BRAND STRATEGIST

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Fetch

Launch Party @ Fetch
April 17th 5-8pm 



Keoni Chavez, Managing Editor
I followed Fetch to crash this event because their keywords were "Party All The Time." Fetch brings apps to you that you'll love (the ones you want to keep installed). This personal search-companion was officially launching so I danced into this party and within minutes had the chance to get a demo of this new app from Keoni Chavez, the Managing Editor ... /Genome Wrangler /Spirit Animal /Penultimate Fighter. The most important aspect of his role though is that he plays games all day. Many boys dream of growing up to do this, with parents saying it's not a career -but Keoni is doing it. He plays these games and tags them with keywords such as "jumping" and "shooting" so you can find the games (and hopefully apps soon) that you would enjoy most. By searching for these traits and telling Fetch to follow them this app has a level of customization, advanced filtration, and depth offered by Fetch (and Keoni). With unique trait-search and similar-search features, Fetch gives you the most comprehensive ways to express your individual interests. Only here can you pinpoint an app's consistent, fundamental traits and link them together however you want to find exactly what you’re looking for, like “3D+Undead+Realistic Visuals” and instantly browse the most relevant results. Start a similar-search with an app you already know and then add new traits to find amazing games you never knew existed. Add traits like "Military" to Angry Birds to find games that upgrade you from slingshot to grenade launcher while keeping the same, fun gameplay elements you love. Fetch constantly looks for new games/apps that match and puts them in a personalized feed for you. With Fetch, the possibilities are endless... kind of like a computerized dog. 

Anu Nigam, CEO Fetch 
Fetch CRASHED IT keyword YOLO (You Only Launch Once)

Monday, April 22, 2013

Online Marketing Institute

Digital Cocktail Hour by OMI @RocketSpace 
April 16th 6-8:00pm 
I crossed off someone else's name and sub'd in for this stranger to crash an OMI gathering. Aaron Kahlow, CEO & Founder of the Online Marketing Institute (OMI) told me to say nice things about him after we took our photo which makes me wonder if he knew why I was taking a picture with him, or if he just tells that to every woman he encounters. 

OMI is the leading eLearning platform & training destination for digital marketing education. Their core mission is to enable professionals to execute efficient campaigns, drive higher ROI and advance personal career goals. OMI has educated marketing professionals on digital marketing for over five years with all of their online learning opportunities delivered via there proprietary eLearning center, which can be accessed with an online subscription or purchased individually. 

That evening they were presenting the Digital Leaders Cocktail Hour with Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners and author of Landing Page Optimization. Tim has a PhD is Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence, which led him to develop an expertise in user-centered design, persuasion and understanding online behavior. In the mid-1990s Tim became one of the early pioneers in the discipline of website conversion rate optimization. Tim went on to start SiteTuners, a firm that improves website conversion rate via a conversion-focused redesign blueprints, landing page testing, and training of internal optimization teams. 

Tim Ash, CEO of Site Tuners
and Author of Landing Pages Optimization
Memorable Quotes
"Screw the HIPPO (highest paid person's opinion) -stick with the big data when it comes to building your site and user experience."

"The two hottest digital marketing trends: Mobile and Neuro-Marketing."

"There is no such thing as a perfect process."


"The law of sunk costs say live in the moment and don't look at what you've already invested as logic for your next decision."

Monday, April 15, 2013

World Savvy Gala

World Savvy Gala
April 11th 6:30-10pm @ WineWorks 



Dana Mortenson, Co-Founder 
I crashed a Gala (not pronounced 'gay-la'). World Savvy's mission is to educate and engage youth in community and world affairs, to prepare them to learn, work and thrive as responsible global citizens in the 21st century. I came to support Dana Mortenson, the Co-Founder & Executive Director as we stood together for the photo -please ignore the veins that are protruding from my neck I was trying to flex. When World Savvy was founded in San Francisco eleven years ago they began working with just 20 teachers and 90 students from a shared cubicle in Redwood City.  Today, they serve a network of more than 56,000 constituents annually as leaders in the field of global education from three offices nationwide- San Francisco, Minneapolis-Saint Paul and New York. During the gala celebration with hours d'oeuvres and unlimited wine was a silent auction with trips to Hawaii, the Rocky Mountains, box seats at AT&T, the Adobe Suite and beyond... and I stayed silent for most of it. With a dedication to education, global awareness and thoughtful dialogue about the issues that affect us all as global citizens, this was a gala that was worth crashing.

http://worldsavvy.org/
No-name wine lady. 
The other person that stood out for me that night (beside the Founder) was the the wine lady who was equally amazing -although I forgot her name.

World Savvy Gala was taking place at Dogpatch WineWorks -San Francisco's only collective tasting room, wine bar and event space in a working winery. This local urban winery offered up an assortment of wines that evening in there industrial setting that even gives you the option to create your own wine in-house.
CRASHED IT.. For the children (and the wine)! 

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Mozilla

Mozilla Research Party 
April 2nd @ Mozilla

Brendan Eich, Co-Founder & CTO of Mozilla 

I crashed Mozilla's Research Party because I was excited to expand the foundations of the Open Web, but more importantly their office overlooks the Bay Bridge and I was even more excited to find that out. Brandan Eich co-founded Mozilla.org and is currently the CTO. Brendan is widely known for his contributions to the evolution of the Web, including inventing JavaScript and spearheading its ongoing standardization and evolution (not a big deal). Brendan kicked-off the event with a keynote speech as it was streamed live on Air Mozilla.  

Mozilla is 15 years old and it builds software very differently than any other company because they're not really a company, but in fact an open-source project backed by a not-for-profit foundation for the public benefit to promote choice and innovation on the internet. Brendan is the ultimate decision maker for any technical issues and sees the goal of Mozilla engineering as "expanding up the stack to fight proprietary lock-in that diminishes developer and user experience", to not just work on excellent products but make them successful by partnering up with other organizations. 

Back in 2004, Mozilla ran a Technical Advisory Board or TAB which mostly took advice from Enterprise companies, which they proceeded to mostly ignore. The last TAB meeting though was the biggest, and the one where Sergey Brin showed up representing Google. Due to a back injury, Sergey stood a lot. This tended to intimidate some of the other TAB members, who were pretty clearly wondering "What's going on? Should I stand too?" An accidental executive power move that I now will employ. Mozilla has come a long way, and today Mozilla Research is laser-focused on the Web with lots of research projects and industrial partners in the future.


CRASHING and hacking at Mozilla! 

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Pocket Gamer

Pocket Gamer Party @Roe 
March 25th 9pm-Midnight 





Wait, you're just the "demo guys"? This was quite the title they gave themselves when I asked them what their role was within Immersion. Apps have feelings too though (at least apps with Immersion does). I crashed the Pocket Gamer Party and took a moment within all the games to feel out Immersion. 

Immersion adds engaging touch feedback to your android Apps with Immersion's Haptic SDK. Haptics is the study of touch and Haptic effects are products by actuators which are built into devices to create vibrations. Haptics provide a sense of realism and improve the user experience and are found in consumer devices like mobile phones, tablets and gaming controllers. They harness the power of touch to transform the user experience into an intuitive encounter, bringing their communications to life.

I'm not a gamer, but I enjoyed the cocktails that were brought to me by their Gold Sponsors -you got played.

Immersion CRASHED IT! ... For the love of the game

Friday, April 5, 2013

RichRelevance


RichRelevance's Founders' Happy Hour
March 20th @ Headquarters 



Tyler Kohn
Mike DeCourcey

Who is David Selinger?
I still have no idea but what I do know is that I crashed their happy hour and met his friends, Michael DeCourcey and Tyler Kohn -the other two co-founders that couldn't stop saying great things about him. With a dynamic company culture these three co-founders go back to when their parents were friends as they started their company in a small 2-bedroom apartment and have grown it to a 27,000 square foot space. Although David was no where in sight, he could have been perhaps opening up another office because RichRelevance is growing rapidly. Around 200 employees and offices worldwide (with even some offices of one person) they're building a successful SaaS DATA company. {rr) has a rich sense of culture and their values adorn the walls revised and developed by a grassroots initiative led by the whole team with a commitment to customer-centricity, innovation, team, integrity, ownership and action. 

David managed to build quite the reputation at Amazon earning him international recognition as an expert in the field of eCommerce data analytics and personalization, increasing Amazon's annual profit by over $50 million and setting the industry standards for recommendation services and he was now on board at Rich Relevance bringing all that knowledge with him. These three minds combined live and breath leading edge technologies -especially around DATA and driving applied analytics for retailers such as Walmart, Target, Office Depot, Neiman Marcus, etc. in personalization, advertising and merchandising. I crashed this event and learned about their products and technologies, mingled with the Founders (except David) and experienced the richness in RichRelevance. If you're out there David I heard you're quite the character on the mic when you're singing Ice Ice Baby and I would like to get a photo with you too. 



Here's their story in animation form:
http://youtu.be/UfPsbqqQVwM


CRASHED IT... Dynamic personalization for commerce that's as cool as ice with RichRelevance!

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Business Insider

Business Insider Editor Lunch @ Mad Valley SF
March 21st 12-1pm 


I had lunch with Henry Blodget, Editor and CEO of the Business Insider -one of the fastest growing business and tech news sites in the world. I crashed his presentation at Mad Valley SF, a place that describes itself as a cross between Madison Valley Avenue savvy and Silicon Valley dreams. Modern media is evolving at an unprecedented rate, the only way to embrace it is to adapt and Universal McCann refuses to stand stubborn and smell the burnt rubber of media's rapid acceleration and that's why Henry (and I) stopped in. 

I crashed Henry's event to hear about the future of digital and to share some of his perspectives on mobile. The internet has disrupted many industries and it's beginning to happen to television. With consumer behavior changing, we turn on the t.v. to tell us a story yet now we're also on other devices while we're watching.  Mobile has made digital 24/7 with consumers even using their smart phones for buying decisions while they're standing in the store. Google essentially owns mobile search and while it's compared to advertising at a store, Facebook is like advertising at a party with around 1/7th of the world's population now using FB. Mobile app revenue is growing as consumers are also doing things you could only do on your phone like Angry birds and Instagram -but still mobile is only a tiny fraction of ad spending. People are consuming a huge amount of content through mobile so you would think mobile advertising would be huge. Well, there's still some problems with it including the small screen and mobile CPMs being much lower, but if we can figure out a way to tap into it correctly there's definitely a big opportunity for mobile in the future... and that's how Henry sees it.

Surrounded by a semi-circle of computer screens where this presentation was taking place I met a couple guys from BLI. Britelite Immersive (BLI) is an experiential design agency and event production company that uses physical space to tell brand stories, leveraging technology as a medium and architecture as a canvas. They find creative solutions that break out of 2D environments to solve traditional marketing issues, connecting brands with audiences through sensory interaction. http://briteliteimmersive.com

CRASHED IT... For the Future of Digital