pingan thought of was some basic knowledge.

President Pei said that the "Useful App" was a long-term plan, and that ambiguous questions would rather not be done than be done wrong.

Start with a certain field of basic knowledge, do a little bit, and test the waters. If the effect was good, then promote it to more fields and expand it step by step.

Only by not pursuing quantity and only pursuing quality can it be ensured that this App truly deserves its name.

Therefore, Yu Pingan contacted the official Hantown University through various channels and paid a personal visit to Professor Kong.

Hantown University, especially the School of Liberal Arts, was quite supportive of this cooperation. In fact, school-enterprise cooperation has always been strongly supported and advocated by the state. Many science and engineering schools conduct joint research with enterprises, which is nothing new.

However, due to the particularity of their majors, liberal arts colleges have less cooperation with enterprises. If this "Useful App" could be successful, it would also be a win-win attempt.

What's more, Tengda Group was based in Jingzhou, and President Pei had repeatedly donated money to his alma mater. With this relationship, it would be much easier to discuss cooperation.

The only problem was that the college could not make a decision for Professor Kong Zhemin.

Because Professor Kong had to supervise graduate students, teach undergraduates, and do research, there was a question mark as to whether the old gentleman had the time and energy to join this project as a special consultant.

Therefore, today, if Yu Pingan wanted to move Professor Kong, he would have to use all his skills.

After calming himself down, Yu Pingan entered the apartment building and gently knocked on the door on the second floor.

After a moment, the security door opened, and an old professor with gray hair and a hale and hearty spirit looked up and down at Yu Pingan: "You must be President Yu?"

Yu Pingan quickly said, "Professor Kong, just call me Xiao Yu. I'm sorry to bother you."

Professor Kong Zhemin smiled, "No bother, no bother, please come in."

Yu Pingan followed Professor Kong Zhemin into the living room. The situation here was about what he had imagined. The sofas and furniture were basically made of wood, which looked very old. There were paintings and calligraphy hanging on the wall, and the entire wall was a bookshelf filled with various books.

Professor Kong Zhemin also poured a cup of tea for Yu Pingan, who was a little apprehensive.

After chatting for a few words, Yu Pingan didn't dare to waste Professor Kong's time and went straight to the point: "Professor Kong, the leaders of the School of Liberal Arts should have briefly told you about my intentions. Let me give you a detailed introduction to the specific content of our App."

"I was originally responsible for the Tengda Life App business in Tengda Group, and now I am responsible for this 'Useful App'. I want to create a knowledge-sharing community that combines the 'encyclopedia' and 'question and answer' models..."

Professor Kong Zhemin listened carefully, nodding from time to time. Occasionally, a hint of doubt flashed in his eyes, but he didn't interrupt Yu Pingan's narration. Instead, he waited until Yu Pingan had finished explaining the entire "Useful App's" starting point, specific structure, charging model, incentive model, and other content before he began to integrate all this information and think carefully.

After considering for a moment, Professor Kong Zhemin said: "President Yu, listening to your description, this software seems to be similar in positioning to CNKI, which retrieves academic literature and academic papers. So, what are the specific differences between the two?"

Yu Pingan immediately replied, "Of course, there are very big differences."

"To put it simply, the people we are targeting are completely different, and the goals we want to achieve are also different."

"Academic papers and academic literature, including textbooks for various courses in universities, are certainly the most essential and cutting-edge knowledge, but to read, understand, and master this content actually requires a very high threshold."

"For most ordinary people, even if they are allowed to look at this knowledge, they won't understand it."

"If the goal is popular science, this kind of efficiency is definitely very low."

"Therefore, the software we are making is mainly aimed at the general public. We are committed to popularizing these aspects of professional knowledge to them in a more simple and easy-to-understand way."

"What we are doing is professional content with a lower cost of understanding, which is more inclined to let users 'understand' rather than 'fully grasp'."

"And the biggest difference between this software and the question and answer platform is that the knowledge on it has been screened. We will try our best to ensure that there is no garbage information, and at the same time, there is a more advanced indexing mechanism, which greatly improves the efficiency of obtaining knowledge."