I’ve received an IIBA branded Bambook whiteboard notebook, during the Dutch Chapter IIBA 2019 year event.
As a fanboy of Moleskine notebooks I will share my thoughts and personal experience on the Bambook whiteboard notebook.
Bambook Whiteboard Notebook Design
The Bambook whiteboard notebook comes in a softcover and a hardcover version, where the main cover ingredient is … bamboo. The color options are limited to Bamboo or black. 🙂 The hardcover version comes with an elastic strap to keep the notebook closed. On the back cover there is a penloop attached on the inside, that is very similar to the Leuchtturm1917 Pen Loop.
The Bambook is available in three different sizes A4, A5 and A6, while you can choose from 7 different page styles. For example rulled, dotted, to-do, but also pages to write music. You can even customize the pages to your personal preferences.
The backside of the Bambook has an iron ring binder which I personally dislike a little. The advantage of a ring binder is that you can completely fold the pages (single page set-up). Personally I think a ringbinder doesn’t look as good as the glued backside of a Moleskine. And in my own experience ringbinders sometimes get deformed, however I haven’t experienced that yet with the Bambook. Furthermore, you slightly get an offset between the pages left and right, when you simply fold the page open.
Bambook mission statement
On the Bambook website you can read the mission statement:
“We believe that we can combat deforestation and waste of paper by making products that last forever. For each item that you purchase from us, we have a tree planted.”
The mission statement is what would make me prefer the Bambook over a whiteboard notebook from the competition. Contributing to a good cause like planting trees and respecting nature is something that I personally value.
Bambook App – Sync your offline notes with cloud services
The Bambook App for Google Android and Apple iOS synchronizes your offline notes with “online” cloud services Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and DropBox.
The Bambook App uses the camera of your smartphone to take a picture and scan the notebook-page. The Bambook App recognizes the the black page margins (and the notes within the black rectangle). You can save the notes to a specific folder in your preferred cloud storage on your phone.
Bambook App or Microsoft Office Lens
The app reminds me a little of Microsoft Office Lens, that also scans business cards, whiteboards or notes which are uploaded to OneDrive or OneNote.
“Microsoft Office Lens trims, enhances, and makes pictures of whiteboards and documents readable. You can use Office Lens to convert images to PDF, Word and PowerPoint files, and save to OneNote, OneDrive, or your local device.”
I will test Microsoft Office Lens with the Bambook notebook in the upcoming period (and update this post with my thoughts).
Concluding thoughts and wrap-up
When Bert Jan Schrijver, Co-founder & CTO of OpenValue visited our company BCT Enterpise Information Management back in june 2019 his whiteboard notebook directly caught my attention. That was my first encounter with a whiteboard notebook.
There are a couple of brands who are offering whiteboard notebooks, even some offer additional iOS or Android apps to digitize the notes. Bambook also offers stick-on whiteboard / flip-over-like pages that you can stick on glass or a door. The Bambook stick-on can be purchased as a single version or a set of 3 stick-ons.
No matter if you purchase a notebook or a stick-on the Bambook mission statement is applicable and that convinces me to prefer the Bambook whiteboard notebook (over any other brand).
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