Category Archives: Personal

President Obama Hits Reddit

Posted by Andy in Marketing, Personal, Politics, Social Media

I’ve blasted the Obama 2012 team in the past for their relentless email spamming. So, I have to give credit to a little piece of brilliance that should go down in the campaign Hall of Fame.

While the Republicans are rallying their base in a conference center in Tampa, President Obama was holding court in the virtual world, hosting an AMA on Reddit. As of 3:00pm PDT the post had 17,378 points (62% like it), with 43,822 up votes 26,444 down votes. There were more than 12,000 comments.

It’s hard not to come away impressed that while the Republicans are involved in the “old way” of engaging people, Obama is leveraging the “new way” of reaching out to his base (and stealing eyeballs from them). The Republicans are kind of left without a way to fight back. If they put Romney on Reddit during the DNC, they’ll look like copy cats. If they don’t have Romney do a AMA, they look scared, like they don’t trust what he would say. That’s check and mate Democrats.

Meanwhile in Tampa, Google is reporting that they have received the most searches ever for the term “Reddit” from a single geographic area. (No, not really.)

If I Was The NFL Pro Bowl Director

Posted by Andy in Big Businesses, Media, Personal, Sports

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything here.   If only there was a tool that helped people write coherent blog posts…

Well no one asked me, but here’s what I would do if I had to make something out of the NFL Pro Bowl.  Keep in mind the following items:

  • The game is atrocious
  • The NFL needs it as a way to spiff their advertisers
  • Players dig the Pro Bowl because they get bonuses for making the team
  • The game now happens on that dead Sunday between the Championship games and Super Bowl.

So here’s my dumb idea.

High Level: Make the Pro Bowl a week long television extravaganza featuring all the TV shows on the network hosting the game.  Send the producers of all that network’s shows (that make sense) over to Hawaii to film programs that feature Pro Bowl players.  Heck, you can even create shows.

Let’s say that CBS was televising the Super Bowl.  Without doing too much thinking you could have some sort of episode of:

  • Amazing Race, where a bunch of sets of teammates are competing or players get teamed with a regular person.
  • A Survivor spin off
  • A live “taping” of one or two of their sitcoms
  • Plus Pro Bowl specific hows such as a Jeopardy like game show with Linemen vs Quarterbacks. a “teammate” version of the Newlywed game,  skills competitions, etc…

All of these shows could involve Joe Fan, and reach a cross over audience.  But here’s the kicker: You get to charge new advertising dollars for NFL related shows.  Super Bowl sponsors would have more ways to extend their Super Bowl buy into earlier in the week, and companies who can’t afford Super Bowl ads would have a way to invest marketing money into the game.

And really, I don’t really care what they do with the game.  You could still play it, but instead of 3 straight hours of dreadful football, you’d have mini-bites of content from some of the shows that just aired, and some that are going to air that week.

This is a kernel of an idea, not a well thought out plan.  Would love to get your thoughts.

Congrats to a Few Biz Plan Competitors

Posted by Andy in Achievement

Since I graduated from the UW’s MBA Program back in 2006, I’ve been proud that I continue to have the opportunity to be a judge in the annual Business Plan Competition.  It’s truly inspiring to me to see what comes out of the minds of young entrepreneurs, especially those whose excitement has not yet been polluted.

This year is especially exciting though.  For the 1st time, I knew a little about three of the companies that made it through to the round of 32 before they received their Golden ticket.  (No, I was not allowed to judge these companies.)

So, before they prepare for their Investment Round battle in a few weeks, I want to congratulate the three teams that I’ve been able to get to know a little bit.

  1. Flash Volunteer offers a set of mobile and social tools to create, discover, track and easily share volunteer service events via a variety of integrated channels.
  2. GroBox aims to make it super easy to grow your own fruits and vegetables in a small amount of space.
  3. Splitpen is a creative online outlet for ordinary people of all abilities to come together and co-write stories with multiple plot lines, sub-plots and endings.

Good luck to all three teams (and the other 29 of course), and we’ll see you in a few weeks.

Teen Feed

Posted by Andy in Charity

Catherine has been volunteering for a little while with a group called Teen Feed.

Now, for a little while there, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about what Catherine was up to. But I have had the great opportunity to volunteer with her a few times in the last few weeks, and want to relay a thought or two.

It’s hard to find something much more disturbing than a room full of 18-25 year olds with no home, no food and a pretty hopeless outlook. If someone is 40, you can put some level of blame on them for being in the spot they are in. But it’s kind of hard to fault an 18 year old.

For about $100-$150, a Teen Feed organizer puts together a menu and buys all the groceries for about 50-60 people. Anywhere between 4 and 8 volunteers take over a kitchen of a neighborhood church, and prepare the meal. The kids arrive at 7pm, and dinner ends promptly at 8pm.

The kids who show up for the free food have no place to go, and in some cases no other food to eat. Some just spend the entire hour taking advantage of the heat and chairs they are allowed to rest in. But they are all polite, thankful, and just happy someone cares.

I’m going to write more about this over the next few weeks. But I really want to commend the volunteers of Teen Feed, and urge you guys to consider Teen Feed when you are considering where to donate some of your time or money. In my mind, 18-25 year olds are still save-able. We should be working on ways to do that.

Recapping NWEN’s First Look Forum 2011

Posted by Andy in Achievement, Technology

I always enjoy attending business plan events such as NWEN’s First Look Forum, the UW Biz Plan Competition, Startup Riot, etc… I tend not to call them competitions, and lean towards words like “showcases.” Sure the teams may be competing for a prize, but what they are really doing is showing the public the amount of work they’ve done on taking an idea from imagination to execution.

The real inspiring part of days like this is to see people striving to reach or exceed what is generally concluded as their “potential.” For every 100 people sitting in Westlake Park complaining that the world is unfair and out to get them, there was 1 person in the NWEN First Look Forum pitching an idea that they believed would create jobs and money. If I had my way, that would be the 1% / 99% ratio we should be trying to change.

This was the first year I was involved with a team (Relaborate) that made it through the process, even succeeding down to the final 5 companies. And now I’l use the term “competitor” because from the team’s viewpoint, making it from 37 to 20 to 12 to 5 really is a gauntlet, and you do feel a measure of success each time your name is called to advance.

But when you look at the other 11 companies, you can’t call it a competition, because I don’t know how any consumer would ever be making a choice between any of our products.

  • BAM Testing, What’s your athletic potential.
  • FanZappy, “Social-to-Store” service attracts social fans to local businesses and further converts fans to repeat in-store customer via our mobile app.
  • Glacier Peak, Nature does nothing uselessly.
  • Green Simian, Renewable Mobile Power.
  • Grid Mobility, Connecting Power to People.
  • Lacuna Systems, Expert Web Performance Management.
  • MotoVolta, Inc., High Performance Electric Motorcycles.
  • Mountain Logic, Halves heating and cooling costs for 100 million homeowners with central forced air by only conditioning occupied rooms.
  • Phytelligence, Smarter plants.
  • ProtoSec, Creating the next wave of Internet and Web vulnerability detection giving enterprise customers novel and low-cost vulnerability information about their applications, helping them meet compliance and security requirements.
  • Radiate, The Future of Internet Radio.
  • Relaborate, Blogging Made Easy.
But no matter what, here are 12 people – from an original list of 37 – who are attempting to build and create jobs, not protest that no one is creating jobs for them.  Maybe not all of these will turn a “profit” some day, but if you are looking for ways to stimulate an economy, I think these are the kinds of events and people you should be investing in.  They may not all show a return, but at least there’s a chance.

McDonald’s “I Spy” Interactive Video Campaign

Posted by Andy in Big Businesses, Marketing, Personal

Another nice find by DigitalBuzzBlog.

This McDonald’s campaign asks you to watch a :50 YouTube video and look for a certain character hiding in the scene. If you click on the character, you move on to the next level.

It’s actually a little hard at first, so don’t lose your patience the first time to get to the end without spotting Grimace. It’s a neat gimmick for a campaign, and definitely something you could replicate if you have the creativity and motivation.

I Suddenly Understand Home Depot

Posted by Andy in Personal

I’ll admit it. For years, I’ve felt pity on guys who have told me they need to go to Home Depot to get some stuff for the house. I was confused when they talked about how they were actually looking forward to it. I’ve never understood it. Why would anyone WANT to go shopping fo ranythign, much less home repair stuff?

And in the last 2 months, the light bulb has come on. I get it.

If you’re not living with your girlfriend/fiance, you may occasionally get asked to do some work on her place, just to fix something dumb like a picture frame. Otherwise, it’s her landlord’s problem. And if something breaks at your house, it usually can be solved with duct tape and by moving a dresser in front of it.

But when you have a “domestic partner” things change. (This is where I’ll lose the single guys.) Especially if you own your place. Suddenly, if something is wrong with the house, it’s something that is wrong with you.

But there;s a huge difference. If you are fat, it will take you months to get in shape. If you are losing your hair, you’re going to lose your hair. If you have a lousy job, there’s a whole career issue you have to tackle. What I’m saying is, these are things that could be “wrong” with you that take a long time to fix.

But when your pipe starts leaking, you have Home Depot. One day, and you are fixed. It’s a miracle.

Plus, you realize that when you are a guy in Home Depot, you are among friends. The help is helpful. The customers are friendly. And the rows and rows and rows and rows of toys. Exquisite. You want one of everything, but you realize you don’t need it. Because when you do need it, you can just run down to Home Depot and get one.

And another side effect – women are scared of Home Depot. They won’t admit it. But watch the wives in the building. They’ll slowly gravitate to the sections they feel most comfortable in. While we start exploring the intricacies of the different types of screws available, the women want to get the task done and flee.

Thus, you often get to hit Home Depot on your own. And there’s no Home Depot in your neighborhood. So you have to get in your car, turn the football game on the radio, and take a nice long drive. You can easily get in a 1/2 quarter one way and a 1/2 quarter back. It’s beautiful.

So in a nutshell – I apologize to the guys I’ve questioned before. I get it now. The only thing I don’t get is why they don’t have a chicken wing bar behind the lumber section…