Archive for the 'Computers & Technology' Category

Southside Smoosier Tech Club Meeting – January 4, 2010

One of the great things about 2009 was getting to meet more and more people at a variety of social meetings and tweetups around the city. One group I tried to participate in as frequently as possible was the Southside Smoosier Tech Club started by my friend Douglas Karr.

Tonight the group met again on the first Monday of the year at The Strange Brew Coffee House (@TheStrangeBrew) on the far south side of Indianapolis in Greenwood, IN. For getting the news out late and spreading the word about meeting at a new location, I think we had a good turn out.

Those in attendance were Noah Coffey, Aaron Sudduth, Andrew Angle, James Paden, Patric Welch and Doug Theis. I’m proud to call of these guys friends and love having them in my network of social media and technology specialists here in Indianapolis.

If you’re on the south side or just love technology and feel like driving, be sure and join us next time. We plan on meeting the first Monday of every month right back at The Strange Brew at 6:30pm.

As Doug Theis reminded us in the video, the Rainmaker’s Techmaker’s meeting will be taking place Tuesday night, January 5th at 5:30pm at the downtown location for Scotty’s Brewhouse.

I’m A Blindy Award Nominee

I just can’t help but say it. You know you’re expecting it!

"You LOVE ME! You REALLY LOVE ME!"

jim-carrey-the-mask

This week is the 2nd Annual Blog Indiana conference on Thursday and Friday here in Indianapolis. This is a great event and if you’re in the area at all you should plan on registering and attending. It’s well worth the price for the information and opportunity to network with bloggers from all over Indiana.

As part of the events this year they’ve started the Blindy Awards, which are awards to recognize area bloggers in a variety of different categories.

The 2009 BLINDY Awards will recognize Indiana’s best blogs, bloggers, and social media magnates for their efforts across a spectrum of categories. Help put your favorite blogs & bloggers in the Hoosier spotlight by voting!

I found out over the weekend that I’ve been nominated in three different categories for some of my work in the blogosphere.

  • Best Social Network / Local Blog for I Choose Indy
    • I started writing on this blog as I transitioned out of another blog I was writing about Indianapolis. Working with Douglas Karr and Pat Coyle on this project has been a great experience. I’m not the only writer on this site so it’s not "my" award by any means. Up against some serious competition with the Smaller Indiana website as well.
  • Best Business Blog for Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association blog
    • Again, I’m not the only one responsible for the work on this site. Casey Mullins and I were recently brought on to help write some content for the city. Other staff members also regularly contribute to the site. Another great partnership and it’s great to see the work being noticed by others.
  • Best Hoosier Blogger for =) Bnpositive’s Blog
    • This is by far the biggest honor for me. I can’t imagine this being for my blogging on my personal blog as this one has quite a bit of dust collecting on it. The challenge these days is I’m so busy blogging on a variety of other websites that hopefully that’s where the recognition is coming for on this one. I’m absolutely ecstatic about his nomination and honored to even be included on the list.

I’d love to blast all my social networks letting people know about this honor and ask them to vote for me on these awards. There’s part of me that I feel would belittle that honor though. I want to receive votes from people who really know my work and are readers and hopefully that’s what will happen. May truly the best blog and blogger win!

Shady Social Media Promotions – Do Celebrities and Athletes Care

I saw a post by a friend of mine, Patrick O’Keefe at iFroggy, about some less than stellar promotional tactics being used by a poker tournament that’s taking place in the Bahamas. I’m not going to give any link love to the event itself. You can read about their tactics on Patrick’s post, I just found out from him this evening that they’ve also taken advantage of some posts about Michael Jackson’s death to add their comments and links about the tournament.

The event consists of 25 sports legends and 25 poker pros competing in the tournament. What I’m curious to know is if any of them care about the under-handed and shady tactics being used to promote the event. Do any of the people care about their name being associated with such activities? Do these celebrities and athletes even "get it"?

If you know or look-up to one of these individuals, let them know about this post and this activities for this event. I’d love to hear their comments and opinions on such things?

Sports Legends Poker Pros
Troy Aikman
Richard Petty
Sugar Ray Leonard
Emmitt Smith
Reggie Jackson
Julius "Dr. J" Irving
Fuzzy Zoeller
Laffit Pincay
Bobby Hull
Brooks Robinson
Kyle Petty
Rocco Mediate
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Joe Namath
Mike Ditka
Ozzie Smith
Herschel Walker
Jim Brown
Jerry West
Gale Sayers
Michael Strahan
Rick Barry
Antonio Esfandiari
Cyndy Violette
Gavin Smith
Karina Jett
Robert Daily
Chip Jett
Marco Traniello
David Singer
Jamie Gold
Johnny Chan
Annie Duke
Amir Vahedi
Marsha Waggoner
Kenna Cowboy James
Barbara Enright
Kathy Liebert
Layne Flack
T.J. Cloutier
Phil Laak
Marcel Luske
Men (The Master) Nguyen
Capt. Tom Franklin

There you go. Those are all the folks having their names associated with the event and promoting the event with their likeness and name.

It appears that some of these individuals have even had MySpace pages setup for them promoting this event like this and this.

If you’d like to see examples of the marketing tactics and promotions already being done, just do a search for the athlete’s name and Bahamas or poker. You’ll probably find some results. It’s working, but is this the kind of thing we want social media being abused for in promotions?

If you’d like to see examples of some of the promotional messages that have been you can click after the link to see links and examples.

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