Our annual holiday party is always a blast. Check out a few pics and videos detailing the hijinks. If you wanna make it to next years make sure and let me know. Cheers!
Time lapse video of the party. This is all shot in my office!!!! End of the night drag race in the golf cart...perfect ending. Add Comment Well, 2012 has been a crazy year. At many times it has been trying, but at all times it has been exciting and rewarding. My journey has been....well, frankly it has just been psycho, full of all the pitfalls and plateaus that an entrepreneur should expect. As I look forward to 2013, I am excited on a personal as well as a professional level. It seems that things are coming together, and this can only be attributed to the support and love that I receive from the amazing group of people that surround me. This point cannot be over-emphasized. Huge props to my amazing family, even though they sometimes look at me sideways, always support me no matter what. The endless support of my awesome girlfriend, whom without, I would be absolutely lost. A crazy group of friends, from all walks of life, who always keep me grounded, laughing and looking forward to the next adventure. My clients and colleagues that provide me with exciting opportunities and a type of friendship that can only be developed by working together. Did I forget anyone? Oh yea, San Francisco...she is a beautiful city, perhaps the most inspiring, multi-dimensional city in the world, and she keeps me busy, interested and drives me berserk in a way that no person can. All that being said, check out what I am getting into in 2013, so far: äctucast :: Finding this killer group of guys was purely an accident, but my return to the world of business development (for someone else but myself) is met with a level of excitement that I have not felt in a very long time. Partly because I love data, partly because Eduardo has created an exciting, cutting edge product, but mostly because it is not everyday you find a cool group of guys who know how to work hard and have fun in the same motion. Let's get it boys!!!! 99centbrains :: Franky is up to something big and I am stoked to be part of the process. The amount of talent and drive in this guy and the company that he is building is really f'n cool. Cheers, and here is to a happy, safe and prosperous 2013! I was told not to write until I was inspired. Well, I am inspired, and have full-blown writer's block. So why not share some of the companies and people who have been keeping me stoked?
Sorry, I do not mean to sound boastful, but it is always cool to see projects come together. Maybe abit of back story is necessary. Jon Blandin at Falconfive was looking for help with a promotional event, some marketing and a website redesign. He also mentioned that he wanted to get his business involved in the America's Cup. It all sounded good to me and I began researching the twists, turns and near sinking of the America's Cup (AC). As I began to call on folks connected to the event, Andrew Wood of the San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) came up as a passionate proponent of hosting an arts festival that coincides with the AC in 2013. Great idea, BUT Andrew was in need of some help ASAP and Falconfive stepped up to the plate. SFIAF had acquired an amazing space at 540 Sutter in SF, CA and needed some assistance to pull the place together before their annual weeklong festival. We agreed to build the bar… it was a tight deadline, but Jon was confident that he could pull it off. In true Falconfive fashion, Jon designed the bar specifically for the space, upcycled materials from past projects, fabricated the bar in 3 days and installed just in time for the grand opening, yesterday May 2nd. As you can see below the bar looks amazing and really pulls the room together. The bar top is hickory and the base is MDF that has geometric patterns etched into the material with a CNC machine. Falconfive is proud to be part of the SFIAF festival and we look forward to checking out some of the international performances! Link to SFIAF Link to Falconfive Link to SF Bay Guardian article The OMMA event was a 2-day conference in SF, CA, March 2012. The focus was heavily on digital media and advertising. I am a numbers guy, so I will say 70% of it was awesome, 30% of it was…meh. As far as free events go, I’d say all in all it was pretty good. I was able to make it to all of the Key Notes and tracked the Social and Video break out sessions. There were a few things that stuck out to me during the course of the event. One in particular was the heavy emphasis put on data analysis and its effect on marketing campaigns. It seems that in our digital world every click is being tracked, aggregated and compiled. The results are being turned towards understanding consumers at a level we have never known before. Combine this with data factories like Google and Facebook that are gathering personal information on an unprecedented level and you have a perfect storm for knowing anything and everything you ever wanted to know about anyone. Of course Social media was ever present. I think the take-away was two fold: 1. The antiquated approach to telling your market what they want and how they need to think is going away, and going fast. Social media has allowed participation on a whole new level and rather than fend off the masses, a race for inclusion is at hand. Invite your fans and target market directly into the mix, have them participate (if not downright lead) the next campaign, ask them what they think and allow them to build a brand experience. There is nothing that creates advocacy quite like participation and ownership. 2. I often describe social media as the wild wild west, and I was stoked to hear others are using the same terminology. We are all new to this game and marketing within these platforms is in its infancy…in utero may be a better way of putting it. Companies are ditching traditional advertising and throwing large amounts of money and resources into social media. I heard numbers like, 40- 60% of traditional marketing and advertising budgets are being reallocated to social medial. How do you divide the advertising budget at your company? In summary, I feel we are not using all of this new information to understand the public in the traditional marketing and advertising sense. Instead we are using the various social media connections, insurmountable amounts of data and immediate consumer accessibility to locate trends, concerns and the inner-thoughts of our market. Companies are working hard to build direct, personal relationships with customers, to experience life with them, to humanize our brands and to connect as an equal. This seems to be the new marketing paradigm. The race is on to see who gets there first. Check out my notes from the event in the PDF below. 
It is 4:51a, Pacific Standard Time, Stardate March 25, 2012. It has rained all day and my taxes are due...just kidding (not really). I just spent three days gathering my work and trying to find a way to describe who I am and what I do. That is a BIG question followed by millions of small questions, especially as an entrepreneur. It feels good to finally get a website up. Let me know what you think. I have been listening to music non-stop to keep me pumped up for this grueling process, Zane Lowe and Mike Davies on BBC Radio1. You should check it out. My first real blog will be on the OMMA Global marketing conference. It was heavy...and I need to get the 10 pages of notes I have out in the open again. Stay tuned. I want to go snowboarding... Cheers, Jon | |||||||
