SXSW 2011 – South Florida Speakers

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Brian Breslin

So voting is upon us once again to pick our favorite panel ideas and wage the annual popularity contest for people to get some stage time at SXSW. That being said, I always like to support the South Florida community whenever I can, so here are the panel ideas I saw from members of the community that responded to my tweet. If you’re from South Florida(Palm Beach, Broward, Dade, and Monroe counties) and have a panel, please post a comment with the link.

So without further ado:

Essential WordPress Search Metrics
Brian Breslin, Infinimedia (ME!) & John Carcutt, MediaWhiz
We’ll be exploring what types of things you need to know to get a leg up on your competitors. This panel will be covering: – secret tips for optimizing your blog – what the industry leaders know – quick tips to improve your blog’s conversions – how these special metrics can affect your blog’s growth

  • Why is my blog not ranking well in google?
  • Why is someone else’s blog beating me?
  • How do I fine tune my blog?
  • What data am I not looking at on my blog?
  • What metrics really matter?

Conversion Rate Optimization for Web Page Designers
Alex Harris, AlexDesigns.com
Designing a successful website for online business takes more than just great creative work. Conversion rate optimization is a key strategy for improving sales, lead generation and capitalizing on paid advertising and marketing campaigns. Here you will takeaway the best practices that I have learned from A/B & Multivariate testing to maximize conversion rates and increase ROI. Examples include using conversion funnels and targeted landing pages.

Alex also setup a great intro on how to get started with voting.

Ubiquity’s Era: Your Application, Everywhere
Davide Di Cillo, 39 Inc.
Until recently, user interface and user experience designers only had to deal with similar screen sizes (remember when we were designing all sites for 800 x 600?) and about 2 or 3 main browsers. But nowadays, when designing a website or application, we need to take into consideration that users could be accessing them from different devices and platforms, with different screen sizes (an iPhone with a 3.5″ or a 30″ display), with different input systems (from touch to mouse oriented), and different platforms (for example, Android users aren’t familiar with the same elements that iPhone users are). In this presentation we will analyze these problems, with the help of case histories and examples. I will also showcase possible solutions, such as fluid responsive design or serving different templates, and what possible scenarios we are most likely see in the future.

How to be a Liger of Development
James Hall
In today’s industry, its essential to know more than one programming language in order to maximize your worth in your workplace. This panel will discuss the pitfalls and perils of being this type of multi-language programmer, and what to expect when becoming a liger of development

Your Online Reputation
Craig Agranoff, Do It Yourself Online Reputation Mangement
Back in the day the Romans had to only be concerned with the people living in their cities, warriors with their honor in the Kingdom. George Washington only had to worry about his reputation within the original colonies. During previous decades, your standing was dependent on the community you belonged to and the industry you worked in. Now your standing in the community has totally changed. Your entire reputation can vaporize while you are sleeping. An entire industry can be ruined overnight. What is important now is that your personal brand be known to all and not only to the people in your city, state, or country. To be reactive with your reputation online means it is too late. You must be proactive and protect your name before anyone slanders it. Has anyone ever posted something nasty about you on the Internet? Finding work, romance and friends can become a disaster if you are smeared online. If you know how to type in a web address, you can learn how to claim, repair, and monitor your online reputation. There is no software to buy, or computer languages to learn. This presentation teaches you how to get bad stuff about you off Google — and good stuff on, putting your online reputation in your hands.

Ten Sexy Skills for Project Success
Denise Jacobs, PapillonEffect Consulting
What if you knew your project would be a success from the very beginning? What if we could do away with dreading the inevitable scope creep, budget blow-out and overrun schedule, what if every team member could take control of the project outcome and make it a win? Join us for a fun, interactive session to learn solid communication skills, great project management tools, and how to cultivate an effective and enjoyable team culture. Leave the session with a fresh approach to looking at tech and new media projects and ways to apply new management skills to your personal workflow.

What Now Flash?
Joshua Guffey
Now that the iPad and iPhone are widely accepted as the future, Where does Flash stand? Can we still build our sites in all flash (hint: yes)? And how do we deal with those challenges like non-flash and mobile versions?

Unbreak My Heart: Someone Fix the Mobile Web!
Matias Penela, AgencyNet
The complexity of thousands of unique hardware and OS combinations means that developers have to take hardware limitations like screen size into consideration, as well as software limitations such as obscure or dated browsers. This means that right now somewhere, someone, is looking at a newly published, “mobile-optimized” site for a forward-thinking company and can’t figure out why the webpage looks like a high school student project.

Agile for Agencies
Melissa Ainslie, AgencyNet
In the Rugby world, scrum means that the whole team works together to push the ball toward the goal. In the software development world, it refers to an iterative framework for developing projects or features as one cohesive unit. How can we apply the efficiencies of agile development to a client-driven world?

Everyone’s in the Service Business
Betsy DiCarlo, AgencyNet
With the evolution from a production-based to consumption-lead economy, a surprising fact emerges: brands too are in the service business. It’s no longer sufficient to produce a product and expect it to fly off the shelves. Consumers are educated, vocal, and have the expectation to have a voice in the brands they buy. The digital ecosystem has empowered this shift, and companies have to be structured to account for the behavior.

Why Brainstorming Sucks & What to do About It.
Larissa Meek, AgencyNet
This session focuses on taking a step back and looking at the big picture. Get ready to explore methods that spark ideas before you start pushing pixels or crafting code. This hands-on session is perfect for designers and coders alike because ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. Roll-up-your sleeves get ready to walk away with a few tools to help spark some innovative ideas and give your projects new meaning. After all, Creativity is a choice.

Your Banners Are Bogus
Alex Morrison, AgencyNet
How effective is digital advertising these days? Pre-rolls have transformed much of current online inventory into a familiar facsimile of television advertising. But banner advertising has become that annoyance that people don’t pay attention to anymore – how can we create a more meaningful advertising relationship with digital consumers?

Now Form the Head! Voltron and Digital Space
Brian Chiger, AgencyNet
Voltron is the 80′s original battle robot. Comprised of five separate (and fully capable) Battle Cats, it is only when they are combined that the true power of Voltron is released (along with his nearly unbeatable “blazing sword”). With the advent of the integrated web and the multiscreen consumer, brand presences must operate in a similar way, individually capable yet more powerful as a combined whole. How should brands integrate their digital platforms (web, social mobile) to maximize success? How should analog touchpoints be woven into the mix?

Why Can’t More Advertisers Design Relevant Mobile Experiences?
Richard Lent, AgencyNet
Mobile is the most self aware computing platform to date. It’s location aware, time aware, context aware… so why is the state of mobile advertising and app-vertising so random? Digital marketers need to take a page from the CPG industry and develop with a purpose and usage occasion in mind — such a solution would be more valuable to both consumers AND advertisers.

Posted in Community | View Comments

Is our society too harsh on the poor?

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Brian Breslin

Sound advice? - View in large

If you were dropped in our society (western, specifically the united states) with zero support system, zero money, zero job, nothing. You have absolutely nothing at all but the clothes on your back and your wits. What would you do?

I was hanging out with my dad driving around Miami the other day, and I noticed two important things that were occurring: There were more people shopping at the mall than a year ago, and there were more homeless people asking for money in the streets nearby than a year ago. It made me wonder: is the gap between the rich and the poor expanding even faster than ever before?

Is our society designed to make it impossibly hard for the have-nots to compete with the haves?

Malcom Gladwell wrote a fascinating essay in 2006 about the apparent cost differences between managing a problem like homelessness and solving it.

When I first started writing this post, I thought, maybe there are deeply rooted reasons we rationalize this divide between haves and have nots. My thoughts jumped from religiosity to classism to bigotry, but in the end I don’t think we can point a finger at any one cause and make it our scapegoat. All we can do is see what little things we can do across the board to improve everyone’s situations. This isn’t a socialism or communism issue, this is a people issue. So please don’t get this confused. This is about helping our fellow man, something I’d hope transcends political and theological boundaries.

I’m very curious to know what you think, and what you would do in the situation at the beginning of the post.

Posted in Social | View Comments

Can we finally kill the page view?

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Brian Breslin

Having been involved in online advertising in some shape or form for 14 years now, I’ve come to a realization: everyone is trying to rip each other off. That’s right, everyone is out to pull a fast one on each other, and it all boils down to one simple metric: pageviews.

Publishers think they can game their pageviews by using silly tricks like making me generate 50+ pageviews just to see a bikini slideshow (don’t judge me, it was research…). Of those 50 page views I’m responsible, how many ads do you think I saw? Likely several hundred. How many of those ads do you think I remember? How many of those ads do you think I clicked on? ZERO. What did it cost the advertisers? assuming a $10/CPM on those ads, it cost them $.05 to be a blur in my memory.

Advertisers are also responsible for this global tomfoolery being propagated. They aren’t demanding quality time in front of their prospective customer eyeballs. Sure your eCPM is cheaper now than it was 10 years ago, but is that really relevant to your marketing metrics if you’re not getting the same conversions/sales from these ads? They should be looking at what MSNBC.com is doing and take note. MSNBC has killed pageviews in favor of time on site/sessions. Its simple enough these days to do it, so lets start shifting our thinking on ads.

Since its not enough to complain and not propose a solution, I suggest we start looking at metrics that involve time exposed per user. Own a user throughout their browsing session. I’m pretty sure they already have these called takeovers, but now lets charge by time in front of a user. Now I know this argument isn’t new, since myspace was notorious for this a few years ago.

I feel like this could lead to higher revenues for the publishers, as well as higher ROI for the advertisers.

Posted in Advertising | View Comments

Does being self-aware make you a better entrepreneur?

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Brian Breslin

I was skimming through Hacker News (it’s recently become one of my daily must reads) the other day and a comment caught my eye, someone said something along the lines of “that would require the creator to have been truly self-aware.” A few days later I read another comment where someone was lauding a Ted talk for the presenters keen sense of self-awareness .

It got me thinking do we need to become more self-aware? As web developers we often think we are incredibly self-aware. Unfortunately we are not. Ok, ok, most of us aren’t, a select few of us are happily self aware, they are known as outliers in statistics. What I mean is, the vast majority of us think we know what we can do, think we know what we’re good at, and also think we know what others are capable of. We also think that everyone around us thinks the same way we do, that has the same problems we do, that has the same needs we do.

” Most Americans do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or they respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer”. Peter Drucker

Some might argue that not knowing your limits is what allows us to make incredible discoveries and break the status quo. This might be applicable in science, but I’d argue that it isn’t necessarily the case in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is not a solo pursuit despite it typically being portrayed that way. Why is it ultimately not a solo activity? Well you aren’t building a business in a vacuum are you? You aren’t building a product to then sell to yourself.

Entrepreneurship is about knowing what you’re good at, what your technical, strategic, or intellectual advantages are, and profiting from it (what are your arbitrage opportunities?). Learning about yourself and defining your skills typically requires also learning about your market, which is another key skill to address in business.

Learning self-awareness is like doing market research. Test your assumptions, both about yourself and your business.

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, a famous executive “focus on your improving your weaknesses, and at best you’ll be average, focus on improving your strengths, and you’ll be remarkable.”

Posted in Business | View Comments

Why do location based services still suck for businesses?

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Brian Breslin

After millions of people have willingly handed over their location data to a multitude of companies running location based services, I ask you this question: Why do the tools the businesses have still suck?

Why is there no simple business account on foursquare that enables business owners to interact more dynamically with patrons? I know there are business accounts, but I still see companies creating accounts and friending people. Where is the tool that lets businesses blast out geo-targeted deals, or interest targeted deals? Where is the system that alerts a business owner when regulars or mayors show up? Why can’t we be “fans” of a business?

Gowalla is similarly lacking in focus on the business end of things. Where are the options for business owners to claim their venue? Drop custom items? Create their own challenges (could be excellent for chambers of commerce)?

Maybe I’m jumping the gun and we’ll see a roll out of these services in the next few months. Who knows, maybe a cpm based push message ad system is in the works for foursquare, tied in with check-ins, and coupon redemptions and you can quickly see the $100M valuation taking shape.

Or do they just need to build out business APIs and let creative people fill these holes?

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , | View Comments

Review: Gatorade Natural

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Brian Breslin

Gatorade LogoAs someone who drinks a lot of gatorade (my uncle, who is also my dentist, is probably cringing right now), I figured I had to check out Gatorade’s new line of “Natural” drinks. Apparently the only place that carries them is Whole Foods. Whole Foods hadn’t carried any other gatorade products before (as far as I know from my past trips, I’m sure @wholefoods could clarify this), despite their carrying Vitamin Water (which is just as unhealthy as gatorade).

After doing a bit of thinking I realized that I have none of the scientific background required to do a real review of this product, but I can review it purely on taste. I do have taste buds and years of drinking sodas, sports drinks, and other beverages. The only “natural” aspect of this is they use “natural flavoring” and sea salt and skip the high fructose corn syrup (yet use highly processed versions of sugar in sucrose and dextrose). So here goes, without further ado.

Gatorade Natural Orange Citrus:
Actually tastes pretty good. Has a nice round flavor, not too sweet, not bitter. Tastes like a mix of orange gatorade + citrus cooler, but slightly less sweet. Probably my favorite of the three I’ve tasted so far.

G2 gatorade naturalGatorade Natural Lemon Berry:
Pretty good as well, tastes less sweet than Orange Citrus. The taste is akin to mixing lemonade and “blue” raspberry and strawberry drinks. I’d drink this again.

G2 Natural Orange Pomegranate:
Blech. This tasted like shit. I love orange flavored drinks. I also love pomegranate drinks. This mix though brought out the worst elements of each. I choked down a third of this and threw it in the garbage, despite being in the middle of a summer soccer game. Never again.

I also tried a bit of one of the other G2 Natural versions, the Berry flavor, haven’t finished it yet so can’t truly rate it. G2 uses truvia or stevia to sweeten it, so it had a weird finish to it.

So will I buy this natural gatorade again? Eh, probably if I’m at wholefoods. I won’t go out of my way to get it though, and I typically buy gatorade in larger sizes than 16.9oz that this comes in. If Gatorade wants to send out some cases my way, feel free, or we can do a blind taste test.
Up next to try: Blackberry, citrus mango (though not at all looking forward to that), and whatever other flavors are at my local wholefoods.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged | View Comments

Book Review: Emergency: This book will save your life by Neil Strauss

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Brian Breslin

Emergency By Neil Strauss Having read some of Neil Strauss’ stuff in the past (New york times stuff, the game, etc.), I had a good idea of what I was getting into with Emergency: This book will save your life. I knew the title was going to be slightly misleading, as well as the trailer for the book so to speak. With that knowledge ahead of time, I was able to enjoy the book for what it is: a narrative of Neil’s forays into a different subculture. He did this before in “The Game” when he dove headfirst into the world of pickup artists, and seduction. That book, was advertised as the “definitive guide to picking up chicks” but it was just a narrative of his adventures meeting these people and becoming part of their inner circle, and littered with anecdotes of his practicing some of their ideas.

Emergency is in the same vein. I think a lot of his readers will buy this thinking this is the bible of what to do WTSHTF (When The Shit Hits The Fan), but will come away slightly disappointed. They will get a good well written story out of it, but won’t really know how to save their own asses when all hell breaks loose.

So what is this book? Its part introspective diary of a weak whiny white guy’s transformation into stronger self-confident self-subsisting white guy, part survivalist high level guide (things you should know, but not specifics on any on how to do them).

What this book is not:

  • How-to book on survival in the wilderness
  • How-to escape the country
  • How-to get another citizenship (only example is St.Kitts)
  • How-to save your life. (that’s the freaking tagline of the book no-less)

Strauss does something vaguely analogous to his journey in the Game. In the Game he outlines how he went from shy and timid around women to learning confidence (which is ultimately the underlying principle of the entire book – see I just saved you $20), in Emergency, he outlines how he overcame his fears of living in our society, and freed himself to actually live.

In the end, do I recommend this book? Maybe if you like reading stories about people making changes in their lives. If you enjoyed the Game, then pick this up. If you actually want to learn to save your own ass and that of your friends, save your $12 and go to the library, check out a bunch of books that are manuals.

Posted in Reviews | View Comments

What the ad world should learn from the Old Spice guy

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Brian Breslin

I was amongst the throes of people who were captivated by Old Spice & Wieden+Kennedy’s intense ad campaign that exploded all over the web the last few days. These types of things “should” be happening all the time, but it seems like most big brand ad agencies still haven’t grasped why this campaign worked so well, and garnered so much attention.

Why did the Old Spice campaign resonate with fans?

  • They took time to develop the character (curated over 6+ months)
  • They handed over the reigns to the audience
  • They gave ownership of the character and the brands to the fans (maybe accepted reality of ownership)
  • They went everywhere their fans were (Digg, reddit, twitter, facebook, youtube, even 4chan!)
  • They didn’t cheap out. $$$
  • They took risks.

What made me wonder though, why haven’t other brands made their spokesperson “characters” interactive before? Where is the “King” from Burger King? Why haven’t the folks at Crispin Porter done anything to build up this character recently? There were some great foundations laid a few years back with the “wake up with the king” campaign, then nothing.

Dos Equis was another character which could have benefited from a campaign like this. Imagine making the most interesting man in the world into the worlds most interesting advice columnist? The content that could come out of that would be hilarious.

I have no doubt in my mind that Old Spice will clean up at whatever sycophantic awards ceremonies the ad-industry organizes. I just would love to see big ad agencies curating their social media efforts and not making them disposable one off projects.

Posted in Advertising | View Comments