I just wanted to write up a quick thanks to the amazing crew who put on Podcamp this year in Nashville. The event just keeps getting better each year.
I gave an intro presentation called, “Happy Clients: An Intro to Digital Account Management,” and plan to post some of my thoughts as well as a bit of the feedback from the Q&A session here over the next few weeks.
I attended the January NAMA luncheon this past week and got the chance to hear Tim Moses, CEO of Sitemason, a web development and CMS-provider here in town, give a talk on the future of mobile app development.
He set up the talk by giving the status of the mobile app landscape: Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android pretty much dominant the market while Blackberry users only check email. In other words, if you’re a marketer, you’re going to want to focus your efforts on those two markets.
But one of the most interesting things I think he did was to pull a quote from Matt Cutt’s blog, supposedly penned in 2008, but published January 3rd, 2011:
“More people will realize the inevitable truth that Bill Gates saw years ago and that Apple has chased since the introduction of the ROKR: of all the devices in your pocket, the only one you’re not willing to give up is your phone. Therefore, all personal gadgets will eventually be subsumed by your phone. Camera? Already part of your phone. Pen and notebook? Quite close. Video camera? Almost there, give it a couple more years. Car keys, wallet? It will come. In five years, your phone will have fingerprint authentication and be able to start your car or pay for groceries with contactless/RFID chips. It’s all coming. In 10 years you’ll use your phone to authenticate yourself at the doctor, authenticate prescriptions, and store your personal health history, not to mention all your desktop preferences, bookmarks, browser add-ons, and keys to which music you have permission to stream or download from the cloud.” I call this TRUE. Most people now agree that your phone is a personal computer in your pocket. Back in 2008, not everyone realized this.
I think that was (if true) a great prediction. Moses also followed that up with a stat that the most frequently used camera to upload photos to Flickr is the iPhone.
It’s amazing how we take all of this granted now. “People use an internet-enabled device that is with them at all times more often than their $1,000 (with lenses) Canon Rebel? Duh!”
Moses also shared a great anecdote of how his 7-year-old son asked to use his phone the other day because he lost something under the couch. It’s perhaps unsurprising that phones have become our cameras, our computers, our internet connections and, yes, our flashlights.
The two trends I keep hearing more and more about, as far as smart phones go, are the implications for e-commerce and augmented reality (AR). I hear less about accessing and managing personal medical records, but those implications are interesting as well.
Just wanted to give a shout out to everyone at Advocate Marketing & Printing for their mixer Thursday night: Marketing + Advertising + Design.
I never know what to expect as a young, Nashville nonnative when I attend any kind of networking event. This one landed quite well in the middle of the spectrum from overly stuffy to too laid back.
Plus, owner Matt Sims gave me and a friend a tour of his Indigo Press.
Thanks, Matt!
This past weekend I attended Nashville’s Startup Weekend. If you’re unfamiliar with the Startup Weekend concept, here’s a primer. I attended the event last year as well, and my two experiences couldn’t have been more dissimilar. Here are my lessons learned:
Last year, I voted for teams based entirely upon how impressed I was with the person pitching the idea. I was new to Nashville, and therefore figured I may as well just align myself with someone who (at least in all appearances) knew what they were doing.
This year, I shifted gears a bit.
My criteria for ideas was simple: “Does this sound like a fun way to spend a weekend?”
Having taken those two different approaches, I can say that picking a team based on leadership makes an enormous difference.
If you want to spend a weekend working in a creative environment, go with the idea.
If you want to launch a business in a weekend, go with leadership.
(I want to add the caveat that we had an awesome team with some really interesting people. We just didn’t have any one person, myself included, who decided to step up and provide the leadership necessary to carry the idea through to execution.)
Continue reading “Business Matters: Four Lessons Learned from Nashville Startup Weekend”
I am pleased to announce I recently started a new position at Journal Communications Inc., a medium-sized custom publisher outside Nashville, Tennessee, as their Online Content Manager.
The position will undoubtedly evolve as the company does, but my foremost task will be to help shape their online strategy.
I couldn’t be more excited.
(My apologies for the hiatus. It’s been a hectic couple of months…)
Matt Bigelow 