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Hazelnut Tech Talk is a collaboration between Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo.
Our seventh episode was recorded the evening after Bear and Blog and features Steven Walling, Wikipedia Extraordinaire and chicken tender who works with Wiki inventor Ward Cunningham at Portland’s AboutUs.org, wherein we talked about using Wiki as an academic source (and getting an A for it), Recent Changes Camp 2009, The Wikipedia Manual of Style, breakfast, lunch and dinner, sleeping under the stars and by the river, guinea pigs, User Bots, and trees, snakes, owls and grapevines
If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?
Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. But Portland’s own event, Ignite Portland, will be happening soon, and it is a chance for locals to make short presentations on anything they are passionate about.
When?
November 13, 2008. On the Ignite Portland Blog, Josh Bancroft urges Portlanders to Save the Date.
Ignite History
Local tech legend Raven Zachary told me that Ignite Portland was founded by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly. He was initially inspired by Japan’s rapid fire presentation method of Pecha Kucha and did an adaptation of that for technology. If you haven’t heard of Pecha Kucha before, it is Japanese for the sound of conversation. Attendees watch a speakers that have only 20 slides, with 20 seconds per slide.Portland Pecha Kucha Night was just last week.
Ignite Portland
Portland, Oregon has had some of the largest events in Ignite history. Ignite 2 packed the Bagdad Theatre with over 750 people, and many waiting in line had to be turned away.
Ignite Portland at Gnomedex
Several alumni of Ignite Portland will be presenting their five minute topics at this week’s Gnomedex 8.0, an annual social media conference organized by Chris Pirillo. Rick Turoczy has a list of the presenters on his blog, Silicon Florist, and Portland Ignites Gnomedex on TinyScreenfuls, the blog of Josh Bancroft, who points out that “The idea for Ignite Portland was hatched at last year’s Gnomedex.”
Ignite Portland Planning Begins Now
November 13th may seem like a long time away, but Ignite events take a tremendous amount of effort to pull off. Want to be part of the event and meet some really cool people in the process? The Ignite Planning Committee is always open to dedicated, passionate volunteers. Help make this Ignite Portland even better than the last three.
The Ignite Planning meeting that occurred at Cubespace tonight was there primarily to deal with a system in large demand. The first major thing discussed how the online ticket reservation system would function. Then, volunteer teams were developed. Currently, they are as follows:
The Presenter Team
Raven Zachary, Mentor iPhone developer and recently of Raven.me, an iPhone development blog. You can follow Raven on Twitter. He’s also a Legion of Tech Board Member.
Tasks
- Review and sort through all Portland Ignite 4 proposals.
- Ensure that all presenters submit 20 images, a Powerpoint, or PDF by the final deadline.
- Ensure that AV equipment does not FAIL upon deployment.
The Marketing Team
Josh Bancroft, Mentor of Intel, Kindle Evangelist, and author of the TinyScreenfuls Blog, and Legion of Tech Board Member. @Jabancroft on Twitter.
Tasks
- Spread the word about Ignite Portland 4 through writing on the Ignite Portland Blog
- Designate an Official Ignite Portland spokesperson to ensure uniform information gets out to local media connections.
- Monitor the Tweetverse for Tweets about Ignite Portland. Tweet from the official Ignite Portland blog, and answer questions as they are asked.
The Sponsor Contact/Site Team
Todd Kenefsky, Mentor CEO of Connect Interactive Media, an interactive marketing company, and Legion of Tech Board Member.
Tasks
- Convert Sponsor logos from .eps format to .gif or .jpg and place them on the Ignite Portland sponsor page.
- Help create sponsor slides
The Ignite Event Setup Team
Dawn Foster, Mentor, Consultant, FastWonder blogger, Legion of Tech Board Member, and recently, of Shizzow, an micro-geolocation released last Monday (a review of its beta release is here).
Tasks
- Help set up the venue during the day of the event.
- Organize attendees and help line flow.
Other Organizers
Adam Duvander also has a hand in organizing Ignite Portland events and has presented in past Ignites. Check out his blog, Simplicity Rules, and Adam’s Twitter profile.
~.—————–
For more information, check out the Ignite Portland Website.
Ignite Portland 4 will be on November 13, 2008
- Bagdad Theater
- 3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd
- Portland, OR 97214
- 7:00 - 10:00 PM
- Ticketholders get in at 5:30 PM
- General Admission at 6:15 PM
- Admission is always FREE
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Please let me know if I missed anything in this post. Feel free to contact the Mentors via Twitter if you’d like to add to the volunteer efforts.
You can follow me on Twitter @caseorganic. I’ll be on the Marketing and Sponsor Teams.
Thanks for reading Hazelnut Tech Talk! We’re proud to bring you event coverage from a mix of creative and tech worlds.
Volume Four of Portland’s Pecha Kucha Series was held last Tuesday, August 12th, 2008.
This particular session was located on NW 8th and Couch Street in artists place that was currently under construction. There was a random amalgamation of wooden benches on the floor facing a large presentation screen. The event was free, and so was free wine and beer. Not bad for a Tuesday night of entertainment!
At 6:30Pm the room was already filled to capacity. There is a large oriental carpet in front of the large projection screen, and the audience overflow is sitting on it.
What is Pecha Kucha?
Pecha Kucha is a Japanese word for the sound of conversation, or chit chat.
It is a presentation technique in which the presenter shows 20 images for 20 seconds each.
In this way, an audience can absorb a large amount of information very quickly, because interest is kept up by the rapid change of images and speaker engagement. It’s a way to remove the annoyance that a standard Powerpoint presentations often bring to standard meeting experiences.
Pecha Kucha Presentation Summaries
Andrew Brahe
Confluence Project
Brahe received his B.S. in Architecture from Portland State University, and he has a passion for ethical design and strives for a better way to build.
His presentation started with an audience participation exercise. He had the right side of the room begin to snap their fingers, and got the middle of the room to begin rubbing their hands together. He made the left side of the room made slap their thighs. Then he urged everyone to do their part faster and louder, until the place was filled with a great amount of percussive noise.
Then he made everyone stop.
There was dead silence and darkness; then the first slide showed up on the monitor.
The presentation involved architecture. One of the best slides demonstrated a beautifully formed pedestrian bridge that had been built over a freeway near Ft. Vancouver. He said that this bridge would be opened to the public soon.
The image of the land bridge spanning over the highway was intense. It looked as if green grass had grown all over the highway in an organic arch, partially eroding away the concrete. In reality, the bridge was allowing animals and humans a way to cross over previously impervious territory.
There were a number of other architectural projects shown, including a tall bird observation tower in the middle of the forest with a long ramp all the way to the top. Brahe is also employed as a project manager with Maya Lin (the architect behind the Vietnam memorial in Washington D.C.) on a multi-sited art and architectural installation.
Diane Jacobs and Karen Maurer
Visual Artists
This presentation detailed a future interactive installation at the Disjecta art space in North Portland. The show encourages viewers to “See, feel, open, and act”, and “Find words that begin to transform the present”.
“We abolished slavery, except as a punishment for crime”, the presenter said.
The pieces were about bridging the gaps in multicultural understanding in Portland. One of the most poignant lines: “Don’t let anyone forfeit untapped potential”.
The art show opens Saturday, the 23rd of August from 6-9 pm at the Disjecta. 8371 N Interstate Portland Oregon 97217.
Gallery Hours are Fri-Sun Aug 24-Oct 25 / 12-6 pm, and the Artists Talk is Wednesday, October 1st at 7 pm.
Bill Dieter
Industrial Designer, TERRAZIGN, Inc.
Bill Dieter started Terrazign, Inc., a Portland-based industrial design firm in 1994. The firm works primarily with fabrics and hard woods. His interest is in “integrating the worlds of hard and soft”.
Zippable Plywood Trade Show Booths
One of the first slides demonstrated a trade show booth for a snowboarding company. He was able to integrate zippers into the polished plywood panels to allow the tradeshow display to be zipped together into a study shape and unzipped
into an easily transportable shape once the trade show ended.
“This is the only time I’ve ever gotten splinters from sewing”, he added with a smile.
All Weather Segway Enclosures
He showed off other industrial objects from his firm, including an all-weather enclosure for Segways that made the little personal vehicles look even more ridiculous——>in a good way. Here’s a link to an article (and photos) of the invention on Engadget called Meep Meep.
Backpacks and Military Projects
The next series of slides ranged from inflatable car seats for toddlers (saving time, space, and weight), and Compression backpacks, which do pretty much the same thing while looking awesome at the same time.
He outlined some of the military projects the firm has worked on as well, including a backpack with a hydration frame that made water the structure of the pack.
“This solved the largest issue of military life, which is hydration”. Placing hydration at the center of the bag allowed the soldier the capability to modify what they needed, because the backpack was also modular.
Sparq Training Equipment
Terrazign created a series of collapsible hurdles for Sparq, a training division of Nike. They’re lightweight and foldable, and can withstand and structure serious training.
They also developed weight vests, which were made from monofilament fiber mesh that allows for air flow.
Vertical Treadmills for NASA
Perhaps the most interesting part of Dieter’s presentation involved images of NASA members training for space missions on vertical treadmills. The treadmills were developed by Terrazign to create artificial gravity and the ability to retain bone density while in space. The vertical treadmill is effective because of its capability to simulate gravity equal to body weight.
A group of guys that were playing a series of Mexican folk songs on guitars strode by the event space while we watched a man running on a vertical treadmill on the screen. It was a strange juxtaposition of elements that made the audience consider really what they were looking at.
You can see images of the Vertical Treadmill at the NASA Website.
Severin Villiger
Designer, Teacher
Severin began by telling us that he was going to do a presentation about Italian Airplanes. He was wearing a leather coat, airplane goggles, and a big black biker helmet.
Apparently, he was a Vespa enthusiast. He showed pictures of pinup women riding the bikes, and even had a whole series of them inside the presentation space. The entire presentation was developed with a zany Swiss accent, which made his ability to make the crowd laugh even greater.
Vespa Mania
“Who thinks a Vespa is a toy?” he smiled, “I don’t”.
He showed an image of his group of Vespa riders doing all sorts of interesting activities, and then one of his personal collection of Vespa bikes.
“The best thing about a Vespa scooter?” he stated, “You have four…or ten”.
Want to join the fun? Check out the Portland Vespa Group for more adventures.
Intermission
Matthew Packwood
Radio Producer
“I’m going to do a presentation on Contemporary Classical Music. It’s kind of an oxymoron. Contemporary and classical shouldn’t go together, but they really do”.
“I figured that it is rather difficult to talk about music, so I brought four pieces to share with you, all of which have something to do with Portland”.
He then began to play each piece. Each song had four slides associated with it - a title slide, a picture of what the often complex music looked like, an image of the composer, and an image of what the original cover of the pieces looked like.
These four elements caused a greater understanding of each piece than if simply the music had been played alone. The images of the composers were probably the most compelling of all of the images.
Piece One
Two Celebratory Fanfares (1995)
Composer: David Dzubay (b. 1964)
Performers: John Rommel, trumpet, Edmund Cord, trumpet, Thomas Brown, trumpet, Richard Sandals, trumpet, Amy Schendel, trumpet, Robert White, trumpet, David Dzubay, conductor.
Piece Two
Incidental Music to Corneille’s Cinna (1955-1957) whose cover looked like an old book.
Composer: Lou Harrison (1917-2003)
Performer: Linda Burman-Hall, tack piano.
Piece Three
theater of mineral NADEs [excerpt] (1998)
Composer: Eyvind Kang b. 1971.
Performers: Eyvind Kang
Here, Packwood showed an image of one of Kang’s conceptual sketches. It was as intense as the image of the composer. Extremely detailed and poignant. It told the story of the composer’s mind almost as well as the music.
Piece Four
Open up your Ears. Composer: Bryan Johanson.
Performer: David Starobin, Guitar.
This was an overwhelmingly beautiful piece, and it was a classical piece inspired by a line in the Jimi Hendrix song ‘Can You See Me?’.
Packwood’s presentation was excellent because he chose to let the music speak for him.
If you want to learn more, please check out Packwood’s site Art of the States.
Greg Barton
Designer, Hurricane Katrina Revisited
Greg received architectural training from Tulane University, RISD, and , most recently, the Bartlett in London. He has created exhibits and installations shown in venues from Tyron Creek to AIA Portland Gallery to the recent “PDXplore: Designing Portland” exhibit at PNCA. Before moving to England, Greg worked for Hoist Architecture.
Barton was attending Tulane University in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina displaced his life. The event that caused 81 billion dollars in damages is still affecting the lives of many residents.
He reminded the audience that the hurricane has not finished its toll on the residents of New Orleans. There are 150,000 families still living in FEMA trailers, with an average of three per trailer. Many refugees live in FEMA villages, or “FEMA-villes”.
A far cry from the luxurious representations of trailers from the 1950’s in advertising, there are many health hazards present in trailer life. For instance, Formaldehyde exists in dangerous levels, and there have already been many C02 related deaths.
He then showed how pragmatic restraints began to reshape the public sphere. Some families had placed white picket fences or stone lions in front of their temporary/permament trailers in an attempt to trick their minds into feeling like they had an actual place to live.
Meghan Sinnot and Carl Larson
Advocates, SHIFT - Portland Biking Initiative
Meghan Sinnot came to Portland from Alaska and attended Lewis & Clark college to study Anthropology. Since it was way up on a hill, it was not easy for her to explore the surrounding Portland area without taking a long trek downtown on the college-supplied bus.
Then, Meghan discovered biking. Now she is an part of SHIFT, the Portland bicycle advocacy group.
She began the presentation by taking out a bike and pedaling on it while telling the room about her history.
“Who rode a bike here today?” she asked us. Many hands went up, including mine.
“What we do here at SHIFT is basically an ad-hocracy,” she stated, “but we do have a stash of cash in someone’s basement that they let us get at sometimes”.
She talked about the group’s attempts at serving breakfast to bike commuters on the bridges in the morning. And she talked about Critical Mass, Zoo Bombing, and Pedapalooza—a few of the great Portland bike events that serve the educate and create a nice ground for future bike advocacy.
“In Guadalajara,” she said, “there is one vehicle for every three citizens”.
You can find out more about Portland Bike Culture at shifttobikes.org.
TJ Norris and Chas Bowie
Artists
One of the presenters was masked, and the other unmasked. They talked about the modern condition, asking questions such as, “does the mask control the wearer?” (or does clothing or career control the subject?), and snapshot culture. Click Click Click Click Click Click. Tick tock, Tick tock.
I would write more, but I can’t really describe what they said in the way they did. I was very impressed though, so I am including some links to their work here.
Resources
Read more about TJ Norris, and his show at the New American Art Union. There’s also an article history for Chas Bowie at the Portland Mercury.
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Future Pecha Kucha Portland Events
I highly recommend attending any Pecha Kucha event. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming sessions in Portland or elsewhere, and possibly sign up to present, visit http://www.pechakuchaportland.org/.
For more information regarding ciyscope and upcoming events, please visit www.projectcityscope.org.
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Event Sponsors
W.PA - Works Partnership Architecture, LLC
Architecture Foundation of Oregon
FordGraphics
A to Z Wine Works (Delicious).
Quixote Investments (add this link).
Rogue Brewery
Art Institute of Portland
Today at 2Pm, all of the members of Portland Advertising Federation’s Colaboratory program presented their final marketing plan to Sameunderneath, a local sustainable clothing company.
Team Lattice showed a 5 minute video about their experiences before delving into the presentation.
The Lattice Presentation
- Research and Strategy
- Digital Brand Experience
- In-Store Branding
- Spreading Awareness
- Experiental
The Types of Sameunderneath Buyers
- Change Agents
- Enlightened Rebels
- Movers and Shakers
- Established Pioneers
Some of the brilliant ideas they came up with were as follows:
- Consumer Education: hangtags with information about the company’s values and the clothing ingredients and creation process. This will allow the consumer to really interact with the history of each piece of clothing.
- Stickers that can be written upon, to generate content for ideas — to spread the sameunderneath brand. Biodegrade nontoxic stickers.
- Chalk wall poetry can then be put on the walls of buildings with the sameunderneath.com logo at bottom - generated from Stickers #colab
- Projecting comments from a live Twitter feed about the Sameunderneath product on the catwalk of a Sameunderneath fashion show in LA. Sponsored and attended by socially-conscious, high-profile musicians.
- Branding on the inside of the clothing, so that wearers can lift their shirts to show, indeed, that they are wearing Sameunderneath. (Serves as an advertisement for photo opportunities, and a chance to show off nicely toned Yoga-abs?).
- Flyers
- Website relaunch
- Outdoor wallscapes
- Magazine
- Documetnary Series
- Sameunderneath Film Festival
- 30 second Promotion
- T-Shirt Challenge
- Banner Ads
- Pioneer Square Gallery
The Sameunderneath Target Market:
“People who give a Damn”
And for people who love music——>Advertising on Pandora.com”
Audience Interaction
Lattice team members ended by handing out stickers to everyone in the audience, saying, “Please, finish the statements on these “biodegradable, non-toxic stickers” and place them in locations that are poinigiant (and
Ryan Christensen, Founder of Sameunderneath said, “this idea is genius…(holds up the stickers with fill-in blanks) …when I first began Sameundenerath
An LA Resident Responds to the Sticker Idea
I was live blogging the Colaboratory Presentation as it happened, and I received a reponse to the stickers from @willtorres from Los Angeles, California.
@willtorres: “@caseorganic yeah, i love the stickers idea a lot. i was going to imitate a project i found with stickers throughout the city.”
Looks like their idea will be a great success.
—————–
Team Kiwi Presents
Luke Rolka:
Sameundeneath started as an educational curriculum…an idea. Now it has transformed into this business model. This socially responsible business.
“What we want to do is take this and make it big — move it national”.
“We want to take Saemunderneath and turn it into a model of super awesome success”.
Bryan Davidson: Even as Samunderneath grows, there are certain values that must stay the same.
Bryan Davidson’s words were, true, charismatic, thoughtful and provocative, which mirrored exactly the bullet points on the screen.
“You’re not just selling clothes, you’re selling a value system.”
“It is important to keep things small while thinking large. So we propose a new role of Community Director, because the world needs more Ryans.”
Luke Rolka: Consumers these days are really looking for ways to engage in a brand.The director is taking the Sameunderneath values and living and breathing them…becoming the representation of the brand. here in Portland. Then they can take that knowledge and adapt it to a city that they’re going to be running, and see how they can do it there.
Christine Vo: Sameunderneath is known very well in portland right now, but we want to take that internationally.
The T-Shirt Challenge
A way for designers to really get their name out there and show off their work.
Film Festivals, Lecture Series, Art Shows, and a Magazine
This was a decidedly different take then the music /urban street appelation basis of the Team Lattice presentation.
Founding of a Corporate Magazine, each zine with region focus, showing what each of those locations are doing with their local community and the Sameunderneath brand.
Then Unveiled a New Website: in which each of the pages have great design, Documentary Series, Philosophy, Community. “Get Involved” tab.
“What would you say to the world if you had 30 seconds to speak your mind?”
Rebels are encouraged to speak their minds on any subject and submit the video to the Sameunderneath website.
Flyers Embedded with Seeds
In order for you to grow, you have to engage with the customer. How better than by growing pieces of paper? Flyers embedded with Wildflower seeds. They can be buried in the backyard and have the words, “grow your paper and your ideas”.
“Each city’s flyer will have a different skyline, and we will try to get local artists to do the images for them. At every point, it is important to get local artists to do things for the compay…all these things create sustainable organic growth frr your company.
Then at the end presented a marketing plan roundup which included:
~.——————–
Now Ryan has to choose. It is a very intense decision. He leaves to use the restroom.
Sameunderneath had a 1.5 million growth revenue last year. The company is interested in affordable and efficient marketing methods for growth.
It all comes down to the customer base. Are they artsy and into film? Are they into music? The marketing plans seem to target slightly different demographics. Lattice presents an urban grassroots music-base, and Kiwi defines the demographic as a more thoughtful, artsy, film-loving creature.
The success of either marketing plan all comes down to what best fits the true demographic of Sameunderneath consumers.
To Team Lattice: One of your best points was the paper; that pamphlet that has the story that goes into the stores to educate the people. Something that each floor sales staff can read to better understand the product.
To Team Kiwi: We’ve been doing flyers since the beginning of the company, but now we’re starting to do personal invitations. It’s a way to say, we don’t want to waste your time with pieces of paper. With a private invite, people have to go out of their way to ask their friends to attend an event, and it is more word of mouth than objective and detached.
Ryan: This is a really difficult decision. They’re two different plans.
I really liked the fact that Team Lattice had the fill-in sticker that told the story of the brand. At the end of the day, it’s a new version of “hello my name is” Things like that are so personal and so engaged with community. It could go anywhere and be filled in with the culture of that community, that space.
To Team Lattice: I thought you ladies did a great job and restrained it to what really matterned.
In addition, your presentation’s marketing recommendations started small and then went big, just like how Sameunderneath should be growing. If you had shown me the magazine in the beginning, I would’ve discounted it right from the start. Do you have any idea how much it costs to publish something like that?
To Team Kiwi:What I really liked a lot was Bryan. You were kind of the leader of the pack. It wasn’t a presentation—you were being you.
The Decision
Ryan buys enough time to think, and then makes his decision. It is Team Lattice. But he points out that he doesn’t want to make a decision at all, because both teams came up with exceptional ideas.
“I would like each and every one of you to E-mail me,” he says, “and each of you to come to visit my creative team. I want both teams to be there to put in opinions and voice their two cents.”
The Colaboratory Sameunderneath Discount
Ryan added that, “Between now and the end of the month—everything in the store is $20 from now until the end of the month. Just let the store staff know that you’re a member of Colab and this discount will be available to you”.
Final Thoughts
According to Malcolm McCullough, author of Digital Ground, “Design is the Product”. Design is what people experience, what they see…all text, all seen and unseen material. It is that Psychology of space that design induces that makes a person feel positively or negatively about a space or thing. Online voluntary communities need a base under which to interact. They cannot be forced into acting voluntarily. They must weave themselves into the brand’s story.
I believe Team Lattice did this the best, because they created three distinct and affordable ways in which consumers could weave themselves into the brand’s story while helping to tell that story. The hang tags describing each piece of clothing and the company’s philosophy, the fill-in stickers, and the concert were all integrating factors that weaved the brand into the lives of the consumers.
It has been an amazing experience watching the #Colab members interact with each other and their agencies. I can’t wait to watch how they develop in the future. I’ve never seen such a dedicated and intelligent group of designers work so hard on a project before. Kudos to everyone. Team Lattice and Team Kiwi will go incredibly far, and soon.
- ~.—————————————
About the Colaboratory Internship Project
Sponsored by the Portland Ad Federation, the COLAB project believes that “Interning at 1 agency is so pre-millennial”, and takes a different route in inspiring the creativity and professional education of its interns.
From the Colaboratory website: “COLABORATORY takes place over 6 weeks in Portland, Oregon. 10 participants are selected and individually paired with 3 of the 11 agencies based on their strengths and interests. Interns spend 2 intensely focused weeks at each agency learning from all disciplines”.
Interns:
- Allison McKeever
- Bryan Davidson
- Christene Vo
- Heather Schwartz
- Kim Karalekas
- Luke Rolka
- Melissa Casillas
- Mary McPherson
- Megan Nuttall
- Whitney Bard
- Ascentium
- eROI
- Anvil Media
- Fish Marketing
- the|new|group
- Grady Britton
- CMD
- Asterix Group
- HMH
- Livengood|Nowack.
Agencies:
Also check out the Team Lattice business card: It grows with their ideas.
Hazelnut Tech Talk is proud to play a part in reporting the COLAB experience, and is dedicated to connecting COLAB members with local networks, people and events that are moving and shaking the design world.
All of the members of COLABORATORY have been blogging about their adventures since their first day. Bram Pitoyo built a way to follow all of the action at once. It also checks the latest Twitter conversation that’s hastagged #COLAB, so you do none of the work and get all the results. Check out Bram Pitoyo’s COLAB Feed Aggregator from Yahoo! Pipes.
Shizzow was released today in Private Beta to various members of the Portland Tech Community - or at least a lot of Portland Twitter folk.
Shizzow is Portland-based social network Geolocation service with exceptional data granularity. That means that it is possible to define your own location (my house is Caseorganic Laboratories and Bram’s is Link En Fuego Headquarters).
Local networks have been in need of this service for a long time. Services like BriteKite don’t offer the sheer amount of nuanced locations that a local network like Shizzow does.
I received my invite from Dawn Foster at 10:16 Am and only a few hours later I had already had 10 friends “listening to me”. Listening is the equivalent of a “follow” on Twitter.
Geolocal Shouts
Shizzow also has “shouts” instead of Tweets, which serve to inform other listeners of a user’s location.
Before long, I knew that @reidab and @donpdonp were at Urban Grind Coffee NW, and I didn’t have to sort through my Twitter feed to gain the knowledge.
Cleaning up the Twitter Feeds
Shizzow takes the communication capabilities of Twitter and applies them to location, giving locations a feed. For instance, I can see the history of a location by clicking on it. Through this, I was able to discover that a fellow Twitter contact was at Backspace seven hours before me.
Adding/Finding Locations
Shizzow has a ton of locations already listed, but one can also add locations that don’t. When I typed in the location of the Portland Small Business Accelerator, it recognized it as an ‘office’, and I was able to add it to the list of locations I’m capable of regularly shouting from.
User Interface
I found the UI to be smooth, and the ability to add connections very simple. I also used it to find Dawn Foster and friends at a Green Dragon Shizzow meetup. She and other founders were working on fixing minor bugs already. What service! Not bad for a first day of beta!
Resources
If you’d like to know more about Shizzow, mosey over to Shizzow.com, or read the awesome Silicon Florist post about Shizzow.
I want to thank everyone who worked on Shizzow for doing such an excellent job. We’ve all been reading and waiting for a great futuristic technology like this to finally come about. While we were thinking about it, the Shizzow group went out and did it. Major Kudos to them.
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Thanks for reading Oakhazelnut.com! If you feel like it, you can follow me on Twitter, or subscribe to the Oakhazelnut.com RSS feed.
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Hazelnut Tech Talk is a collaboration between Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo.
Our sixth episode features Megan Nuttall and Allison McKeever, two members of the COLABORATORY program from the team Lattice.
An interview with two members from the opposing team, Kiwi, was aired two weeks ago.
This episode covers James Rice, websites that scroll horizontally, lost dog poster that may or may not masquerade as an invitation to an underground rave party, Triscuits, best Portland agencies to work with, laptops with 17-inch screens, relative durability of the MacBook keyboard, Urban Grind, James Rice (you heard it right) and SEO bombing.
Here are links to Allison McKeever and Megan Nuttall’s blogs.
About COLABORATORY
“COLABORATORY takes place over 6 weeks in Portland, Oregon. 10 participants are selected and individually paired with 3 of the 11 agencies based on their strengths and interests. Interns spend 2 intensely focused weeks at each agency learning from all disciplines.”
Interns:
- Allison McKeever
- Bryan Davidson
- Christene Vo
- Heather Schwartz
- Kim Karalekas
- Luke Rolka
- Melissa Casillas
- Mary McPheerson
- Megan Nuttall
- Whitney Bard
- Brain Davidson
Agencies:
- Ascentium
- eROI
- Anvil Media
- Fish Marketing
- the|new|group
- Grady Britton
- CMD
- Asterix Group
- HMH
- Livengood|Nowack.
Hazelnut Tech Talk is proud to report the COLAB experience, and wants to connect its members with local networks, people and events.
To follow all their blogs and Twitter actions, check out Bram’s COLAB Feed Aggregator from Yahoo! Pipes.
A Colaboratory Visit
Today, Bram Pitoyo and I visited CoatesKokes to see what the Portland Colaboratory members were up to. The two Colaboratory teams were hard at work on their final PR and Marketing pitch for Sameunderneath. We watched them interview some CoatesKokes employees about what the Sameunderneath brand stood for. After about an hour of this, James Rice made a visit and let the team in on some strategic presentation advice.
James’ advice came at the right time — both teams have only seven days left before their final presentation to Sameunderneath. With only a week left in the program, he aimed to give them strategic advice on creating engaging and successful Marketing/PR plans.
James Rice is the Digital Brand Strategy Director at Ascentium, an agency specializing in interactive media. He has an intense track record. During his 15 years of agency experience, he’s only lost 5 clients. Compare this to baseball, golf, or the Olympics.
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James Rice Begins
James Rice: One of the things that most people forget, especially at your age, is that the concept of a team is very important. Never lose sight of that.
Collaborate
photo credit: Capra Royale
One thing we pride ourselves on is that everyone feels like they can work together to execute to that client’s expectations.
For instance (he pointed to Colab member Christine Vo, who was sitting to his left) if Christine and I were presenting to a client, a sort of conversation could go on between the two of us. It wouldn’t be like divisional, like assigning one person slides 3 and 5, or dividing up the work.
If you have the appropriate discussions in front of customers, that will speak volumes for people wanting to hire you.
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On the Errors of Big Agencies
There are some errors that most BDA (Big Dumb Agencies) make in presenting to potential clients. One of them is that they are used to pitching the team. CoatesKokes doesn’t do this.
It’s not about the people, or the history of whatever. Introduce your like this: “This is Joe, and he’s the account planner, and Sarah is the copywriter”. That way, the client sees what the agency is going to do, not what its people did in the past.
In case the agencies are listening, the idea of a BDA is not mine. George Parker coined the term on his blog AdScam.
He lived in Boise Idaho, and is a kind of blogger pundit. I highly suggest reading his work, as well as Marktd.com.
That all said — act as a team.
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Clients, Challenging Brands, and Organization
photo credit: gcoldironjr2003
1. Clients want to hire people who are enthusiastic about the business — who have taken the time to learn — who work together to challenge each other. At the same time, never be afraid to challenge the brand’s assumptions.
2. Be very organized in your thoughts — you have to be able to tell the story. Always pretend there’s a director over your shoulder, or that you’re presenting to your own camera.
Those are the two big tenants of presenting well.
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Passion, Slides, and Owning the Room
photo credit: jurvetson
Clients want to see that you’re passionate about the presentation.
But don’t put everything on the slides. If I see slides with more bullets on them, I’ll probably scream.
OWN the room when you step in. What’s on the glass or projected, will fill the gap.
What is most important is that you’re standing there with your team, and you’re passionate about what you say.
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Words Inspire Images
photo credit: Georgieporge
I was in my car the other day, and Posion’s Every Rose has its Thorn came on the radio. I listened for a moment and then switched over to CD. That Niel Young’s Cowgirl on the Sand. That was much better for some reason.
What made it better? It’s the same when it comes to presentations.
What we want to do in presentations is to get someone to think uniquely, or to present something that shows we’re unique. The phrase “Cowgirl on the Sand” shows something to our mind. It really conjures up an image. It is also unique, while the phrase “Every Rose has its Thorn” is overgrown; cliche.
Always try to come up with polarizing and intriguing things, and be very vocal; personable.
(At this point, James Rice began to wave his hands around a bunch).
Also use a bunch of hand motions.
(He pointed to the whiteboard behind him).
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This whiteboard is your best friend.
Once we went on a pitch and won HP as a client against a big competitor. We presented without laptops and Powerpoints and just brought in a whiteboard. That way, we could actually involve the clients in our presentation. They could watch it develop instead of sit there on the screen — this unmodified, ungrowing series of static images.
That’s one of the things I’d like to see in every presentation room. A whiteboard on which you could project a presentation on the lower part of it.
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Owning the Room During Electronic Malfunction
Sometimes you come in, and there’s stuff that sometimes doesn’t work. White boards solve that. When possible, always have a backup. You shouldn’t need a Powerpoint to pitch an idea. It should be there in your head, and the head of your team.
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The COLAB Sameunderneath Presentation
James Rice: Lets talk about the Colaboratory presentation to Sameunderneath. How much time do you have?
Colab Member: 30 minutes for the pitch, and 15 for questions and answers.
Another Colab Member: No, it was just 30 minutes.
At this point, the team realized that there was a discrepancy of time-knowledge amongst them.
James Rice:
This brings up a good point. There should be that one point person who is in change of the entire thing. There always should be a pitch leader who is collecting all of the ideas. Everyone will take care of parts and pieces, but there needs to be part of a collector.
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On the Presentation of Self
photo credit: Steve & Jemma Copley
Never spend time on welcomes. I’m probably the only team that doesn’t do biographies. With Linkedin, Facebook, ect. out there, and there’s a good chance they know it is you.
As soon as you state, “I did this”, your design work becomes about your past.
If I could bestow any philosophy — it’s all about what you did — it’s about what you’re doing.
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On Thanking the Client
