Emerge Inc. Blog

Yellow Ball Tennis Camp recently expanded to seven camps for the 2009 season. With the expansion, Emerge worked with Yellow Ball Tennis Camp to restructure the website in a user friendly format to provide visitors easy access to all camp information.

Within the website, visitors can learn more about Yellow Ball Tennis Camp, register for camp, purchase Yellow Ball merchandise, view coach information, photos, tennis network and more. To learn more, visit the Yellow Ball Tennis Camp website at YellowBallTennis.com.

Four sessions, a quick run through the trade show and walk through Austin today.

Presenting Straight to the Brain

• Classic PowerPoint isn’t good enough, the bar keeps getting raised
• Presentations are moving from what could be displayed on paper to a film strip style
• Tell a story, give it emotion
• Brain is hardwired through evolution to ignore lots of things that don’t result in immediate danger
• Think of the audience when building your slides
• Question every slide, does it have a pulse, make it bet for its life.
• You would never see bullets in a movie; they shouldn’t be in your presentation

Outsourcing 2.0: Is the World Flat or Not?

• Outsourcing overseas or domestically can be challenging
• Look for contractors who will tell you what they do not specialize in; otherwise they are average at everything
• Communication is critical to successful outsourcing
• Chat and email can work best because conversations are documented

Whitehouse.gov 2.0: Upgrading to Open Source Government

• This session was recorded and send by request to the White House
• Attendees (about 50) included Internet Director for President Bush’s last 2 years
• Also attending was Scott Thomas design director for President Obama’s Change.gov and BarackObama.com
• Put government data out there and allow people, non profits and the private sector to innovate with, around and on top of it
• In Canada, any information created by the government is jointly owned by the creator and the Queen
• Lots of innovation around open government is happening in local communities around the Country

How Start-Ups Can Take Advantage of the Recession

• Large corporations are making cuts and focusing on their core business; time to take market share
• Talent that wouldn’t be accessible to small businesses is now available
• Don’t sign long term deals for office space; maybe co-locate with a larger company that has made cuts
• Ask lawyers and accountants to defer billing until start-up has achieved 1st round of funding; they either believe in you or they don’t; no reason to work with those who don’t
• Keep overhead expenses low and use creative marketing techniques

I ended the day with a walk through downtown Austin and visited the state capital.

Today, I attended 4 sessions and the SxSW Web Awards:

Neocartography: Mapping Design and Usability Evolved

• 60% of online maps use Google
• 80% of males use North up; 80% of females use turn by turn driving directions
• Online mapping is moving beyond what can be done on paper
• Mapping events in time is one of the next evolutions

How to Create a Great Company Culture

• Investors look at spreadsheets, culture is what is between the lines the ensures you make the numbers
• Paint the companies big picture to ensure everyone is inspired and knows the end game
• Culture is a family system; Parents – investors; Best Friend – Cofounder; Good Friends – Management Team; Kids – Employees
• Anyone who loses their passion no longer helps the team
• Establish clear accountability based on business and performance metrics

From Flickr and Beyond: Lessons in Community Management

• Editorial: One of the best panels so far, with community managers from flickr, YouTube, Etsy & Current TV
• Community is difficult at all levels
• 3 reasons to remove user contributions 1) legal; 2) User Experience; 3) Brand Management, Advertising, Social Responsibility
• Transparency and communication are critical; explain why content is removed
• All community rules grow out of “Don’t be a jerk”

Pitfalls and Opportunities: How to Fund a Startup

• It is not about the idea. It is about the execution
• In a flat world, 10 other people have the same idea, who will execute fastest/best
• Avoid taking investor money until you absolutely need it

I’ll end with a congratulations to all of the nominees and winners of the 2009 SxSW Web Awards.

I thought it might be interesting to document each day that I am at the SxSW Interactive conference. I think the easiest way to do this will be to list a few takeaways from each session I attend:

The Ecosystem of News

We arrived in time to attend 1 session on Friday, so I’ll include that with Saturday’s sessions.

• Because of the economy, newspapers will make a transition in 2 years that otherwise would have occurred over the next 10 years
• Newspapers should stop paying for content the web is already producing for free; do what you do best and link to the rest
• News will become a lot more distributed

Tips for Making Ideas Happen

• Generate ideas in moderation, quickly kill ideas
• Share ideas liberally, if they are stolen, they weren’t unique enough
• Creativity + Organization = Impact
• Achievement = Actions Taken (not ideas generated)
• Require constraints from clients – budget, colors, etc. they are there even if neither you or the client acknowledge them
• Recognize, measure and celebrate actions taken
• And, the always popular – find time to focus on the important not always the urgent

Microformats: A Quiet Revolution

• Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards
• Microformats are being used on a lot more sites than most think – google, yahoo, Microsoft, ebay, WordPress

Opening Remarks: Tony Hsieh

Well, in the interest of honesty, I skipped the opening remarks to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes beat Michigan State in the Big 10 Men’s college basketball tournament. I will watch the YouTube video as soon as it is released. (Don’t forget, it was a Saturday!)

Kicking Ass With Controlled Metadata

• In many cases, user generated tags are not enough, experts and/or paid professionals are needed
• Pandora uses music professionals and tags songs in over 400 dimensions
• It can take a lot of tags to ensure relevance
• Some site are now sharing tags with and API

Collaborative Filters: The Evolution of Recommendation Engines

• Collaborative Filters combine input from many different people to filter information better than it otherwise would be filtered
• Recommendation Engines personalize these results
• 10 years ago, everyone saw the same Netflix site. Now each user has a unique site
• 2 types of data; 1) entered by users; 2) learned from user actions
• When last.fm enabled users to share their song lists, it changed their listening to hide “guilty pleasures”

Time to figure out my schedule for tomorrow and enjoy downtown Austin.

JDRF is holding their 11th Annual Promise Ball event on May 9, 2009 in Columbus, Ohio.  The silent, super silent, and live auction fundraiser benefits the research of type 1 diabetes.  For the third straight year, Emerge has worked with the Mid-Ohio JDRF to develop the website to promote their event.  In the fall of each year, Emerge also helps JDRF promote their annual Walk to Cure Diabetes event.

On Tuesday (2/24/09), I surpassed 15,000 followers on twitter and thought it was an appropriate time to take a minute and reflect. A large body of work already exists on the advantages and value of twitter, so I’ll focus on my personal motivations and lessons learned.

Personal Motivation

I first heard of twitter March 2007, when it won the South by Southwest Web Award. It wasn’t until July 2008 that I jumped in. For the first few months I visited often, but only posted sporadically.

In November, while watching a Cleveland Browns game with some friends, we started talking about the potential benefits of twitter. The next day, I outlined my goals for twitter:

• Try to understand it, especially from the point of view of how it would benefit clients of Emerge.
• Connect with specialists who could be partners on Emerge’s larger projects.
• Build my professional connections, especially in Columbus, Ohio where Emerge has a branch office and we see potential for growth due to their thriving tech community.

As I documented earlier, my motivations became very personal with the attacks in Mumbai, India, where my brother lives.

Lessons Learned

Some other random lessons learned:

• A lot of people are very interesting
• It can be addictive and therefore I must stay disciplined
• I don’t like Direct Messages that are simply, “Thanks for following, visit my website”
• Authenticity is critical
• You can say a lot in 140 characters
• I sometimes start my searches at twitter instead of google
• I used twitter instead of emailing certain colleagues
• If I post a (quality) web link it will receive at least 30 clicks immediately and over 150 in a week
• There are a lot of ‘coaches’ on twitter
• There are a lot of words that can be rewritten with ‘tw’ at the beginning

In just a few of months, I have accomplished all of my original goals, although I will continue to learn more, search for specialists and build my professional connections. It is probably time to set out some new goals, but I’ll save that for a future post.

Emerge worked with the Friends of Metro Parks in Columbus to create a website for their upcoming levy campaign.

The website features general levy information, ways to get involved, video and contact information.

To view the website, visit vote4metroparks.com.

Emerge is happy to announce the launch of a new website for Avon Lake City Schools.

The new site enables internal staff to update and maintain the entire website through a content management system. Teachers also have the ability to build class websites.

Visit www.AvonLakeCitySchools.org.

Emerge worked with Invizions Inc. to develop a website for their new division, Energy 1. Energy 1 and Invizions Inc. are taking an aggressive approach towards saving money through energy conversation. Visit the new Energy 1 website at www.ERS1.net.

Emerge is in need of a great copywriter to craft two professional 30-second radio commercials. We have an initial draft that needs the finishing touches of a radio script writing expert.

The commercials will be on local radio and used to promote a new service we have for developing marketing websites for businesses that don’t want to do all the work themselves and don’t require a full service design firm.

Deliverables:

1) Write an update of the initial draft (a 2-person dialog between business owners) as a well a crafted professional advertisement
2) Write a second commercial that is a single person straight read

As an option, but not necessary, if you have connections to voice talent to produce the advertisement, I would be interested in quotes/options. Otherwise, the local radio station is happy to record the spots.

If you are a great copywriter and interested, please email a quote and your background to Ed@EmergeInc.com.