Monthly Archive for November, 2008
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Wow! We’re never quite sure what to expect with Ignite Portland after the chaos at Ignite Portland 2, but the last two events, including Ignite Portland 4, have been smooth sailing.
The presentations were amazing. We had:
- a little nudity
- a sing-along for take me out to the ball game
- a Kenny Rogers quote used by 2 different speakers
- cyborgs
- dating advice
- garanimals
- and much, much more
A huge thank you to all of our sponsors. Without sponsors, Legion of Tech could not afford to do free events. The sponsors paid for the venue, event insurance, some food, and more. We also had some really cool, 30 second sponsor videos, which I thought worked much better than having each sponsor talk on stage for 30 seconds.
The only down moment during the event for me was having people boo our sponsors. Not cool, people. The sponsors are the people who make the event possible. Be nice to them if you want to have future events.
A huge thank you to all of the people who volunteered and helped out at the event. Without the support of a huge volunteer staff, we could never make these events happen. Keep in mind that everyone in Legion of Tech and all of the people staffing our events are volunteers. We do this because we love it.
Now, what did you think of Ignite Portland 4? What worked well, and what didn’t? Please post any feedback about the event on the Ignite Portland Open Thread: What Could We Have Done to Make Ignite Portland 4 Better?
Certain social media activities (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) can provide tremendous value to companies for very little cost, especially when compared to traditional advertising. If done right, social media can give your company a voice that people will pay attention to because they want hear what you have to say, and the costs can be significantly lower than some of the other options.
I’ve been a little concerned about my timing for starting a new consulting practice. I launched the consulting arm of Fast Wonder on June 23rd, and as everyone knows, the economy has recently taken a turn for the worse. As soon as the economy tanked, I had a couple of smaller clients pull out of deals; however, I’ve noticed an upswing over the past 2 weeks in people calling or emailing me to ask about my consulting services.
Yesterday, I came up with this hypothesis: Companies are pulling back and reassessing their strategies and spending in light of the economic situation. During this reassessment, some companies are deciding to increase their social media presence as a way to stretch already thin budgets. Even with consulting fees to help them get started, they are still spending a lot less than they would for even a single, small, traditional marketing campaign.
I put this question out to my Twitter followers on Friday:
Here are the responses:
- PDXsays: @geekygirldawn Affirmative
- wickedjava: @geekygirldawn completely think they are moving that direction because it’s more cost effective.
- donmball: @geekygirldawn Maybe you’re just good at what you do. There’s always that!
- MelWebster: @geekygirldawn Not sure, but as a small PR boutique, we have also seen an uptick lately in consulting opps.
- unclenate: @geekygirldawn I certainly see the shift happening, PR 2.0 is making an impact. Most seem stuck on the ROI and value measurement question.
- becnavich: @geekygirldawn I know i’ve seen a few blog posts on why companies SHOULD be turning to social media, but whether they will or not…?
- msamye: @geekygirldawn Great topic for this afternoon’s @beerandblog.
- jmelesky: @geekygirldawn i saw a move towards pay-per-performance in the ad space during the bust, so it wouldn’t surprise me if social is a new focus
- Justin Kistner (on Facebook): I’m in talks with a company now is reallocating a large amount of their marketing budget to social media because they’re looking for more cost-effectiveness.
I also know that inquiries are not the same as deals, so the jury is still out on this question. I’d be curious to hear if other consultants have noticed the same trends? For those of you working inside of companies, is your company making any changes to their social media strategy in light of the economy?
A few interesting things this week …
Changes at Vidoop | The Vidoop Blog
Thinking lazily about reputation and relationships
Beaver BarCamp II
OEN Social Media 101 – SlideShare
Social Network Spaghetti | Portland Web Innovators at Vidoop | Hazelnut Tech Talk
Blog | Change.gov
Obama’s Social Media Advantage, Act II – ReadWriteWeb
Blogs Influence Purchases More than Social Networks – MarketingVOX
These last few weeks have been tough on people. Most of us can probably say that we’ve felt the impact of these tough economic times in one way or another. From my perspective, companies have been a little less eager to spend money on consultants, and I have some friends who recently lost jobs at local Portland tech companies. During times like these, we need to stick together and help each other. By working together, we can all be more successful and come out of the downturn with our businesses intact.
On another note, a few of us have noticed something a little disturbing about the Portland tech scene:
On the one hand, Legion of Tech and other grassroots efforts (Beer and Blog, WikiWednesday, Portland Web Innovators, and more) have built thriving events where groups of people get together to talk about technology in a very informal way. These events tend to bring in large numbers of very smart people who skew toward being relatively young, working as consultants / freelancers, being incredibly passionate about technology, and having more technology-related side projects than you can count.
On the other hand, there are groups like the Software Association of Oregon (SAO) holding events that are also very well attended, but by a completely different set of people. These people are also very smart and successful, and they skew toward being more experienced, working at established companies, and are career technology professionals.
For some reason, it seems to me like there is this wall between these two groups of people, and it doesn’t feel healthy to me. I’ve been working with the SAO for months (way before we even suspected that we were heading into times of economic uncertainty) to find ways to break down this wall and get these two groups of people together. With the economy taking a hit, we decided that now was the time to do something about it. We felt a real need to get these two groups of people together to find ways to help each other through tough times. Our ultimate goal is to have Portland emerge out of the downturn with a technology industry that is stronger than ever.
We wanted to kick this effort off in a very informal way to get these two groups of people together and talking to each other. Thrive – PDX is born. We would love to have you join us on November 11th for the first in what we hope will be a series of events for a united Portland technology community.
Thrive – PDX
Tuesday November 11, 2008
5:00pm – 7:00pm
Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub (upstairs)
112 SW Second Ave
RSVP on Upcoming
Rick Turoczy and I also outsourced part of the naming for this event to our Twitter followers, and I wanted to thank everyone who provided suggestions. A special thank you to Benjamin Jacobsen who came up with this idea: “Survive and Thrive. Portland Tech moves onwards.” (we shortened it a bit)
Please use the tag: ThrivePDX when you write, tweet, post photos, etc. about this event.
We hope to see you there!
A few interesting things this week …
Blog RSS Feed (recommended)
Yahoo Pipes Video Podcast on iTunes
Subscribe to Fast Wonder by Email
