Emerge Inc. Blog

Beginning Monday (January 11, 2010), I am going to write a blog post a day on Emerge’s company values. For many years, we have informally operated under these values, they drive our hiring decisions, our project management decisions and the way we related to clients and other team members.

In the middle of 2009 we decided to formally document these values. For the past 6 months, we analyzed and discussed these values to ensure that they were in the best interests of clients, fellow team members and the company owners.

The next phase is to publish these values, explain them and ask for feedback from friends of Emerge.

Emerge is seeking a cutting edge marketing professional to join the Emerge team on a part-time basis (with the potential for full-time in the future).

The successful candidate will have lead responsibility for creating an emerging media strategy for various Emerge projects, implementing the strategy and measuring results. For this position, we are defining Emerging Media as everything on Brian Solis & Jess3’s “The Conversation Prism“.

Full details on the Emerging Media Marketing Leader position.

Chris Brogan, author of the New York Times best seller “Trust Agents: Using Social Media for Business Success — the Rise of the Trust Agent” will speak at Lorain County Community College from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 (Register Here). Chris is speaking as part of the Credibility Conversation, a 3-part speakers series on building personal and business value through social media. The Credibility Conversation is hosted by Emerge Inc. and LorainCounty.com.

Chris Brogan is an eleven year veteran of using social media and both web and mobile technologies to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles, and makes media of all kinds at chrisbrogan.com, a blog in the top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150, and in the top 100 on Technorati. Chris is also the cofounder of the PodCamp new media conference series, exploring the use of new media community tools to extend and build value.

Chris won the Mass High Tech All Stars award for thought leaders for 2008. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, US News & World Report, The Montreal Gazette and Newsweek.

Over the years, Amazon has moved from selling books to selling electronics, clothing, toys, just about every item you can buy on the Internet you can find at Amazon.  Amazon also offers fulfillment services, online payments and gives the ability to create your very own online store.

While all of Amazon’s services are interesting in their own right, the services I find most exciting is Amazon Web Services.  Amazon Web Services (AWS) enables businesses large and small the ability to exploit Amazon’s vast infrastructure by offering on-demand highly available virtual servers.  These virtual servers can run anything from Windows XP to extremely advanced Linux systems.  Users of these servers pay by the hour and are on a tiered system based on the power of the server purchased.

Emerge has been using AWS services for months, using Amazon’s infrastructure to expand the capacity of LorainCounty.com’s High School and College Football broadcasts.  Each Friday and Saturday, Emerge boots-up a new AWS server, adds the necessary software and broadcasts the game.  Since the service is offered on-demand, Emerge only pays Amazon while broadcasting the games, after the games we shut down the server and our billing stops.  Previous years’ broadcasts on LorainCounty.com required purchasing specific software and a dedicated server on a monthly contract, with Amazon there is no contract, when we aren’t broadcasting we don’t pay.

In the past 2 months Amazon came out with what I think is the best offering.  Amazon is now offering MySQL hosting.  MySQL is an open-sourced relational database management system with over 6 million installations.  It is used by sites such as Wikipedia, Google and Facebook. MySQL is used by Emerge for many of our client’s sites to enable dynamic page creation, online stores and sharing of ideas.

As with all software there is an administration side (patch the software, run backups, correct disk errors, etc).  At Emerge I do these administrative updates (usually late at night while our clients’ clients are sleeping). With Amazon’s MySQL hosting, Amazon takes care of all that.  They even have monitors available to check the status of the database and if needed we can increase the amount of disk space used by the database, increase the CPU of the database, even increase the size and power of the database server.  I know this is a bit of Geek Speak but all of this allows developers, such as Emerge, to concentrate on developing web applications and web sites, not spend as much time on database administration.

So the question arises, “Is my Emerge hosted website’s MySQL database hosted with Amazon’s Web Services?” Currently the answer is no.  Amazon MySQL hosting is still in its Beta phase of development.  Beta means the software has been released to the public, but may still have some bugs or issues.  Because of these possible bugs or issues, Emerge will not transaction client’s sites to Beta Software.

While Amazon’s MySQL hosting is still in Beta, we have begun experimenting with it and are investigating if MySQL hosting from Amazon will be the right fit for our clients.  If the fit is right and when Amazon release MySQL hosting into production we will contact you before we make any changes to your website.

Additional information:
Amazon Services (fulfillment, online payments, etc.)
Amazon Web Services
Amazon RDS (MySQL Hosting)

Nearly a hundred people joined us at the LCCC Spitzer Conference Center yesterday morning for the first of three scheduled events in the Credibility Conversation speakers series.  It was a big success, and I was impressed not only by the number of attendants but also by the atmosphere and excitement that was palpable in the conference center as the speakers took the stage.

I recognized a lot of Lorain County business, political and community leaders in the audience, and could see that a lot of traditional face-to-face networking was done during the continental breakfast before the speakers started.  Ed Skimin, co-founder of Emerge, thanked those in attendance and introduced the speakers, Lewis Howes and Shawn Morton.

Lewis, who is also a previous two sport collegiate All-American, talked about his experience using the LinkedIn website to become an authority figure in the realm of sports networking.  He was a very enthusiastic, animated speaker and had some great advice for using LinkedIn to network and build success.

Howes was followed on stage by Shawn Morton, the Senior Consultant for Social Media at Nationwide in Columbus. Morton, who has many years of experience in web development and social media initiatives, spoke about Nationwide’s use of social website Twitter to reach out to new customers.  I personally didn’t realize that Twitter could be used so effectively to find new customers and research projects.

Photos and videos from the event will be added to the Credibility Conversation website in the next couple of days.

Don’t forget: the next scheduled Credibility Conversation event will take place at the Spitzer Conference Center on Dec. 9, 2009 at 7:30 a.m. and will feature Tom Wanek, an internationally-renowned marketing consultant and author of Currencies that Buy Credibility. The final speaker, New York Times bestselling author Chris Brogan, will come to LCCC on Jan. 13, 2010 to discuss his book Trust Agents, about tapping into the power of social networks to build your brand’s influence, reputation and profits.

For more info and to register to join us at the next events, please visit www.CredibilityConversation.com.

Join us for the Credibility Conversation, a three-part speakers series on building personal and business value through social media, hosted by Emerge Inc. and LorainCounty.com.

The first event, Featuring an expert on LinkedIn (Lewis Howes) and the head of social media for Nationwide Insurance (Shawn Morton), is next Wednesday, November 11 from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. at LCCC Spitzer Conference Center . Upcoming speakers including a consultant on business credibility (Tom Wanek) and a New York Times best selling author (Chris Brogan).

The regular cost is $45 per session; $90 for all 3 sessions. But, readers of the Emerge blog can register for the discount rate of $60 for the series when registering online at www.CredibilityConversation.com/emerge.

H1N1 is on the mind of many of us during the start of the fall. Seems like everywhere you turn there is another story of H1N1. Lorain County Health Department, through an Emerge developed website, has put together a special H1N1 section on their website. The section contains statistics of H1N1 vaccinations during the department’s Flu Clinics along with prevention information. The department also added a link to the H1N1 Pre-registration form available through the Ohio Department of Health.

Lorain County Auditor Mark Stewart released the 2009 Triennial Values on-line through an Emerge developed website. Every 6 years the Auditor’s office is required by State Law to visit every property in the county to establish its value. Three years after that establishment, the office is required to reevaluate the values. During the Triennial review, the office reviews statistics of sales and transfers and determines through a math formula the new values of the properties. The Auditor with the help of Emerge team members released the values on-line at http://www.LorainCounty.com/auditor/summary/.

How does your company’s Web presence reflect upon its trustworthiness and professionalism?

Transparency is a philosophy that many businesses have adopted in order to better serve their customers, but it is quickly becoming mandatory thanks to the Internet. While it was once difficult to research customer feedback about specific companies, the Web has allowed consumers to quickly amass a large quantity of information about your business.

Unfortunately, some companies see Internet transparency as a threat to their customer base, since anyone can post criticism about a product in countless places on the Web.

Here at Emerge, however, we believe that the Internet gives your company the opportunity to better satisfy customers through feedback, interaction and tracking.

If used correctly, the Internet can allow you to connect with the pulse of your customer base like never before. Rather than looking at negative feedback as a hindrance, you should consider it an opportunity to identify areas where you can improve your products and customer service. By doing so, your clients will appreciate your honest efforts to better serve them.

The concept of a static, unchanging company website is quickly being replaced by that of an online gathering place that lets a business interact and share ideas with customers. Thanks to advances in social media and community-oriented plugins, it’s now easier than ever to transform your site into an exciting, customer-friendly online experience.

By embracing the transparency that the Web lends to your company and products, you’ll be able to increase revenue, expand your customer base and create “buzz” about your business.

And that’s exactly what Emerge wants to help you do.

JDRF hosted their annual Walk to Cure Diabetes on Sunday, October 4 at The Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio.  This year’s walk had over 6,000 walkers and hundreds of volunteers participate.  For the third straight year, Emerge has worked with the Mid-Ohio JDRF to develop the walks website to promote their event and to provide event details.  For more information and photos from this year’s event, visit the Walk to Cure Diabetes website.