Renny Gleeson, global digital evangelist for Wieden + Kennedy, led off the Inverge Conference, with a personal, philosophical discussion on how fast and far our lives have changed due to digital devices, mobile, and online social media. It was an epiphany for Renny at 4am in a London hotel to realize he’d been screwing around on different social sites for over 12 straight hours. Talk about some high engagement metrics for those sites. This speech was a month ago, but I feel it was still uber-relevant to get perspective on what has led up to this precipitous change. Here are my notes from his speech:
With each tech advance, it takes a little while to connect emotionally with it and through it.
• 1876 – Telephone (killed body language), but made it easier to meet up
• 1844 – Telegraph – Morse tapped “What Hath God Wrought” “Crap, what have we done?”
• 1906 – Radio - > Broadcast
Use Technology to meet up, see one another
1971 @ Email (Ray Tomlinson: @ indicated a user was at some other host) -> Email medium can be the most misinterpreted (lose body language, voice inflection, most range to explain enough to get misinterpreted)
Email vs. Social Media
• Email – Very focused (1 to 1)
• Social Media – Distracted by so many other toys involved in it
– Crib Sheet – Visual cues for displaying emotion
– Dinosaurs in inappropriate places – Flickr Group
– Blip.fm: jam or music (more…)
More notes from the Inc. 5000 Conference. This young, 30-something, Bay Area entrepreneur is outrageously talented and currently running 3 mind-blowing companies. Insane.
Paypal, Zip2, (SOLD THEM)
Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City (NOW RUNNING)
Tesla Roadster- faster than a Ferrari, more energy efficient than a Prius, 3.9 seconds (0-60 mph), $4 for going 250 miles, Price: $109,000
Elon in press is called nano-manager:
• Re-design and re-modeled doors, headlights
• Delorian failed because it was a bad-performing car
• Orders – 1,200 deposits
Charge agent:
Example that Tesla sets for the entire industry (Chevy Volt happened because of that)
Solar City- as big as 5 competitors combined in California
SpaceX- lead designer on space rocket-3 tries- keeps improving. First two paid for by DARPA, third paid for by Air Force.
Darren Rowse wrote an awesome article on ProBlogger.net about “How to Polish Posts: Individual Blog Post Design.” Since we, at eROI, are slowly developing an overall strategy to encourage all employees to create blog posts on one of our 5 blogs (The Email Wars, eROI Days, Return on Subscriber, Cross Pixel Nation, and the soon-to-launch “Fresh” creative blog), I thought a few tips would help me and others in the company with more engaging blog posts in the future:
How to Polish Blog Posts:
Following are a number of areas that I consider when polishing blog posts. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you’d add to the list - I’m sure there are plenty more. (more…)
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…)
I recently wrote a blog post, Innovation Even Applies to Non-Profits, which talked about fascinating business models surrounding hipster companies like Threadless.com. No sooner had I written that blog post did I receive another several emails from friends and partner companies about a Portland company called RYZwear.com that has a nearly identical business model to Threadless.com and is launching its site this week with a sneaker design contest as the core of its community-based revenue model. Here is the email that I got:
I love the business model and the concept behind RYZwear.com and Threadless.com, but I’m wondering how much room there is for me-too type companies. Is it truly a revolutionary shift where an entire new economy can be built around it or is there significant first-mover advantages to Threadless.com and other community-based business models already up and running?
Alright, so I’m incredibly biased towards local success stories in the Portland software community. I think it’s relevant to share an amazing story / article in Forbes on Jive Software’s meteoric growth in the web 2.0 collaboration space taking on behomeths Microsoft and Lotus.
Higher Office
by Claire Cain Miller
Upstart Jive Software aims to change the way people work by bringing social networking to the office. It’s up against some firm called Microsoft.
Jive Software chief executive David Hersh has a lofty goal: a world where office work is so fulfilling, inspiring and free of trivialities that parodies like Dilbert and The Office cease to exist.
There are loftier goals–ending genocide, famine, cancer–but Hersh’s is a good fight, and you can make a lot of money helping companies get themselves out of those endless e-mail chains and pointless meetings of office work. Jive’s software uses the Web to do that.
“People live in e-mail and documents no one else can see. We’re changing the way companies work,” says Hersh.
db Clay, known to many of us at Portland’s Saturday Market as the groovy collection of wallets made out of duct tape has come a long way with their sophisticated new e-commerce website built primarily using Ruby on Rails technology.
To kickoff the site and 10 year anniversary (founder Garett Stenson started at 19 years old in college - sickeningly talented young entrepreneur) of the company, db Clay is throwing an insane party on Thurs, May 29 at Lizard Lounge and a 2-day sale on May 30-31. Check out the invite and the goods here >>
Greenlight CEO Tim Priest shared this really insightful report of Greater Portland’s economy and which areas are most ripe to recruit for. Here is just a small sampling of the Recommendations from that report:
“Considering the data as a whole, Greenlight has selected these clusters for its first RECRUITMENT initiatives:
1 - ALTERNATIVE/RENEWABLE ENERGY combined with ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES AND RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY
Rationale:
• Our region has a significant electronic services workforce that can easily transition into renewable energy.
• Significant venture capital is flowing into alternative/renewable energy.
• Our region has momentum in this cluster, with recent announcements from Solar World and other companies, and other regional economic development groups are embracing it.
• The Oregon Legislature recently increased incentives for renewable energy companies.
2- COMPUTER SOFTWARE and IT SERVICES
Rationale:
• The greater Portland region has significant human capital, 20% greater than the national average, in the cluster.
• Software is the number one cluster for venture capital.
• Of the region’s specializations, the cluster provides the highest-paying jobs.
• The region has a strong software community and reputation for both open source and software that interfaces with hardware.
• Portland is strategically positioned to capitalize on the Bay Area and Seattle’s software strengths.
3- DESIGN
Rationale:
• The region boasts big consumer brand names — Nike, Columbia Sportswear, Adidas.
• The cluster is consistent with and feeds the region’s green, sustainable brand image.
• We have a 40% higher concentration of talent in these fields than the national average.”
One trend of online marketing and the tech world as a whole is that there is an acceleration of distraction and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). And, I’m sitting next to the King of ADD, Dylan Boyd. We are listening to the first keynote at MediaPost’s OMMA show in Hollywood, but Dylan has been showing me how Twitter works and it’s quite addictive. Yes, it’s unusual (from my Twitter Virgin perspective) that respected CEO of ReturnPath just Twittered details of the birth of his child and it’s also weird to learn when some of my business associates have a bowel movement.
But, there are some newsworthy uses of Twitter, as the ADD King showed me. The Oregonian is feeding its news into Twitter, Tri-Met has its traffic updates posted real-time to Twitter.
Lessons learned from a guy who started an email marketing company - many people WANT to communicate all the time - don’t fight this human need / addiction - fuel it. Why not?
My buddy, Paul Anthony, sent me this YouTube video of his client buying a licensed song through his company’s website. As Paul mentions, it’s the first time anyone has ever licensed a song for business purposes on an iPhone. I like everything about the video, but it got me thinking just how pervasive the buzz and media hype has gotten around this thing. What’s next - iPhone usage in the bathroom? How far will it go?
Full disclosure: I don’t have an iPhone, so I’m purely commenting on what I’ve read.
Part of me is distressed by this news and part of me is happy. Why? Because I’m eROI’s Emerging Technologies Manager; guess what I do! According to this survey, 90% of 4000 people state their leading activity on the internet is sending and receiving email. Booooooooring (shhh don’t tell my boss I said that)!!
While eROI is firmly embedded as a leader in the email marketing industry, I’m on the lookout for next thing, and enjoying every minute of it. And in the spirit of being completely honest, everything I am loving right now will probably never be as useful as email -or- maybe it’s just too similar to notice.
Be delighted. If you aren’t impressed with this video and technology advances, you don’t have a pulse. With the touch of your fingers, you can make 2D maps turn 3D. You can zoom in and manipulate thousands of images on the fly. You can do anything. Jeff Han is a legend and the future is far closer than we ever imagined.
The Brits Don’t Like Social Media in Email?November 20, 2008, 11:02 am - It was interesting to read this from the UK. Really you don’t like video in email? It does not make you click? I would totally be up
Last Thursday, I (@ryanbuch) attended an all-day, online marketing conference in Portland called 
