Kevin Tate, a buddy of mine, had an awesome analogy featured on the front page of the Oregonian today in the article “Tech entrepreneurs defy recession” by Mike Rogoway. Here’s the excerpt from the article with Kevin’s quote that really got me thinking from a different mindset:
“Portland fosters the creation of small, furry mammals rather than dinosaurs — the really big things,” said Kevin Tate, 35, CEO of StepChange Group, a social media advertising and marketing specialist in the Pearl District. The “dinosaur” model of big corporate campuses and regimented software development (think Microsoft — or even Google) is going by the wayside, Tate said, in favor of more informal and collaborative arrangements. Portland’s current high-tech foment positions the state well to capitalize when the recession ends, provided its technology entrepreneurs have the appetite to take it on. “What happens when things start coming back?” Tate asked. “Will the small, furry mammals evolve?”
Nearly 9 years ago, 7 mainly tech start-up entrepreneurs co-founded a group called Starve Ups. We all survived the dot com implosion, but were influenced by really wanting to scale our companies for growth. Some Starve Ups companies have grown a little faster than others, but many contain a desire to do something world-changing with our companies through software, social good, amazing company culture or all of the above. I really like Kevin’s quote because it is accurate and represents a strong contingent in Portland’s software community, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves that our dream is to do something bigger and be more like a lion than a forgettable Chihuahua. So, how do we get there? Lack of capital is usually at the top of the list, but our biggest limitation is our mindset. Let’s grow game-changing, sustainable software businesses in Portland and tout Portland’s livability and balance as a BONUS, not a detriment to growth.
Comment below with your ideas of a more representative furry mammal for Portland.
We, at eROI, have been working the last year on creating a new generation of Event Registration Software, eROI Event, with an enhanced user experience. We are currently in the Beta Launch Phase with a limited feature set, but we are excited to get this early-release version of the product out in front of our clients and the tech community in Portland. Our goal is to gather real user feedback as we continue to develop and enhance the product. We are offering a freemium version of the product for free events, but should a user prefer to hold paid events, we can enable the Payment Gateway feature for a minimal monthly fee of $50.00.
Novel concept, but I actually used our eROI Event tool to create an event for our Employee Disco Party on June 26th (if you are one of the 2 friends that employees can invite, then you too can join in the fun). I thought some screen shots of the back-end admin area would help you see why we are excited about this beta release (even though the feature set is slightly limited for the next 1-2 months until we get feedback from all of you that want to signup for a FREE account for free events (to use for RSVPs to dinner parties, seminars, BBQs, industry networking events, business meetings, etc.)
I’m publishing my schedule for SXSW – it’s kind of ridiculous how much stuff there is to see and learn. This is my first time to the amazing, well-known event and we are showing up in full force – 1/3 of eROI staffers will be there, but clients, don’t fret, we will be on email and working during most of it. Cheers!
Let’s review my online predictions for 2009. OK, I admit it – the easy ones are not happening nearly as fast as I thought they would. Let’s just look at the first 3 of 10:
10. My Dad will use Twitter for first time and get hookedWhat’s up Dad? You are addicted to your Crackberry just like President Obama, all you need to do is download a great app called Twitterberry and you’ll be using Twitter in no time. 10 weeks into the year and still hasn’t come true. Side note: my older sister is using twitter (@3greenmoms) in the past few days to talk about her new company, 3greenmoms.
9. My Mom will get on Facebook and get addicted to chatting non-stop with family and friendsMom, C’mon – you are a chatterbox – the most social woman I know. Facebook is perfect for you. I thought you and my wife would be sharing all of your secrets about how I have food on my face half the time and wear really bad clothes on the weekends. I guess you’re not there yet. When we see you and Dad in a month, we’ll need to do something about this – Facebook is so mainstream now because it’s painfully addictive.
8. Skype and other easy video-creation apps will take off in ‘09Done. My entire family on my side and my wife’s family all got video cameras / microphones to totally Skype-enable their laptops. It makes for super fun Sat or Sun mornings to check out missing teeth on the kids and other fun things to visualize. Nicely done.
Come to the Portland Art Museum at 7pm tonight, March 7 to check out 8 Cut&Paste contestants do some insane speed designing using Photoshop and Wacom digital pens and tablets. My wife and I are joining another dozen eROI peops to cheer voiceferously our own Tom O’Toole – the talented eROI designer – who is predicted with 3 to 1 odds to win this thing. No matter what, it will be a good time.
Haiku Monday is back like a hurricaine, like a Super Bowl ad that had you laughing and crying in the same 30-second spot. I was in the backcountry skiing at Mt. Hood this past Saturday and my skiing buddy informed me that he just made the switch from his Blackberry (avid evangelist for 9+ years) to an iPhone a month ago. Here’s a very technical guy who travels domestically and internationally a whole lot and has a love affair with Blackberry – he survives on his mobile device. If he made the switch to an iPhone and several others in my office have made the switch, then what’s going to happen to RIM (Blackberry manufacturer). Well, they’ve got the most powerful man on Earth publicly admitting his addiction to his Blackberry and most lawmakers haven’t switched. The best thing to do to settle this debate is begin a haiku dialogue. So, let it begin:
I still love email
on my Blackberry, but the
web + apps on iPhone are crazy sexy
The above haiku did not follow the haiku rules, I apologize. Don’t use that as an example for your own haiku, but you must express yourself in the comments below.
At eROI, we’ve launched some exciting new blogs in the past couple months, and the content is unbelievably good. It’s so good, it may even rival the eROI Days blog. If you haven’t had a chance to check them out, now is your chance. Fresh is a blog from our creatives that is both design-oriented as well as great insights into web technologies. eROI NYC has an urban, high-energy feel to it with loads of unique video straight from the New York underground. Then, there are the tried and true old-timer blogs with eROI Days, The Email Wars, and Return on Subscriber.
Since we are full believers in OPTIMISM at eROI, we wanted to get everyone in the mood to do a little holiday partying and heavy drinking. KillROI is back in action and mixed some killer beats – 3 FREE downloadable mixes (an hour of blissful listening). KillROI also offered himself up for Free – he has no shame and apparently no price. To check all this out, go to the landing page from our email campaign.
A friend of mine, Michael Berkeley, is founder and CEO of a very cool startup called SplashCast Media that is making a huge impact in the online entertainment world – their recent success was with integrating with Hulu.com. The two companies are innovating and creating a whole new experience of Social TV for re-runs of my favorite shows – 30 Rock, The Office, and others shown below. Tech entrepreneurs have been espousing the advent of Interactive TV for 15 years, but Social TV is so much cooler – it feels like hundreds of your friends are watching the same TV show at the same time, commenting on it, IMing, and doing so in text, voice, or video comments. Ah, innovation is a beautiful thing. Remember how I wrote in an earlier blog post about December being The Month of Optimism. Well, here it is. Check out a snippet of their press release below.
At eROI, we launch a quarterly email marketing study on things that make you scratch your head and do a bit of a double-take. Conventional wisdom says that EMAIL IS DEAD among high schoolers and college students. So, we decided to test that hypothesis, and this report has some fascinating discoveries.
Our latest survey uncovers exactly how high school students, college students, and recent college graduates communicate online. 283 high school and college students participated in the study and 29 states were represented.
These survey results reveal eye-opening trends and preferences of this demographic in how it communicates digitally. We also get valuable insight into the effectiveness of marketing messages received through email, and discover areas of opportunity for marketers to connect with this in-demand group.
Students can be an elusive demographic for marketers. From this study, you will learn about a lot of new trends and valuable information about students. You will also learn specific data on which marketing channels will carry and present your message most effectively.
Our fearless NYC Director, Chris Masagatani, has been scouring the streets of NYC for 374 days. He and his fiance (now wife) moved there Dec 2, 2007. They moved straight into Hell’s Kitchen and Chris commuted all of 25 blocks to the eROI NYC office in the Flat Iron District of Manhattan where we still operate. So much change in a year – his wife is one of the top designers at nationally-acclaimed design school Parsons, and Chris is truly coming into his own as an expert online marketer, leading email design and web projects for CBS Sports, CBS Watch magazine, CBS Star Trek store among other key eROI clients like digital publisher Zinio, real estate companies like Shares of New York, The Marketing Directors and dozens more unique and amazing NYC-based clients.
What makes our year anniversary in NYC even better is that Chris has found his voice blogging on our new blog in the eROI blog family. Check out the phenomenal, unique video mashups, and photos of NYC life on THE REBIRTH OF SLICK >>
You will feel like you are in New York City when you read the blog posts and watch the videos at www.eroinyc.com
Email Design Drives Results for CBSSports.com Fantasy Sports
Does email design really matter? Is it just “fluff,” or does it truly drive results?
At eROI, we just let our Resource Center subscribers know about this exclusive email marketing case study. See how a fresh, targeted, and on-brand email design by eROI’s award-winning creative team took the CBSSports.com Fantasy Sports emails to the next level.
Please comment below to let us know your thoughts on Email Design. Give us your take Before & After you read the case study. Thx.
Everyone has been referring to today as Black Friday, the first day that many retailers get into the black all year due to the increased buying for the holiday season. Today was especially critical, given the economic conditions, and for consumers, all the amazing SALES that are happening. But, for a growing trend of companies, today could be named GREEN FRIDAY as retailers, like eROI client, Seven Planet, are trying to educate people on mindful commerce of buying goods that are good for the planet as well as bringing in a little green money to sustain their business model.
Today was the first day of the soft launch of this green general store. eROI designed and produced this dynamic, search-engine-friendly, e-commerce site, so please check out the site (www.sevenplanet.com) and check back in to this blog for a more in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at what went into the thought process for the business model, website strategy, design, and development.
Great Welcome Email - Every once in a while I get a nice surprise. I was told the other day that Levis had a great new welcome email and that it lived up to the promise on the home page. What was this promise? Well if you look at the home page at the footer they state “Sign up [...]
I am excited to join a great panel for an upcoming Software Association of Oregon event called 
