Boulder Ignite 2

With Ignite2 just around the corner, had to give my home girl Tara some props for getting up and giving this presentation comparing the tech startup to doing comedy at the previous Boulder Ignite. I wasn't able to attend the first one but this video is brilliant. Sorry I missed it Tara and will see you all tomorrow night at numero dos.

HotDog!

In early November I had the pleasure of attending the WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) conference out in lovely Las Vegas. Aside from my streak of bad luck in the Vegas casinos the event was fun, well run, informative, and laden with people wanting to crack the social media code for developing and running a successful word of mouth marketing campaign. There were widget companies, PR firms, advertising firms, SEO, SEM, measurement firms, affiliate network companies, and damn near everything in between. But the hottest thing had to be the dog parked in the lot.

The Oscar Meyer wienermobile has been around something like 70 years and still generates smiles, cameras, pointing, and now tweeting. I befriended two of this year's hotdoggers and got the total legit ride in the wienermobile down the strip. The song was blaring and people were looking. This thing just screams word of mouth. well done hotdoggers, well done :)

For those who care the wienermobile blog is alive and well and tracking the vehicle's trajectory at http://hotdoggerblog.com/index.php

VU Meter Flicker Sound

I have dozens of poems and not sure where to go about publishing them, so at risk of alienating the entrepreneur/technologist/socialmedia/triathlon crowd ;) perhaps I'll put a few here. Any and all feedback welcome.








A VU meter flickers.
Out of habit
I cannot walk
Or cry, or shout.
I can no longer
Walk along the deserts
Or tropics of your
Imagination.
In code we trust.
No longer taught
By the hands, the lips,
The bones of our elders.
Indeterminancy corrupts
The spirit yields
To non life forms
Now mobile and embedded
In our structures.
With prescient care she approaches
Me
Wan and recently lost
From the umbilical pixels
Born anew into
Smooth and painful
Analog space.
Her hand now upon my chest
Exploring downward
Hoping for acceptance
Teeth bared I'm
Awakened Awakened
To this new world of old.



copyright 2008 Tim Wolters

Real Example of the Power of Social Media

The above ad for Motrin went up on their website late yesterday afternoon. After only 20 hours and a huge blogger and twitter outcry, motrin.com was taken down. Here's a link to one of the bloggers who spoke out. David Armano has provided a more complete analysis of the entire event along with some advice for brands.

Times are indeed changing for companies. Social media's reach and influence is broad and word spreads quickly over loosely knit networks of passionate people.

In addition to David's advice I would say

1. Get to know the social media community. Find the bloggers in your target market.
   Reach out to them. Ask them what they think of your campaign messaging.
2. Baseline the community talking about your products and services with social media measurement applications.
   
3. Monitor increases in discussion volume and sentiment. Live monitoring will provide an early warning system if an adverse reaction to the campaign forms.
4. And most importantly, reach out to the community when warranted. Motrin must be commended for their genuine outreach once they determined the ad wasn't being well received.
   

11+ tips to help survive the downturn from John Doer

Came across this blog entry from Christine.net recording the 11 things John Doer says entrepreneurs should do to survive in an economic downturn. I've copied below and you can get to the full post here. Thanks for blogging this Christine.

1. Don't take a meat cleaver to the core of your business; use a scalpel when making changes.
2. Cut once, and cut deeper than you need to.
3. Keep 18 months of cash flow, being conservative on cash flow from revenue.
4. Defer facilities expansion – don’t spend money on tech or physical expansions.
5. Reevaluate R&D priorities.
6. Renegotiate all contracts that you have, even leases.
7. Remember that everyone in the company needs to be selling the value proposition.
8. Offer people equity instead of cash – e.g., equity bonuses.
9. Secure the cash with things like government-backed securities.
10. Figure out what the leading indicators are for your business so that you can react quickly when things don’t turn out.
11. Communicate honestly with everyone, including all employees, and don’t sugarcoat things.

I really like 11 and think it builds respect and trust. We're all in the boat together after all.

I would say two additions are:

• Truncate deals that are not core to your value proposition. Unless you are still firmly in experimental mode with plenty of cash and small burn SELL WHAT YOU HAVE! Also goes back to the tenets of Focus, Focus, Focus
  
• Pay attention to cost of sales - do you need to travel or can more be squeezed out of inside selling efforts?

Obama leading in the blog wars

Collective Intellect posted our take on the election from a quantitative evaluation of social media perspective. We compared Colorado blogs to blogs across the nation to determine both the buzz around the candidates and net sentiment towards each candidate. The result was a Barack Obama lead by nearly 10 percentage points. Read the full blog post here.

Hallogorgeous

Sent from my iPhone- Just finished up an interesting breakfast with the head of
research for SAP -thanks Vista Ventures!- and walking to work caught
this shot of boulder creek. Has been a beautiful fall here and puts
the financial climate in perspective. Have a great Halloween everyone!

Obama - Palin

Sent from my iPhone- Saw this sign in an optical shop window in NYC. Too funny.

Techno trash

Sent from my iPhone- note the Enterprise Java Beans book in the lower left of the
picture. Just below it are a stack of Encyclopedia Britannicas from
the 70s. Apropos.

Hotel Lobby, Redeye Daze

Sent from my iPhoneHanging out in the lobby of the west side central park Woogo. Caught
the redeye into NYC this morning for a quick two days of meetings. Am
thinking through a blog entry on search but feeling a little fuzzy ;)