eROI Days Email Agency

Yesterday, I joined the Board of Greenlight Greater Portland, an economic development group represented by Portland’s private-sector business community.  Greenlight’s goal is to recruit and retain growing companies in the Greater Portland region.  I was inspired by Greenlight’s mission and the approachability and competence of the Board – titans of industry in this town – I was inspired to write a thank you email to them last night. It went something like this:

From: Ryan Buchanan
To: Tim Priest ; Mark Ganz ; Malia Wasson ; Eric Parsons ; Pat Reiten ; Peggy Fowler ; Steve Stadum ; Roger Hinshaw ; Bill Stoller ; Bob Jesenik ; Wes Lawrence ; Jim Mark ; Dennis Rawlinson ; Keith Leavitt ; Lindsay Desrochers ; Wally Van Valkenburg ; Don Krahmer ; Alan Johnson ; Randy L. Miller ; Scott Campbell ; John Bradley ; Jay Platt 
Sent: Tue Sep 09 23:51:47 2008
Subject: RE: September 9 Greenlight Board Meeting: thank you

Last Thursday, I (@ryanbuch) attended an all-day, online marketing conference in Portland called Inverge (#inverge). I gained a ton of insights from conference speakers from Wieden + Kennedy (@rgleeson), Nokia (@karllong), TechWeb (@TonyUphoff), and Vidoop (@kveton) and from freelance social media freelancers, friends, and business associates alike. I even have 6 pages of handwritten notes (pen + paper, not digital) to prove it.  However, I managed to get in over 30 tweets (Twitter posts of 140 characters or less) that day which doubled my usage of Twitter for the past four months.  I’ve always been open to admitting that, in the past, I have only used Twitter at long conferences and airports when I tell myself that it’s okay to fuel my often-controlled Attention Deficit Disorder. 

I used to think Twitter was primarily a distraction with no practical business purpose, but now my latest Binge Tweeting session has provided some epiphanies from first-hand experience.  I tweeted about Zappos as a great case study in creating employee evangelists and within an hour, Tony Hsieh (@zappos), CEO of Zappos, began following me on Twitter (which is a good thing for all you non-tweeters).  We struck up a conversation on twitter and now I’m an even bigger fan of Zappos. I also realized that over 60% of our eROI employees use Twitter, which is awesome.  We can benefit from knowledge sharing, internal quick communication, and even help in some customer service scenarios.  The next step is to create a Group within TweetDeck, a sweet Twitter application, with the Twitter handles of as many of our customer contacts as possible to engage in those daily conversations as well and continue to be a resource to them.

To check out other CEOs who use Twitter, read the rest of the blog post. (more…)

You’d swear these guys were rockstars with all the attention they’ve been getting for moving their software company from Tulsa to Portland. But, the reality is that it truly is something special with their company, Vidoop, which makes secure password manager software used by banks, financial institutions, and millions of users.  The first thing that makes them cool is that they’ve opened up shop in the heart of Portland’s Social Media center in Old Town – the Technology + Arts Building – between Couch St and Davis St on NW 5th Ave (full disclosure: they are right downstairs from us at eROI. The second cool thing about Vidoop is that there are 45 fully geeky geeks who have embraced their inner-geekdom and absolutely love what they do – I’ve only hung out w/ the 6 or 7 Vidoopians who’ve been in the Portland office the past couple months, but Luke, Joel, Scott, Kevin, Mitch, and Matt are pretty sharp and already involved in Portland software scene.

Third, Vidoop documented their journey to P’town with a blog, dozens of videos, pictures, and incessant tweeting – check it out – Follow their Oregon Trail.

Lastly, Harvey Matthews, friend and President of the Software Association of Oregon, informed me that there is a party this evening at 5pm at the parking lot in front of Backspace.

Time: September 7, 2008 at 5pm
Location: BackSpace Parking Lot
Street: 115 NW 5th Ave
City/Town: Portland
Website or Map: http://maps.google.com/maps…
Contact Info: 503-999-5849

If I can convince my wife and 2 daughters to hang out with 45 smelly software engineers after 5 days on the road w/ no showers, I’ll see you there tonight.  Don’t forget to check out their journey on the Oregon Trail>>

Chris – love your use of original video on your blog – www.crosspixelnyc.com – content in this rocks. It was so good – I had to re-post on this blog so people can see how we roll in NYC. Great job!

Kelly Samardak wrote an incredible piece in her MediaPost column “Just an Online Minute” about the wayward remaining days in the last week of August and how we all get insanely busy starting today, the first day of September AFTER Labor Day.  This is what grabbed my attention: “If you’re reading this on your iPhone, Blackberry, or crystal ball while on the beach gazing at Regis Philbin from behind in his sky-blue banana hammock, thanks, and enjoy this languid read of low-pressure, real-life socializing.  Why?  Because I know September is about to grab us all by our media necks  and wipe the floors with our souls.  See you next week; I’ll be the one in body armor.”

So, while we recognize that the final four months of the year are going to fly by getting entrenched in the online marketing / interactive agency / social media world while juggling family commitments, school, soccer practices for the kids, and an occasional date night w/ your spouse, let’s try to keep a little balance in our lives.  Until then, enjoy this article:

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In the same week, I was asked to do 2 different creative reviews after a hiatus of at least 6 months of not writing them.  The first one “Can you tell me how to get to SesameStreet.org?” is complete and was really fun to write because I could involve my kids as a focus group.  This next one is the one I need your help on.  I have to choose 2 sites to write about – the best of the year that eROI designed and developed AND the best of the year that any other brand or agency developed. 

I feel confident with my choice for another brand developing a site: Converse’s ThisIsTheIndexPage.com.

Please comment on which of these 2 eROI-developed sites I should review – I have totally different reasons for submitting one versus the other:  Zinio blog  … or … Wacom’s Pen Collective

Seriously – let me know by a quick note in the comment field below.

It’s Labor Day – holiday – day for humor – enjoy a few of these real scenarios and an excellent site at www.engrishfunny.com :

more the engrish!

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