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2011-04-102014-11-02

Analog Marketing in a Digital World

Everything isn’t a Facebook Like or Share. Everything isn’t a retweet. Everything isn’t how many times you’ve checked in on Gowalla or Foursquare or bought a Groupon or Dugg something. These ideas aren’t revolutionary.¹

But it’s easy, isn’t it? It really easy. You don’t have to leave your computer. You have an infinite number of shots. You can throw as many notecards at the wallâ€”when you have an unlimited number of notecards, you just know eventually something will stick.

Right?

To use a military metaphor, there is no substitute for on the ground intelligence. To not use a metaphor at all: There is no substitute for face-to-face meetings. For phone calls over e-mails. There is no substitute for getting out of your chair and attending a conference, or speaking at a luncheon, or for taking a client out for lunch.

This is what I call Analog Marketing. It’s you being youâ€”all your awkward mannerisms, all your beautiful eyes, all your suits that fit slightly off your shoulder, all your quirks and the cadence of the way you speak. It’s getting on the ground and doing the tangible work that will support your digital marketing. And for that, there is no substitute.

Like and Share everything you can. Go viral. Ask for retweets. Do the best you can.² But in reality, companies don’t have an infinite number of notecards to throw. Companies have to be selective in what they do. They have to make profitable decisions. And the most profitable, sustainable decision a company can make is to put their people on the ground.

Part I: DrupalCon and the birth of the #drupalmonster

I recently had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture at a Public Relations class with co-worker Albert Hughes at his alma mater Prairie View A&M. It was the impetus for writing this piece.

Our company Schipul solves problems. Painting with a broad brush, we solve client problems related to the Internet. For example, a potential client will come to us with one concept: They need a website and they have no idea how to do it. They trust us to not only:

Be honest with them and give them an honest quote³,
but also provide them with the best technology to solve their problem.

One of the solutions our company employs is the content management system Drupal⁴. We believe in its infinite flexibility, its community, and it is often times the perfect solution to a potential client’s website that needs to be extremely custom.

We realized three things about Drupal as a company:

The community is fiercely loyal;
a lot of people talk about Drupal as a solution, but there aren’t a lot of people “doing it”;
the Drupal community is definitely doing it.

Albert effectively “brought” Drupal to our company as a solution. He had been messing around with it in his personal time, and when a client approached us about a website, he immediately knew Drupal could solve the client’s problem. It did.

At that point, Schipul went full force with Drupal. We learned it and memorized it and taught it and began to take part in the community. We even loved it so much, that at one point, Albert (a rapper by night) produced a quick music video based on a flow of his. Watch this:

Drupal Rap Video – Schipulcon09 from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.

Rapping about Drupal is a pretty absurd concept, but it worked. Founder and creator of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, saw it and put it on his blog. The plays on the video sky-rocketed. Albert and I went to DrupalCon that year, and because of the video, people recognized him. He began to cultivate relationships based off his non-Web-based talent. It established him as part of the Drupal community, albeit in a weird way. It showed a love for the product, and the people responded.

Fast forward to a year later, and Albert and myself were attending DrupalCon again. We knew the power of last year’s rap video, and we wanted to do it again. We had just hired a video specialist on our staff, and with his help, Al and I created a remix to Kanye West’s Monster, effectively creating the #drupalmonster. Watch:

“Monster (Drupal Remix feat. A.Hughes and D.Stagg)” from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.

Since we had met Dries, we e-mailed him again and asked him to watch the video figuring he would enjoy it. To our intense thanks, he loved it so much he posted it on his blog again. This was two days before DrupalCon.

Here’s where Analog Marketing comes in. We didn’t want the initial push and hype of a mere blog post to stop people from watching the video. We wanted to be a part of the Drupal Community, and we wanted to give backâ€”as I said earlierâ€”albeit in a weird way.

Our idea was this: Print a bunch of moocards (half-sized business cards, halved hot dog not hamburger) with a bit.ly link that pointed to the video. That was it. The only thing on it was this: bit.ly/drupalmonster. When we got to DrupalCon, we had 1,500 printed out at a local Kinko’s, and old-school guerilla-style, handed them out to everything and everyone. We put them on tables. We gave them to Drupal fanatics, we gave them to concierges at our hotel, we gave them to people we’d meet eating lunch at a local pub.

But as we gave them out, we talked to them about Drupal. What they loved, what they didn’t. Some had more to say than others, but we tried to connect with them on some level. Given a captive Drupal audience, this was somewhat easy. (“Hey, we wrote and produced a Drupal rap music video” said to someone who uses Drupal raises an eyebrowâ€”it doesn’t make a lot of sense.) It was a little harder when trying to convince a hostess at the hotel it was worth her time.

But I saw that same hostess the next day and she called me over and said that not only did she watch it, but she pulled her co-workers aside and they watched it. Eventually, her boss saw it too. And as she was telling me this, her boss came over and complimented us on the video, and I got to compliment the hostess for being a good sport and actually taking the moocard back and watching the video.

Warning: Nerdy Business ROI Stuff Coming: A lot of people ask me how to quantify ROI on social media… blah blah blah. This is exactly how: That boss then said to me: “I’m not in control of who does our website, but if I were, I would go with you.” It’s the best compliment you could give not only myself and Albert, but our company. Asking our company to do your website is an honor to us; it’s like asking us to babysit or be invited to your wedding. And because of the work we did on the ground, in the trenches, talking to the people and going to where they were, we would get their business. We would get that honor.⁵

Part II: SXSW

If there was ever any epic display of Analog Marketing, it exists on the corner of Trinity and 4th St. during the Interactive portion of SXSW. I had the pleasure of attending for the third year in a row, and each year, it seems this spot between the Austin Convention Center and Champions Bar gets busier and busier.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of attending, at this spot and immediately entering the convention center, there are literally hundreds of people handing out any number of things: party invites, QR codes, half-clad women giving you a card with a free trial code on it. It’s Analog Marketing, for sure, but it’s the “Facebook” equivalent of the concept. You have an infinite targeted audience and, most likely, and infinite number of notecards to throw at a wall. So you start throwing.

Companies know SXSWi is an important cornerstone in networking. The sessions are always hit-and-miss, but there’s always one thing you can rely on: People. People are the cornerstone of any business. If you have no buyers, there is no company. The only thing this version of Analog Marketing lacks is the connection. Most of the time, the people are in a hurry. They’re trying to get from Point A to Point B in as quick a time as possibleâ€”the marketer barely has time to hand them a card (one of many they’ve gotten in the past 30 seconds), let alone have a conversation with them about their needs and how the marketer’s product could possibly solve their problems.

We tried the Analog Marketing moocard approach to our video at SXSWi as well, and it was significantly less successful, for two reasons:

We did not have the captive audience. (When you’re at DrupalCon and you’re handing out a video about Drupal, it’s like going to a comic book convention and asking someone to watch an interview with Stan Lee.)
We did not have time to cultivate a relationship with the person receiving the card. (See next.)

Part III: Cultivating the relationship

Our Business Development Director Aaron Long once told our company in a full company meeting:

It’s a lot harder to get mad and permanently leave your best friend.

His intent is this: When we talk to clients, we try to be their friends. They literally pay our paychecks. Being honest, ethical, and doing good are cornerstones of our company’s foundation, so when a new client comes in, we get the blessing of helping their business not only survive, but thrive. That’s our job; it’s why people hire us. In return, they pay our paycheck which allows us to do all the things we love to do when we’re not working. It’s a win/win⁶.

When you have a good rapport with a client, they’re less likely to leave you. You can be absolutely honest with them, speak with candorâ€”and with those two combinedâ€”have real conversations about what they need their website to do and how we need to accomplish it.

Along the way, you become their friend. You begin to respect each other. You begin to bring in the client’s business as your own; when they succeed, we succeeded. And as they grow and trust you more, they’re less likely to leave. You’ve established a level of trust that has absolutely nothing to do with Digital Marketing. Something you could never buy and something you could never “Like” or “Share” on Facebook. Those things are all part of it, but at the end of the day, you need Analog Marketers to cultivate your relationship with your consumers.

Part IV: What you should be doing now

Laozi (known by any number of variations of his name, such as Lao Tzu) was a record-keeper for the Zhou Dynasty court. He is credited with the following, translated into any number of languages, written 3,000 years ago in one of the most famous texts of all-time, Tao Te Ching⁷:

Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say, “We have done this ourselves.”

This is the definition of Analog Marketing.

I spoke in Houston once about The Next Generation Website at the Social Media Breakfast Houston. A man was there whom I had never met, nor had the chance to meet after my talk, but called our office later that same day. Our top sales-person, Courtney Pemberton, fielded the call and fell in love with them; it wasn’t even about “selling” to them in the conventional sense. They were Girouard’s General Store, who have the claim of the oldest general store in Texas. Due to my public speaking and Courtney’s expertise, they signed on as a client in an incredibly short amount of time. At the time of writing, their site is still in development, but Courtney has gone out of her way, having fun with the client, because she likes them. Both the project manager and Courtney went to their store and took pictures of everything they could find because it’s such a cool place. She brought the pictures back and in design meetings, the designers fell in love with the place as well, experiencing it through the pictures they took, but also the excitement in the employees’ voices.

And when their designs are approved, and their content is added, and their site goes live, our tasks accomplished, I know they’ll look back and say, “We did this together.” And at that point, Digital Marketing can take over and run its course. I’ll be sure to Like it and Share it on Facebook, but I have confidence knowing it all started with Analog Marketing.

Footnotes

¹ Although I am still amazed at how many “public relations” companies just try to convince their clients to get on Facebook or Twitter because it’s like some sort of mandate. News flash: You don’t have to be on Twitter. A better question to ask: Is that where your people are?

² Recognize that these are still good things and that this statement is not tongue-in-cheek. Just don’t start here. Don’t put your cart in front of your horse.

³ If someone’s quoted you over $100,000 for a website, pleaseâ€”call us. You’re most likely being lied to.

⁴ For the curious, we use three content management systems at our company: WordPress, Tendenci, and Drupal. The first and last are open-source CMSs that have created and cultivated wildly successful communities. We rely heavily on said communities and are infinitely grateful for the hard work these people do. The second in that list is a currently proprietary CMS our CEO wrote in the early 2000s to keep the company afloat after September 11. It’s currently in its fifth iteration and is still bread and butter to our business model.

⁵ Even more “ROI”-y stuff: The video had an initial push of around 1,500 plays. As we handed out the cards throughout the conference, the plays continually went up each day: 123, 141, 148, 154, culminating the last day of the conference, topping 200 plays at 202.

To this day, we continually get double-digit plays from the video as it takes on a life of its own. We also continually get sales calls solely because they saw the video, liked it, and thought to themselves, “If they love Drupal this much to make a video, they must have a passion for it.” And passion breeds greatness.

At the time of this writing, the video has over 4,600 plays and 33,400 loads.

⁶ Also a cornerstone of the business. A card is handed out to every new employee (and to a number of clients/potential clients) that not only lists the cornerstones of the business, but also our Mission and Vision and Schipul Honor Code.

⁷ I don’t intend to cheapen any form of Taoism or religion by comparing the concepts of Analog Marketing to a sacred text. I take the quote literally at its face-value: Go to where the people are first. It will literally support everything you do after that.

2011-04-08

NTEN 2011 Knowledge Share: Using Video to Raise Funds

This year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) was one for the record books. CiviCRM was a buzz, making open-source software the hero for a multitude of constituent management woes. Speaking of CRMs, have you ever heard of a SocialCRM, yep…it’s coming people! And of course there was Google, never one to show up empty handed, launching “Google for Nonprofits” with the most adorable chocolate bars in tow. There were so many new, and often misspelled, online fund-raising technologies being discussed that many might have walked away a tad overwhelmed.

So what’s an organization to do? What is the best way to raise money online?

One word – VIDEO. And let me tell you why…

While meandering around NTC, a session caught my eye called, “Videos that Raise Money” (See3 Communications). I like videos, and I like helping our nonprofit clients raise money so I figured this would be a win/win situation. Then BAM…statistics were thrown right in my face:

“In December 2010 ComScore reported that 85% of US internet users watched online video, 88.6 million people watched online video on an average single day and the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video (ComScore, February 2011)”

Geez, whatever happened to playing outside, but I digress…

This data cannot be ignored, and with all of the inexpensive ways to produce videos, nonprofits need to utilize this growing audience to increase awareness and of course, increase online donations.

Ok, so where should an organization begin? According to the guys over at See3, fund-raising has a life cycle and video becomes increasingly relevant during each stage.

Video Fund-raising Life Cycle

Awareness & Identification

Get people to think about the problem and how your organization is dealing with it; and remember, simplicity can force someone to listen.

“It’s in Your Hands” – www.tippytap.org

Solicitation

Go ahead and just ask; allow your donors to create social capital.

“Seriously, Serious PSA” – www.malarianomore.org

Acknowledgement

Just say thank you.“The Boy Who Lived” – www.uncultured.com

Engagement

Show your donors where their money went and how much it has helped your organization.“Prayer Answered in the Form of a Dairy Cow” – www.worldvision.org

Stewardship

Let your donors know the bigger impact.“Stand With Haiti” – www.oxfam.org

Check out the entire presentation on See3’s slideshare!

2011-04-062014-11-02

SXSWi 2011 – The Extended Version

We all like a little closure. Last week Scooter dropped her South by Southwest Interactive takeaways. Today we’ve compiled favorite takeaways from other SXSWi Schipulites to share with you.

SXSWi 2011 Takeaways

From Melissa

Photo via www.fastcompany.com (SXSWi 2011 Scvngr feature)

The highlight of SXSW 2011 for me was definitely SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch’s keynote address. Priebatsch explained how the developing ‘game layerâ€ in the virtual world can be applied to solve problems in the physical world by taking advantage of principles of game play, including rules, rewards, and levels. He even concluded the talk with a short game involving the audience to illustrate how game play can motivate people to work together to accomplish communal goals, regardless of locale of the players.

Not only did the talk itself cover a lot of real world problems (such as the inherent problems with school model) and present some interesting solutions, but Priebatcsch’s energy and enthusiasm was unmatched and inspiring. Listen to the audio of Seth Priebatsch’s Keynote Address

The high-profile presence of Gowalla and their SXSW-focused game of checking-in and collecting stamps throughout the conference was a lot of fun, too!

Also, I attended a panel session called Time Traveling: Interfaces for Geotemporal Visualization. The panel discussed how much data we are creating and storing in online systems, such as Google Maps, now that so many more people have access.

It’s easy to show either time or space/geography in visualizations, but combining them together makes visualizing the data a lot trickier. It’s a new challenge and new opportunity to create and use tools to learn about history, current events, and trends and also presents new ways for storytelling on the web.

One of the panelists, Nick Rabinowitz, who works mainly as an information consultant with a focus on non-profit organizations, created a JavaScript library called Timemap.js that can be used to display geotemporal data in tons of ways, including progressing loading as you scroll through time. He and his brother, panel moderator, Assistant Professor and Director of University of Texas’ Institute of Classical Archaeology Adam Rabinowitz, also created GEODIA, a system that visualizes the temporal, geographic and material aspects of ancient Mediterranean civilizations.

From David

We went to SXSWi with a strict goal to promote Schipul as a leader in the Drupal community, and while we promoted our Drupal Monster video, we had a wonderful time engaging the SXSW crowd with a content management system some were new to.

As part of our strategy, we printed out Moocards with a simple link on them, and we handed them out guerrilla-style.

We got more of a response from DrupalCon the week before SXSWi. But that’s to be expected since the video is Drupal-related. That being said, our promotion at SXSWi kept the snowball rolling. Watch the Drupal Monster video.

From Derek

The panel that made a lasting impression on me was by Aaron With from Groupon called ‘Strange Business: Corporate Creativity that Doesn’t Suck.â€ It was about a lot of things they do that most people see as wasting endless amounts of time and money for no reason. They do fun, interesting things that have no plan at first then actually end up having value at some point (try unsubscribing and you’ll see). My favorite quote was Aaron describing one of their activities: “We made it for no good reason then it ended up having a business benefit.”

At Schipul, we don’t go to the extremes Groupon does, but it’s good to see the idea reinforced by a large company. Our company realizes the potential of ‘wasting timeâ€ even when it may mean lack of productivity at that specific period of time. The Drupal Monster video or Plasma Car races are perfect examples. Listen to the audio version of this panel

Random Photo Time!

While in Austin, we took every opportunity to live it up: nerd-style. That means Lyndia and I cuddled the xtranormals (you may remember them from @urbanhoustonian’s video); I met Dule Hill from psych (USA) and The West Wing (NBC) ; and between panels, the Schipulites enjoyed the beautiful weather on patios with free wireless internet access.

xtranormal cuddlies at SXSWi 2011 — Lyndia and I cuddled the xtranormals.

KMe_DuleHill_SXSWi_2011 — Me to Dule Hill: Dude. You're hot.

lyndia_kme_derek — We're mapping out the parties that have free beer. Priorities. Nerdery.

Looking ahead

We had a few SXSWi first-timers in our group (including me). Since the conference we’ve had opportunities to apply much of what we’ve learned in small doses. Between now and the next SXSWi, it’ll be interesting to see how we, and how others, expand on information from panels.

If you missed it, I’ve updated my takeaways with audio links to the panels. Check them out here. And please feel free to share your takeaways and links with us. We’d love to hear from you!

2011-04-01

Friday fun post: Pearls of Wisdom

Quote_Smile_web — Photograph by Brian Potter

Quotes Build Culture

Part of the culture here at Schipul is to “Learn and share knowledge”, and one of our favorite ways to do that is sending a “Quote of the day” out to our entire office. In fact, we love quotes so much that we have an entire page dedicated to quotes. Sending out and make quotes a part of your company culture can lead to some quotes of your very own! Here are a few “Schipulisms” you may hear when you come to visit us:

“New guys don’t have names.”

Servant leadership is a key consideration when we hire at Schipul. In Ed Schipul’s article “What are People Paid for?” he talks about how doing small tasks relates to how someone will handle a large task. With that in mind, we affectionately refer to a new hire as “New Guy” as they learn the ropes and take on servant leadership style tasks.

Quoting around the office can also help instill core values. Here are some more Schipulisms that do just that:

“Security is #1”

“Trust, but verify.”

“Ease of use changes behavior.”

(As a side note, we never miss the opprotunity for a good “That’s What She Said” around the office 😉 )

Quotes can Inspire, Motivate, and Deepen your Understanding of the World Around you.

He has achieved success
who has lived well,
laughed often, and loved much;
who has enjoyed the trust of pure women,
the respect of intelligent men
and the love of little children;
who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
who has left the world better than he found it
whether by an improved poppy,
a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
who has never lacked appreciation of Earth’s beauty
or failed to express it;
who has always looked for the best in others
and given them the best he had;
whose life was an inspiration;
whose memory a benediction.

–Bessie Anderson Stanley, 1904

That inspires me. It encourages me to stop for a second and really think about what I am reading. How do I measure my success? Are my priorities in the right order to accomplish some of the beautiful truths laid out in this quote? I can confidently say that if I had not read that today, I may have not thought about these things.

How to Write a Good “Quote of the Day” Email

So, now that you’ve gotten inspired and are ready to craft an email that will inspire everyone around you, let’s take a look at some handy tips from our very own Ed Schipul about how to compose a great quote of the day email:

It should be positive.
It should be a concise encapsulation of a concept that helps people.
It should be able to stand alone without further explanation or editorial.
It should do good.
It should be simple in words, although frequently quite complex in thought.
It should be in the default font if possible to keep it consistent and emphasize the words, not formatting.
It can come from *anyone* within the company. Or even a friend outside.
Feel free to copy external people if you think it will be a positive thing for all.
It should be FUN and make you feel good sending it out.

Things to avoid, although this is hard, but try to avoid.

If you have to say “I am sending this quote out because….” or “xyz situation made me want to send this out….” then it is NOT a quote of the day. Those are emails with related quotes in them really, right?
Snarky and mean spirited humor is frequently quite funny, but it is NOT quote of the day material. Those are joke emails, not QoDs. OK?
Delete your footer. Anything that creates visual clutter is bad. So remove ALL text of the email except the quote, the author and perhaps link the author name to the source of the quote.

Here is an example:
—————————-

Subject: Quote of the Day – Resourcefulness
Body:

“The defining factor is never resources, it is resourcefulness.” – Tony Robbins

—————————-

Note the subject consistently starts with exactly “Quote of the Day” so people can create inbox rules to save or file them.
Note there are two spaces above and two spaces below the quote. This makes it stand out visually both when you open the email and on Outlook preview.

Finally, check out this presentation by Enjoy Work to get you started with some awesome quotes:

Guru. How to end misery at work!

View more presentations from enjoywork.org

Want more quotes? Check out our Schipul quote page!

2011-03-29

Trend Tuesday: Tools for Working Remote

While the concept of working remote isn’t new (it used to be called ‘telecommuting’), the tools to facilitate it have grown over the last few years.

The Internet is likely the most obvious tool that facilitates working remote, and the phone may be the most commonly overlooked. Beyond email and phone, consider other third-party tools to extend your business beyond your home base and help your team continue to feel connected to one another. Let’s review the following tools for working remote:

Video Chat
Collaborative Tools
Web-based Teaching Tools

Substitute Conference Calls with Online Video Chats

Instead of hearing only your remote team’s voices, enhance your conference calls with video chat so you can see them and experience a more engaging conversation. Skype and Google Video Chat are two free and easy-to-use tools that make meeting face-to-face a practical way to include your entire team in meetings.

Both are easy to set-up and install. You’ll need a stable internet connection, web cam and audio. Many webcams come with built-in audio devices (I have a LifeCam HD-6000 and really like it). All you do is plug ’em in, launch your video chat application and start your meeting.

Use Collaborative Tools to Create and Manage Documents

If you’ve saved, emailed, updated, saved again, and sent a follow-up email to spell out the changes you made, you may want to give collaborative tools a try. Collaborative tools allow team members to work on the same document, together in real-time. They’re also a workable solution for newsletter editors that are inundated with email attachments of articles and revisions of articles. This 3-minute video illustrates Google Docs, one of my favorite collaborative tools:

The documents and spreadsheets in Google Docs are very similar to those in MS Office. There’s no new software to learn, so getting started is just a matter of getting over the fear of trying something new. I recommend taking the tour to help get comfortable with the tool.

Use Web-based Tools to Demonstrate

Screen shots are helpful for walking clients and co-workers through online processes. Sometimes, when you can’t be there, talking a client or co-worker through the process is the most efficient way. While both methods work, tools like GoToMeeting let you share your computer screen with others to demonstrate processes in real-time. This tool has proven helpful in our web-based trainings and one-to-one client demonstrations.

What Tools do you use?

These are some of the tools we train our clients on using. Since opening our web marketing office in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’ve incorporated more of the video tools for getting face-time with our leading lady April Kyle. What are some of the tools you use or would like to know more about for working remote?

2011-03-28

Kicking off the new Silicon Valley office with IABC!

The Schipul Silicon Valley web design office officially opens today, but in true Schipulite fashion, we just couldn’t pass up the chance for a party! Last Thursday we were proud to sponsor the IABC Silicon Valley March Madness Mixer, which was held at the gorgeous new Brocade Executive Briefing Center.

Despite the rain (yes, it rains in California, and in fact has been doing so since I arrived 2 weeks ago!) the mixer was attended by a large crowd excited to see old friends and make new connections. As an added bonus, local photographer Anne Knudsen was on hand to take new headshots for IABC members! Given that I was wearing the same dress my last headshots were taken in, I passed on this opportunity but kicked myself for it.

For two hours, folks mingled with the crowd, sampled a delicious assortment of snacks and tried a variety of Destino Wines. There were giveaways galore plus a tour of the new Brocade center and a look at all the hi-tech screen technology that went in to it. We’re talking about serious screens here folks – the kind that would put your neighbor’s Super Bowl party to shame!

An example of just one of the awesome new screens at Brocade

It was a great night and we couldn’t be happier to kick off our new expansion with a group like IABC. We’ve long enjoyed working with the Houston chapter and are excited about getting involved with the Silicon Valley and San Francisco groups as well. Much thanks to the entire IABC Silicon Valley board for welcoming us to the area, and to the wonderful folks at Brocade for hosting the event and being awesome in general. All these great folks making us feel right at home. 🙂

Check out more event photos online over at the SV IABC Facebook and Brocade Facebook pages!

2011-03-15

PyCon 2011

This year Glen and I were asked to go to SXSWi. Thank you Schipul.

We turned it down for the opportunity to go to PyCon (the Python Conference).
Once again, thank you Schipul.

It was, in a word; amazing.

In it’s simplest form, Python is a programming language. It’s what we’re using to build our brand spankin’ new Tendenci 5 technology.

Python was not originally designed for web development. It’s capable of so much more, but we’ll get back to that later.

This year the conference was 8 days. March 9th-17th. The first 2 days focusing on training, 3 days on conferencing and the remaining days left for sprints.

Sprints are coding sessions: problems are given out and we use your mad skillz (z for emphasis) to solve what we can. Glen and I only attended from March 9th through the 13th. It was our first run and we wanted to get our feet wet. We’re hoping to get the full affect next year, but simply attending is epic.

Oh man, where to start.

We would wake up every morning around 7a and take the warp speed elevator down to the Ballroom where the conference was being held; convenient — oh yeah.

All rights reserved by kennethreitz — Hyatt Regency Elevator - Photo taken by Kenneth Reitz

The conference this year was made up of about 1400 Pythonistas. That’s what we call ourselves. I’m not making this up.

Every day started with a nice healthy breakfast and mingle time. When we had training days we went straight to training.

Our Keynote was Hilary Mason, lead scientist at bit.ly. She’s a computer science professor with a background in machine learning and data mining. Bit.ly is a URL shortener. Learn more about URL shorteners.

We also heard from Rian Hunter. An Engineer for Dropbox. If you’re not using this, do it now. I’ve used Dropbox for over a year and it’s made my life so much easier.

Guido Van Rossum. He’s only the guy who CREATED the language. Also known as the Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL). I’m not joking. Google it.

We also heard from Threadless, Disqus, and OpenStack. Amazing companies all using Python in amazing ways.

The smaller sized sessions would start at about 10a.

Sessions lasted between 30 to 45 minutes with about 15 minutes to walk between rooms. It was all located in the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, Georgia.

Then lunch. Unlike most conferences, the food arrangements where the best I’d ever seen. We’re talking white linen, gourmets meals, and waiters. We would also get in-between snacks like parfaits, mMmMmm yommi.

Somewhere between ’97 (~ the time that I started) and 2011 things matured. I remember getting excited about markup, styles and javascript. Then fainting at the idea of sprites, caching, indexing, and load-balancing. Only to find myself today hearing buzzwords like coroutines, configuration managers, event based programming, and continuous integration.

It’s not fair to call all of this stuff new age, because many of it has been around for some time. There’s a difference between hearing the jargon and seeing it in action. Let alone getting trained on it.

This conference has definitely opened my eyes to what I don’t know. The initial hit is intimidating, but like most scary things in life it quickly turned to interesting. Well aware that we’re more than capable of working and benefiting from these technologies.

For those of you want to see the sessions in action. You can find most of the PyCon videos at http://pycon.blip.tv/posts.

Overall we had exciting time and made some new nerd friends along the way.

Check out this Video recorded by Glen. Python along with Xbox Kinect being used to make eyeballs that follow you. Web development is only one of Python’s many powers.

2011-03-132014-11-02

SXSWi Catch-Up: Sex, BestBuy & Gaming

We’re still wreaking havoc in Austin! Here’s a an overview of what I’ve been up to –sending a little SXSWi report to give you a peek at what’s going on here. We’ll take a more comprehensive look at these panels and others we attended when it’s all said and done.

SXSW Newcomer

This is my first time at SXSW. I knew it would be impossible to do everything so I set a few goals to help get the most out of the experience. One of my goals is to attend panels that cover topics that interest me as a woman, a web marketer, a writer and a minority in America. I have to admit, I’m pleased with my panel selections so far.

The Yoga Panel

No. This guy wasn’t the instructor, but he totally was giving out free hugs.

About the yoga though: It was interesting to see yoga offered as a panel. And it was an actual yoga class that any beginner could get through easily. It was a good experience for advanced yoga folks, too. The panel was surprisingly popular and we had to modify a few of the poses for the sake of space. Ari Stiles was a great instructor who made light of the crowded room and kept us all at ease. I left feeling refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the day. If you missed Saturday Yoga, no worries. Tuesday Yoga will help you close out the conference feeling peaceful.

#sxswyoga

The Sex Part

Listen to the Bedsider SXSWi 2011 presentation

Bedsider.org is funny, human and interesting enough that it got women to share their personal experiences with sex and protection on camera. They’re also a free support network for birth control. It sounds boring. I know. But it’s so not.

One of the major take aways from the panel Re-Branding Birth Control: Behavior Change through Design, was simply that it’s easier to have sex than to talk about how to have sex responsibly. Jennifer Maer and Lawrence Swiader did a beautiful job of illustrating how Bedsider has a conversation about sex and protection in a way that women can relate to: through girl talk.

Despite sex ed classes, religious teachings and Maury baby daddy episodes, young adults who say they don’t want to have kids yet also say they use birth control inconsistently. To that, the Bedsider team says awareness isn’t enough, and that part of the solution is to have the right tools and an agile approach to educating young adults about safe sex. Bedsider is a community supporting women who use birth control and rewarding them for getting it right. And they’re doing it all by design and conscious content creation.

If you’re into sex (no joke), check out this evening’s panel on Subtle Sexuality on TV.

#bedsider

Latino Link: Marketing to Spanish Speakers Using Digital Platforms

Ana Grace and Joe Kutchera facilitated a brilliant discussion on including Spanish speaking consumers in online marketing campaigns. Ana is leading the charge at BestBuy. She presented a case study on BestBuy’s Spanish language website that gave attendees an idea of how to approach this form of online inclusion. Some of the challenges the company overcame included deciding which version of Spanish to use (they went with universal Spanish), and whether or not to highlight special content to try to appeal to their Spanish speaking customers.

The major takeaway from this panel is that in the BestBuy case study, they learned consumers didn’t want different or “customized” content on the Spanish language site. Their target audience wanted the content to be identical to the content on the English language site. Also, it was an integrated campaign that relied a lot on the support of off line (in-store) components. The offline components included helping customers identify Spanish-speaking customer service reps that could help them in the store.

#latism

Keynote by SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch

Listen to the audio of Seth Priebatsch’s Keynote Address

Seth Priebatsch (founder of SCVNGR mobile check-in app) delivered a compelling keynote presentation. The main conference room was jam-packed so we watched the simulcast from a nearby conference room.

Priebatsch proposed a theory that suggests that we can solve some pretty big problems if we apply key elements of gaming to real life. He demonstrated the premise of his theory by getting the audience involved in a little bit of play time.

Each person in the audience had a card with two colors – one color on each side of the card. (Only in the live presentation, not the simulcast ones). The cards were placed randomly. The colors varied on each card and the room was filled to capacity. The challenge: get each person on a row the same color card. The prize: SCVNGR would donate $10k to The National Wildlife Federation.

It was a fairly difficult task. And it was timed –they got about 2.5 minutes to win the game. Players couldn’t get up from their seats (though I saw some people standing). The audience did well and completed the challenge with almost one minute to spare.

#GameLayer

Branding Panel: Congratulations! Your Brand is about be Obsolete

Listen to the audio of Congratulations! Your Brand is about to be Obsolete

This panel rocked my socks off. I was hesitant to go because, straight up, I didn’t want to get duped into watching a power point slide show about extinct brands and what they should’ve done. This panel was not that at all. The panel played to a packed house.

SXSWi panel on keeping brands from becoming obsolete

Andrea Ring and William Charnock of R/GA presented the audience with what would be a tough sell to the client of a marketing or branding agency:

Dear client,

Hey! Things couldn’t be better. You’re at the top of the game right now. Your brand is doing well –you’re the hottest thing going right now. In a word: you’re winning. Now let’s change everything completely. Don’t worry.

Thank me later.

Your Branding Agency

Scary. Charnock and Ring painted a clear picture of why changing while a brand is at the peak of its influence helps it avoid becoming obsolete. It’s a form of adapting overlooked by some brands that have failed. As an example, Ring and Charnock pointed out that lots of companies built their brands around selling fur, but cultural shifts made that change. You have to be ready to shift when “shift happens.” The key to brands shifting when at the height of their success, according to Charnock and Ring, is to find your higher purpose as a company rather than focusing solely on a product.

#savebrands

Stay Tuned! There’s More.

These takeaways are just snippets of what I learned in each panel. There’s more information and takeaways from the rest of the team still to come. We’re taking in new ideas and making new friends every day we’re here. Look forward to seeing more of what we learned as we return from SXSW. Can’t wait for the wrap-up posts? Follow our tweets to participate in our SXSWi experiences!

2011-03-11

WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg #SXSWWP

Wooohooo! We’ve made it to Austin for the Interactive portion of SXSW. In the celebratory spirit of Houston, we chose Matt Mullenweg’s panel as our first to attend!

Matt Mullenweg is the founder of WordPress, the open source platform that powers at least 12% of the internet. (That’s significant considering the platform is open source — free.)

Takeaways from Mullenweg’s panel:

“The more we give it away (WordPress software), the more we get.”
The future of WP is to use it as a CMS, not just as a blog, but to power websites.
40,000 people a day sign up for WordPress
The jetpack plug-in is a great tool that contains the most popular WordPress plug-ins all in one package. (Available for WordPress.org sites)
The thing that makes young tech executives more successful than any other web executives, is that they’re willing to outwork everyone else.
The goal of WordPress is to make it fun for authors to use – hence the full-screen mode. (It’s a hidden feature many people don’t know about along with “The Kitchen Sink” mode.)

Facts about Mullenweg

He’s from Houston
He went to HSPVA
First went to SXSW when he was 19
Played the saxophone
Thinks everyone should learn some code because, “It’s like literacy.”

Panel attendees were able to live tweet questions using the hashtag #sxswWP. The moderator, John Battelle of Federated Media, led the conversation and fielded questions from the audience, which largely centered around wondering the future of the CMS.

Mullenweg said that for now, he and his team are just coming off of the release of 3.1 and have not begun plans for the next version. Mullenweg said that eventually they’d like to make upgrading WordPress invisible to users to make the process of transitioning much simpler than having users manually upgrade to the latest version.

Stay tuned for more SXSWi updates from the Schipul team, and be sure to give us a shout if you see us around!

2011-03-10

DrupalCon Day 2: A whole lot of nerdery

DrupalCon Day 1 was a blast with a ton of good information, but Day 2 was a whole lot nerdier in our sessions. So, as with our last post, there may be a nerd alert necessary.

Making Maps Beautiful

If you’re a Drupaler and want to make sure your maps look beautiful, we attended a session on ways to make Drupal maps beautiful. Hint: You don’t always need to use Google Maps.

Check out the OpenLayers module. It’s an open source javascript library that allows theme-ing of maps so you can make them look way more beautiful.
Open Stream Maps is an open source mapping system that is similar/rivals Google Maps. There are (believe it or not) instances where clients cannot use Gmap (or Drupal’s Google Maps module); Open Stream allows for another option.
Bring it all together by using the MapBox module which allows you to provide layers (e.g. selected boxes that show/hide information) on your maps (even Google Maps!).
And let’s not forget about TileMill. You can use it to create custom tile setsâ€”it’s a WYSIWYGish editor to create a look for a map and map interactions. As they say, they’re a “a modern map design studio
powered by open source technology.” They do all the heavy CSS-lifting to making your maps pretty. USE THIS.

Drush Make

I was completely, totally, and utterly humbled by dmitrig01. Here’s the nerdy part: Below is a basic Drush Make file (there’s a lot that goes in before this, but hit up Schipul and we can help you out). The idea is that within literally a few lines of code, you can launch a “News” site or a “Video” site, all using Features and Drush.

By the way, dmitrig01 is a 15-year-old 10th grader who is an incredible speaker and actually wrote Drush Make. He spoke at 12-years-old at DrupalCon. I was still learning what women were when I was 15.

A basic, annotated Drush Make file

Hopefully this can get you started:

core = 6.x (Tell it what version of Drupal you're using)
api = 2 (What version of Drush Make we're running, found on Drush Make download page)

projects[cck] = 2.9 (Tell it which version of the module you're grabbing)
projects[features] = 1.0
etc...

projects[news_item][type][module]
projects[news_item][download][type] = get
projects[news_item][download][url] = URL (can be localhost, e.g. http://localhost/...)
projects[news_items][subdir] = features

We’ll be back tomorrow to drop some more nerdery on your ass!