Below is my live-blog of this event: BUILDING A BRAND AT 35,000 FEET WITH PORTER GALE, VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING AT VIRGIN AMERICA.
It is now archived, which flips it into proper chronological order. Note it also contains Twitter posts I did occasionally, before and during the event, which are labeled thusly. I meant to let others’ tweet streams into the page, too — people I knew who were tweeting during the talk — but I was too busy scrambling to get set up, after being late! And there was no wi-fi — darn, and I wanted to blog from my iPad! So I was forced to do the whole thing from my 3GS iPhone, using my ScribbleLive app.
Tag: MIMA
Just a post to catch you up to what I’ve been doing elsewhere online recently, on venues other than this. First of all, my volunteer/pastime blogging thing over at Minnov8.com included a post a couple days ago on a bigtime conference held here in the Twin Cities last week called the MIMA Summit. 
It was sponsored by, you guessed it, MIMA (the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association). Here’s a partial screen clip of that post, and the whole post is here.
Then, just yesterday, I participated again in the weekly Minnov8 Gang Podcast, this one Episode 9 already. (Wow, time flies when you’re having fun.) You can grab it off the Minnov8 home page via the link at top center there, as you can see on the second screen clip. 
We talked about a number of topics, including recent confabs in the Twin Cities, the economic times, social media (of course), and, hey, even wine.
Finally, I continue to Twitter all the while — that just never stops! 🙂 I’m including here a recent screenshot of my Twitterstream. But please do follow the whole dang shebang here. 
One cool thing that happened recently is this: I received a rating for my Twitter account of 91 out of 100 from twitter.grader.com. Wow, that means my Twitter presence is rated higher than 91% of all the other accounts they’ve graded! Nice to know I’m doing something right..
UPDATE 10/6/08: Meant to say that social media is a part of everything I do now for my clients, and also that I’m quite active in our local Social Media Breakfast organization. Be sure to keep the morning on Oct 31 open, because we have an exciting, nationally known speaker coming to town. [Actually, he was already here for a private gig, and I convinced him to stay over a night… 🙂 ] Watch the "SMBMSP" site above for the announcement later today.
UPDATE 10/9/08: I see our local media site MinnPost picked up my story on the MIMA Summit.
Okay, I promise this will be it — for the holiday season, anyway. At the risk of appearing to do nothing else but attend parties, swill wine, and nibble cheese at various and sundry functions, I offer up here my final party post of 2006…well, I think, anyway. We’ll see… 🙂 
This one was the annual holiday function of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA), held Wednesday evening December 13 at the gleaming new Guthrie Theater along the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. Again, it was a balmy evening, in the low 40s…with no snow (!).
I was gonna shoot some pix of this hot new venue (my first time there), and did take my little pocket cam with me. But then I realized others have probably shot much better photos than I could. [Oh?] Check out these very cool Guthrie pix I since found on Flickr. [Thank you, “jpnuwat.” Whoever you are, you shoot some really amazing stuff!!] I now think I’m gonna throw away my pocket cam in shame, because my shots, a couple of which are shown below (after one of his), leave….uh, a little to be desired? 
Oh well, these two of mine show the one thing I wanted to capture Wednesday evening: the great view off the outside deck, which my friends and I decided would be a terrific place to hold a reception in warmer weather.
The event drew what looked to be 100 to 150 people, and was crowded into a long, narrow lounge on the fourth floor. But it was fun, and the food was great, as was the wine. Soon as I walked in, I ran into an old buddy I hadn’t seen in years: Terry Anderson, head shooter at TKA Photography in Edina, who was there to capture some shots of the occasion for MIMA. 
I also met some other really interesting people, including James Schmit of Greater Web Traffic, a state IT employee and former longtime Carlson Companies staffer, who’s doing some SEO/SEM work in his spare time. Let’s hear it for moonlighting! 
Then, after running into friends Tom Borgerding (the original MIMA prez) and Jason Bakker of Campus Media Group, Bloomington — the best darn college marketing firm on the planet — I met Jennifer Meyer, CEO of Web Emarketing, who not only is an accomplished search-engine marketer, but a surfer, too — I kid you not! She’s spent time at Surfer’s Paradise near Brisbane, Australia, and also frequents the Pacific side of Costa Rica in her spare time. [Naturally, we’re gonna exchange some surf pix links while on our respective New Year’s vacations.] After hooking up with MinneDemo colleagues Rob Metcalf of Flyspy and Jeff Pester of Slivercast.com, I was introduced to Martin Davis, principal of Ratchet, an accomplished interactive development shop, spun out of Fallon in 2004, that now serves a large part of the downtown ad agency community. Martin also has really cool business cards, designed by Duffy Design — seriously, you should stop by sometime just to get one! 🙂 Finally, I had a chance to chat at some length with another fascinating guy, Andrew Ecklund, CEO of Ciceron. I’d known his name for a long time, and had briefly met him once in the early days of MIMA, in like 1997, but we’d never had a chance to really talk. He was a font of information, a funny guy, and his firm is doing some excellent web marketing work for clients such as Andersen Windows, US Bank, and Target Center. In particular, he’s really excited about web video, and especially about Brightcove, which I’ve written about before — a company that kinda/sorta has Minnesota roots, since it was founded by Jeremy Allaire and friends, formerly of Allaire Corp., which was founded here. Andrew’s firm is working on some really cool, new video stuff, with a group of well-regarded local film and video talents. I’ll definitely be watching for more news on this….
Well, that’s it from the Minneapolis web marketing and Internet startup party scene for another holiday season….Whoops, no, wait! What’s this? Why, it’s another invitation to a little gathering of players in our local startup community, on Wednesday the 20th downtown. Just an impromptu get-together for beer to meet an out-of-town VC visitor from California. But how can I miss that?… 🙂
Tags: MIMA.org, Guthrie Theater, web marketing, Minnesota
That’s not only my favorite line from my favorite cut of Big Audio Dynamite, but it’s my favorite call to action at this time of year! And here, friends, are three of the coolest places to be in Minneapolis in the next week. The first, unfortunately, is by invitation only…a customer-appreciation kinda gig for the great design/UI firm, FactorUE, tomorrow night, Friday, December 8. But maybe you know someone who can get you in….or just show up at the Foundation Nightclub downtown about the time it’s wrapping up at 9:00, when things will continue raging, I’m sure. The cool thing is that two of FactorUE’s designers are DJs, too!
The second local event I’ll be catching, on Monday the 11th, is the holiday gathering of our great local community of developers and entrepreneurs, playfully called MinneDemo. [It’s the local chapter of a loosely affiliated global network called Bar Camp.] Go onto that MinneDemo link (it’s a wiki page) and sign up if you’d like to attend — unless the list has already gone beyond the capacity of the larger club where it’s being held this time. Dan Grigsby and friends have done a great job organizing and planning these gigs, which are catching on like wildfire. Actually, this one is half-serious, too — a separate room is devoted to a program of five or so brief demos by aspiring entrepreneurs or new startups.
The third event on my agenda is next Wednesday the 13th — the annual holiday bash of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association, which has a reputation for being a really fun party. This year, it’s at the brand-new locale of the Guthrie Theater, so I thought I’d check it out, and catch up with some old friends. It’s free for members or $20 for non-members, and you can read more about it and register right here.
Okay, I must be getting to sound more and more like the Michael Arrington of Minnesota here 🙂 …. [except I don’t throw parties at my own house]. But, if you’re a player in our local IT/Internet/Web 2.0 community, you should be showing up at one of these events, at least! I’m looking forward to all of ’em. See ya there….
Tags: FactorUE, MinneDemo, MIMA.org, Minnesota startups
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