Boulder Report

Retweet contest a simple way to get your business message out

Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco Pena and his dancers' performance at Boulder Theater brought the audience to their feet several times in the two-hour show. I won a "retweet" contest for tickets to the show.

Nothing's wrong with good, simple marketing ideas in Twitter. In fact, isn't that what Twitter was supposed to be all about?

One of the easiest ideas to get your business message circulating is offering an incentive -- a simple contest for example -- asking your followers to retweet your tweet. I've seen this being used effectively by many Boulder area businesses, and it's so easy to do.

This week, the Boulder Theater was promoting an evening performance of Paco Pena, one of the best flamenco guitarists in the world. They offered up the chance for two concert tickets to anyone who retweeted their short promo for the show. Instead of just reaching their Twitter followers, their message spread out to the followers of many of their followers.

Personally I like to save my retweets for things I find especially interesting and that I think Boulderites and others who follow me might also like to know about. A world-class Spanish flamenco guitarist is not someone you get the chance to hear everyday in Colorado, but it was certainly the "contest" that got me to help promote the show. I'll be honest, I'd never heard of this performer. Now I'm a fan.

So guess what?  I won the contest, and off I went to what turned out to be one of the best shows I've seen. The audience loved the exciting combination of flamenco guitarists and dancers. 

The contest is such a simple idea, and now I'm even giving back a little more publicity to the Boulder Theater by thanking them for the free tickets.

Allison and I also went to George's Food and Drink, the very cozy and comfortable bar that now adjoins the theater and is the perfect spot for a drink and food before or after the show. So even though I won the tickets, they still got a paying customer.

I do think you need to offer up an enticing offer for your retweet competition -- concert tickets were great, but you might consider a free meal or bottle of wine if you run a restaurant. Make it really worth while for me to retweet your business -- a discount where I have to buy something anyway probably isn't enough incentive for me.

The concert seats were also in the reserved section, not stuck somewhere in the back of the theater. 

With a tweet announcing the winner, you show that the contest was serious and hopefully your winner will tweet back their thanks! That starts to add up to quite a few messages flying around promoting your business, not to mention all of the good karma!

I did find an archive of some simple retweet contests online at a site called Retweet Please. There might be a few ideas there for you to use in your business.

Mobile networking app hoozat born in CU basement

I’ve heard of entrepreneurs starting up companies in their basement before, but this one’s a little different.

Boulder’s TechoShark Inc., which has developed a mobile social networking iPhone app, got its start as a class project in the computer systems lab, which happens to be in the basement of CU’s Engineering building.

This is the sort of tech-transfer story that takes place because of CU’s emphasis on research, and it has pulled together professor, students and campus intellectual property staff. No one is making money just yet, but the idea seemed good enough that both Dr. Richard Han, computer science professor, and his doctoral student, Aaron Beach, as well as several others working on the project chose to incorporate and start a company.

Mobile computing is a specialty area for Han, and a hot growth area, with smart phone growth exceeding the PC market.

In December 2007, Han asked his grad students to pick a computer project, and Aaron pitched the idea of combining the personal identity and GPS location awareness of a mobile phone with the “friendship” data of social media like Facebook or Twitter.

The idea was intriguing, especially at a time when iPhone apps were taking off. Instead of student teams on different projects, Han let the entire class to take on the assignment.

The application is called hoozat – and it allows a Facebook user (Twitter users just added) to locate friends who are nearby, even in the same room, and connect using their iPhone to read their profiles, see their interests and message them.

These days I often write from various coffee shops around town full of interesting characters, and I told Han I once had a similar idea. “Why can’t I see who in this room is perhaps online using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn?” It’s rude, of course, to walk over and peer over their shoulder.

Now, if two or more of us had hoozat on iPhones, we could meet wirelessly.

TechoShark launched its app for free, hoping to glean information on how it would be used before setting a price. Today, the space for iPhone program and game developers is packed, with some 25,000 apps out there and nearly one billion downloaded. Getting attention against virtual fishing rods, calorie counters or popping bubble wrap apps is one of TechoShark’s biggest challenges.

Still, it’s been a pretty good year for the venture, having won a $100,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant in January, which gives them better odds at winning Phase II funding. TechoShark’s business plan won $3,000 for computer science in CU’s New Venture Challenge, and the company won an IQ Innovation Award from the Business Report. CU recently signed a technology licensing agreement, which gives the university equity in the company.

TechoShark is maturing with several business advisers, and some have suggested targeting the events and meetings space.  Having both organized and attended networking meetings where the idea of having of bug on your name tag and seeking out others in your insect family seems a bit humiliating, I think hoozat might find a good niche here.

With possible SBIR or investor funding, TechoShark sees a move to other mobile phones like Blackberry or phones with Google’s Android. Han says hoozat was developed to be “agnostic” of particular platforms, but the hot-selling iPhone seemed like the place to start.

Looking at the multitude of social media apps being developed, Beech admits, “Anyone that tells you where this is all going is probably not right.”

The developers intentionally kept hoozat fairly simple to start out.  There are competing Web-based mobile location companies out there, including Denver-based Brightkite, which has features allowing you to post photos or notes to your location.

A mapping feature for hoozat, Han says, would allow users to locate specific events as well as people. A search function could list events by categories, such as sports or business conferences.  New features like these might be wrapped into a “premium” version that could generate revenue. Their business plan looks for a revenue stream in 2010, with at least a break-even bottom line in 2011.

Just figuring out with path to take, of course, is what makes or breaks an entrepreneurial venture.

So now for the question that Arron’s already tired of hearing. Why the spelling of TechoShark, and not TechnoShark? Turns out, when he offered the idea to his class, he made a typo in the presentation. But classmates liked the ring of TechoShark. And a company was born in a CU basement.

Join Facebook fan page for Imagine! SmartHomes

Mark Emery, left, executive director of Imagine!, and Bob and Judy Charles show architectural drawing of the new SmartHome, which will open in Boulder this summer. The home will be one of the first in the nation, and serve as a model for future of residential care for people with cognitive disabilities.

I'm excited to help spread the word that Imagine!, a Lafayette, Colo.-based nonprofit providing care to people with cognitive and physical disabilities, has just launched a new "fan" page on Facebook, and is making more plans to expand its reach through social media.

This summer Imagine! will complete and open its new Bob and July Charles SmartHome at 18th and Iris streets in Boulder. This home, and another to be built in Longmont, will be national models for how the latest technologies, as well as green building, can be used in a community home to assist the residents. The technologies will make the caregivers more effective, too, by allowing them to track medications, computerize reminders about client needs and monitor sensors for better awareness and accountability of residents.

The SmartHome project will be exciting to watch, and much more information is available online from Imagine! including photos, videos and architectural drawings of the new homes.

I serve on the Imagine! Foundation, which was started to raise money to help pay off the mortgages of several existing homes, and now we're in a new fund-raising capital campaign to complete the SmartHomes. You can make a secure online donation for the SmartHome campaign, or you could contact me personally for information about the campaign and how you could help.

Imagine! will be putting out a lot more information and news as the SmartHomes project advances. I hope you'll follow the progress.

Downtown Boulder businesses diving in head first to social media

Dave Rogers gets a plug for his new social media startup, Localbunny.com, at Downtown Boulder's breakfast meeting discusson on using social media.

A good pounding of wet spring snow couldn't keep more than 100 downtown Boulder businesspeople from learning more about how to tweet, blog, yelp and simply try to understand the rapidly growing world of social media. 

While it's so easy to think you're drowning in the flood -- make that "deluge" -- of social media sites, there's always something new to discover. A few of us had some slightly nervous laughs learning we're getting close to an emerging "silver surfer" crowd (60 years and older). The breakfast presentation at the Hotel Boulderado also included good info on Yelp, which came to the Denver area with its restaurant and retail reviewers just about a year ago.

Flashing a Powerpoint page showing literally hundreds of social media site logos, Amy Moynihan and Ashley Cohen of GoundFloor Media told the downtowners not to panic if they're new to the social media world. "Pick one or two, and just dip your toe into it," Moynihan said to one woman who asked why she shouldn't run away screaming from the whole social media invasion.

Facebook, Twitter and Yelp could be the top three mediums to get started on in the online conversations and marketing that include everything from blogs, wikis, podcasts, vlogs, Internet forums, virtual communities and micro-blogging (Twitter.)

If you're running a "brick and morter" retail location, Moynihan said, you absolutely need to be taking a look at Yelp, because probably there's already a "yelper" posting a review of your service or product online. The really active "yelpers," she said, get to be "elite yelpers." 

Fact is, many downtown Boulder businesses, including the Downtown Boulder organization and businesses such as Boulder Theater, Tee & Cakes, Boulder Baked, Laughing Goat Coffeehouse (my usual coffee hangout), the Dish, Spudbrothers (here is their Yelp page), and others (certainly the bars and breweries) have already made the plunge. Think the 20,000 students at CU are important to your Boulder business base? Then social media is a no-brainer. 

I'm a "fan" of Downtown Boulder's Facebook page, and heard about this latest Downtown Community Exchange via their Twitter. Downtown Boulder is actively promoting various "specials" or pointing to reviews -- national and local -- of restaurants and other businesses. New DBI Director Sean Maher told me the Dish, a gourmet sandwich shop, tweeted a secret "password" to followers, offering a one-day discount to whoever knew the word. About 40 customers came in with the tweet word of the day. 

GroundFloor Media pushed home the point that Facebook and other social media are not just for teens anymore. Demographics show the fastest-growing group using social media is 25 years and older, and that includes a whole bunch of us -- let's say "somewhat older" adults (whew, found out I'm not yet a silver surfer after all) -- who are starting to "surf" with the teen set. (The leading topic right now for the next Ignite Boulder, by the way, is "My mom just joined Facebook, now what?)

eMarketer, the morning presentation showed, is predicting the number of U.S baby boomers using the Internet at least once a month (you have to wonder who uses the Internet just once a month?) will jump by 5 million to almost 64 million in 2011.

As snow piled up outside the Boulderado, Dave Rogers, former publisher of the Onion in Boulder, announced he's just launched a new social media tool called Local Bunny. This just-born startup, unveiled recently at the Boulder Denver New Technology Meetup, allows businesses and organizations to not only get their specific business noticed, but to list specific dates and schedules. Local Bunny will then push that information out to social media like Facebook and Twitter, letting users search information not just by name, but by the "time" of a class or event. 

Dave told me he's just out of the gates with this one, but quickly showed me on his iPhone how he could search Twitter by typing "@localbunny yoga, boulder" and bring up a listing of Boulder yoga classes by time. Looking for a 9 a.m. class? There they are, or at least that's the idea.

Downtown Boulder will be planning some more smaller sessions for DBI businesses on social media, and here's my suggestion: Get a bigger room. I tried to get into one of the social media sessions at the World Affairs Conference, where a whole bunch of the "silver surfers" were grabbing all the seats, and people had to be turned away.

Hey, I've got to end this blog. While writing, a tweet came in showing downtown Boulder restaurant Bimbamboo is following me. I love their "small plates" menu ... think Asian tapas. Now I'm following them, too.

Xcel Energy looking for volunteers for Boulder's SmartGrid City

I just took the survey at Xcel Energy's SmartGrid site on the Web, where the Colorado utility is looking for 10,000 volunteers to help gather information on its efforts to make Boulder one of the first "energy smart" cities in the country.

One of the key questions on the survey is whether I would be willing to change out my present thermostat with a thermostat designed for the SmartGridCity  Home Energy Manager pilot study. I said yes.

The survey also asked if I would be willing to test new "in-home equipment" that gives more real-time information on my energy usuage. Yes again.

This past fall, we installed much more energy-efficient, double-paned windows in our home, and already we've seen lower utility bills from that. We also recently purchased new Energy Star-rated refrigerator and dish washer. 

I'm not sure if I'll be selected to participate in this SmartGrid volunteer program, but I hope I will. The program is being watched closely around the country, where other utilities are looking at incorporating similar programs.

Boulder's Intense Debate acquired; another success for TechStars

One of the Boulder TechStars companies we selected as a finalist for the IQ Innovations Awards this year was Intense Debate, which had developed some very nifty systems to create community among commenters on blogs, news sites, etc.

Intense Debate just announced it has been acquired by Automattic, a startup from the same people who brough us WordPress. I've met a few times with Intense Debate CEO Tom Keller, as we discussed some ways his company might move forward with traditional print media. With the Automattic deal, it will be interesting to see if Intense Debate now gets larger primarily through bloggers and other Web social media or if traditional print also is worked into the business model.

I've used Intense Debate on my blog, and although use has been somewhat limited due primarily to my small world of readers, I've always thought this Boulder startup had some great potential. Congrats to the Intense Debate team! Also happy to read that Intense Debate will still be available on Typepad, my blog home.

SmartHomes in Boulder, Longmont to serve people with disabilities

SmartHome to serve people with disabilities
Originally uploaded by Jerry W. Lewis

Mark Emery, left, executive director of Imagine!, gathered with Bob and Judy Charles, at the groundbreaking for the new Bob and Judy Charles SmartHome being built at 1806 Iris Ave., Boulder, Colo.

The Charles, with their donation of $100,000, helped launched a fund-raising drive to build two new SmartHomes, technology-assisted group homes for people with cognitive and physical disabilities.

Both homes also are being designed and built with the latest "green" energy-saving technologies. These will include solar and geothermal systems, energy efficient lighting and water conservation.

As a board member of the Imagine! Foundation, it's been our job to raise money helping to pay off the mortgages of several existing group homes. Now we have the opportunity to be part of this very exciting SmartHome project, which will not only benefit the people who will live in the homes, but be national example of how technology can be put to work to improve the lives of the home residents.

Imagine! now has its own Web site devoted to explaining the planning. technologies and progress of the SmartHomes, one of which is replacing an older group home here in Boulder and another that will be built at a Longmont site. An online donation form also is on the site.

This first SmartHome also has received a $250,000 grant from the city of Boulder and the construction team includes peh Architects, who donated the architectural plans; Deneuve as the lead contractor; JVA; Flatirons Inc.; and Seward Mechanical Systems.

Any donation, large or small, toward our fund-raising efforts will be recognized and will help in this very worthy cause. Personally, I would be willing to meet with anyone or any company interested in the SmartHome project or in Imagine!'s large task of serving people with disabilities.

Boulder's electric Optibike a fast winner in IQ Innovation Awards

Last night I finally got to really enjoy the Boulder County Business Report's 9th annual IQ Innovation Awards. Why? Well, for the past eight years I spent a good part of the summer leading up the event worrying, fretting and sweating out the event details, selecting winners, getting stories and videos completed, etc. as publisher and editor at the Report.

This year, I lent new Publisher Chris Wood a hand as a judge for the IQ Awards, and all I had to do after that was show up at the event and enjoy the evening. And it was fun!

After the winners were announced, I was poking around, tinkering with a new OptiBike, the Boulder-based winner in the Sports & Outdoor category. It's really about time for Optibike founder Jim Turner, who for 10 years has been trying to convince people that the idea of a electric bicycle actually makes sense. Of course, with rising gas prices and new awareness of a smaller carbon footprint, people have finally begun to listen.

As I poked around on the bike's controls, and flicked the on switch, much to my surprise it was ready to go. So off I went, sailing around CU Stadium Club event center on electric power. I have to tell you, these bikes are totally cool! Boulder Photographer Jonathan Castner caught this shot of me riding around the room.

The OptiBike's electric motor, with both 400 and 850 watt models, is hidden from view in the bike's aluminum frame, so the bike really looks like a souped-up mountain bike. It has a top speed of about 30 mph as you pedal, although I don't think I quite got there indoors at CU.

I was chatting with Jim's wife, who mentioned how fun it is to cruise up to some of Boulder's fast-riding bicylists, then really start pedaling as the electric motor kicks in. Zoooommmm....off you go around them all.

The bikes are a bit pricey, from $4,995 to $12,995, according to a story in the Boulder County Business Report, but imagine cruising up some steep hills using the bike's electric power.

I'm glad Optibike could capture an IQ Award this year, they are certainly a deserving small company, which is still manufacturing the bikes right here in Boulder.

What I learned at New Media Summit ... in more than 140 characters

About two years ago, I wrote about listening to the founder of this odd thing called Twitter speak to a blogger conference in Boulder. Founder Evan Williams admitted the site, where users text messages to each other of no more than 140 characters, was created "more or less on a whim."

I'll admit that at first I really didn't get it all. Yes, it seemed like a quick way to find out what friend was in what bar, but other than that, it didn't grab me at all.

This week, at a New Media Summit here in Boulder organized by Metzger Associates, I started to hear how companies and organizations are now using Twitter, from everything from customer service to firefighters telling displaced homeowners the location of wildfires.

One Colorado telecom company, EMBARQ, uses Twitter for customer service, reaching out proactively if a customer tweets about a problem they're having. So that's one new thing I learned -- there's a search engine for Twitter, called Summize. Turns out, the day after the New Media Summit, Twitter bought Summize for around $15 million, according to Silicon Valley Insider.

Twitter pretty much is creating its own vocabulary, with one site at Twittervision.com, showing where everyone is the world is "tweeting" from. Here's a fun site with a long list of new words from Tweeple, or Twitter members. Alltop.com is a site covering all of the "Twitterati" or top twitters. Attendees at the summit were invited to a Tweetup at The Cup coffeehouse in downtown Boulder later that night.

What else did I learn?

Here are a few sites and tidbits that I jotted down in my notebook that I still have to check out some myself:

* Wordtracker.com, a paid site but you can sign up for a free trial. Good for active Web marketers, helping them find: "What are people searching for on the Web?"

* Kwmap.net, a site described as "a keyword map for the while Internet." I have not really dug into this one, but it looks interesting.

* More and more companies, and it turns out, even countries, are creating a Facebook page. Did you know that Italy has a Facebook page? Talk about having a lot of "friends."

* I sat next to Lisa Everitt, a former Rocky Mountain News reporter now doing independent writing and PR. Just a few days earlier, I had connected with her on Linkedin. This is what is good about meetings like this, sometimes you gather good info from meeting people vs. listening to speakers. Lisa is writing a retail blog on BNET, a management resource with videos, podcasts and tools. 

* To no surprise, the numbers are getting bigger on what will be spent on mobile marketing, and an entire panel was spent on the topic at the Summit. Worldwide, $16 billion will be going toward reaching users of mobile devices by 2011. But that's another entire blog.

* A final panel at the Summit included Daisy Whitney, a contributing columnist for TelevisionWeek, who writes a lot on the convergence of TV onto the Web. Naturally, she has AppleTV and watches quite a few Web shows. She's also doing her own videocast, New Media Minute, a good source to check out. Her favorites right now? 

Internet SuperStar on Revision3

Popsiren, also on Revision3.

And she like ABC's The Circuit, watch a trailer on YouTube here.

At one point, there was discussion by Monica Maeckle, vice president for New Media for BusinessWire, about just how many links one should include in their blog. Linking is important to bloggers, and she said as a general rule, one link per 100 words is a minimum. 

I put in 15 links in the blog, inspired by what I heard at the Summit. They can be a bit of a pain while you're blogging away, but I'll leave you with this quote from the Summit, "You're nothing if you're not a link."

For more about the summit, visit Metzger's Media in the New Millenium blog. There, I just added another link.

New Media explored in two upcoming Front Range summits

Several small conferences exploring New Media, blogging and other Web 2.0 technology are taking place this summer along the Front Range, and I love the name of one I found out about today -- the Thin Air Summit. 

I guess that's a warning to anyone coming into Colorado, and with the Democratic National Convention here this summer, indeed there may be even less air to breath.

The Thin Air Summit is scheduled for Nov.7-9 at the Colorado Art Institute, and organizers presently are looking for presenters. Preliminary plans promote the meeting as part education, part film festival for Web videos and part "envisioning." Not sure if folks will be "envisioning whirled peas," but we'll see.

Experts predict huge growth in video advertising on the Internet, growing sevenfold from $500 million in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012, an annual growth rate of 49.4 percent. I spoke recently to the Boulder Press Club on the topic of if traditional print publishers will survive the onslaught of new Web technology, and my basic presumption is yes, they will, but a good majority of print media are way behind the eight ball in getting onboard with new social networking ideas for the Internet products. 

In my mind, video is probably one of the weaker areas for traditional print publishers. Although they're all creating blogs and using new ideas like reader-generated news, few are doing much in the Web video world. The New York Times is one strong exception to that. 

The Thin Air Summit says it will explore where social media is headed, asking how to get beyond the early adopters and choosing which good characteristics need to be preserved or even further promoted.

A summit right here in Boulder coming up fast is Metzger Associates third annual New Media Summit, sponsored by Business Wire. I'm planning on attending this meeting, which will be 2 to 7 p.m., Monday, July 14 at the St. Julien Hotel in downtown Boulder. The conference fee is $50, and you can register by e-mail to info@metzger.com by July 11. Monika Maeckle, vice president of New Media, Business Wire, will head a panel including speakers from AdWeek Magazine, TelevisionWeek, The Denver Post and Metzger.

Meetups and other local conferences like these are great venues to meet people, listen to their ideas and hopefully stir up some creative thoughts of your own. Maybe I will see you there.