Did you accomplish (or stick to) any of your 2008 New Years resolutions?

Last year I set some goals for the business, and since the clock is running out on 2008 tonight, this is the perfect opportunity to check in and see how I did.

Goal #1: Make Clients Famous
I should probably define famous. This doesn’t mean an article in USA Today. We simply want our clients to be talked about in online social communities and conversations that are relevant to their business and brand. We were stoked to see blogger Ted Murphy post this write-up of how Panchero’s uses Twitter to engage with customers. We loved tracking the engagement and conversations about the digital treasure hunt we helped run for SmartyPig.
Goal status: Ongoing

Goal #2: Get Smarter Every Day
It’s simple: The more knowledge and insight we gather, the more value we can bring to our clients. Through listening the Twitter community and RSS feeds, my brain stays well nourished. Attending conferences like South by Southwest Interactive and BlogWorld Expo don’t hurt, either. I’ve also got a category set up in FriendFeed that aggregates all the social media activity and content generated by rockstars such as Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Robert Scoble and others. I can tell you that I’ve learned a ton in 2008, but the search for knowledge is never complete. I’m looking forward to learning more — both from incredibly smart people and on my own — in 2009.
Goal status: Ongoing

Goal #3: Attack New Ways of Making Money
We’re still trying to figure this one out at Lava Row. Typically we get paid for our consulting services, campaign implementation, educational workshops and speaking. On top of that, we’re looking into developing educational programming that we can sell as a digital product online.
Goal status: In development

Goal #4: Open a Headquarters
Done. In fact, we moved between three different offices in 2008, and we’re finally in a spot that we enjoy.
Goal status: Complete!

Goal #5: Hire Another Brain
The search was long and grueling, but in July it paid off when I hired Hillary Brown as a social media strategist. She couldn’t be a more perfect fit here at Lava Row.
Goal status: Complete!

That’s two goals accomplished, two ongoing, and one incomplete as of today. Not bad.

That brings me to our goal for 2009, which is really quite simple: CREATE. If we put out just 5% of the volume of content that individuals like Jeremiah Owyang create, we’d be a better company for it. One of the first things we’re going to tackle is our Weekly Video project, inspired by Jonathan Coulton’s “Thing-A-Week” experiment. Hillary will also begin contributing content to the blog in addition to my own stuff. We’ll continue to tear it up on Twitter. Look for all of this and more starting next week.

So, how’d you do on your 2008 resolutions, and what new ones are you making for 2009?

We all know that social networks are incredibly useful for connecting people separated by thousands of miles, but can they actually amplify — and improve — an existing community? For the answer, look no further than what Twitter has done for Des Moines, Iowa, in 2008. Below are five amazing examples.

Let’s make a couple of distinctions before I begin. At the end of the day, these case studies are about humans and the amazing things that happen when they mash their various talents, insights and minds together on a tight, local level. Some refer to this as hyperlocal. Twitter (the technology) was the accelerant that set everything ablaze. Like we tell all of our clients, social media is about people — not websites.

1.) Des Moines TweetUps

One year ago, Andy Brudtkuhl and I were chatting back and forth about the best ways to tap into Des Moines’ undercurrent creative class and somehow bring them all together. We knew these people were out there, hidden in the cracks of our community — maybe they were stuck in meaningless corporate jobs, working from windowless basements, or just out of view. At the time we couldn’t really articulate why, but we just knew it was important for Des Moines to get these minds together. It was also crucial for the mental health of Andy and myself — like many first-year entrepreneurs, we were both working from home at the time, and we needed some social interaction.

And so, in those bitter cold, early months of 2008, we started holding little grassroots events called TweetUps at various watering holes in Des Moines. These gatherings tended to self-organize, and they steadily grew in size from six people (at the first one) to an average of 30-40 people consistently. Over 90 tweeps were in attendance at the most recent ugly-sweater-themed TweetUp in December!

Andy Brudtkuhl, John Pemble and Doug Mitchell. Image courtesy of Impromptu Studio on Flickr.

Jennifer O’Connor and Lacy Brunnette.

But this isn’t really about numbers — the appeal of TweetUps seems to be the quality of the connections and friendships that are established, and the personal and professional opportunities born as a result. I think there are large numbers of people who are turned off by standard “professional networking” events: breakfasts and luncheons filled with lots of salespeople in starched white shirts, trying to stuff their rolodexes with more biz cards and phone numbers.

TweetUps are casual, laid-back, decentralized, and nine times out of 10, there is beer. (This is a big plus.) Nobody has an agenda other than meeting new friends, sharing what they’re passionate about, and learning from others.

The professional benefits of a tight Twitter community are great, but there are also personal impacts. A fellow Des Moines Twitter user mentioned something to me the other night that really stuck with me. He said that he was going on three months holed up in his house, emotionally recovering from a divorce, when he attended the first of many TweetUps. Because of the new network of friends he subsequently made, he gained back some self-confidence, purpose, drive, and happiness. That is significant. That is powerful. Find me a professional breakfast club that can claim something like this. You won’t be able to.

For me, social networks like Facebook are great for connecting me to friends from my previous life, but Twitter connects me with people I should have known my whole life.

2.) Amazing events: Des Moines BarCamp 2008, Highlight Midwest, Ignite Des Moines

As the local tech crowd on Twitter grew larger, more vocal, and better connected, plans for Des Moines’ second BarCamp were hatched. In fact, the event was promoted so well, some folks came all the way from Kansas City to attend. These new connections and conversations led to the formation of Highlight Midwest 2008, a one-of-a-kind unconference that celebrated entrepreneurs and startups from all over Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. “Flyover Country” now has a greater sense of purpose and a much louder voice.

Des Moines’s Twitter community also put together the city’s first Ignite event, which I’ve recapped here. Summary: Some pretty cool events happened due to some really smart people getting connected. One year ago, none of them knew each other, and that’s a shame.

3.) Chris Pirillo, Sarah Lacy and Gary Vaynerchuk visit Des Moines

Without the power of the Twitter community, these influential web superstars, authors, ass-kickers, bloggers (whatever you want to call them) may have never set foot in our city. How else would we show up on their radars? Okay, Chris Pirillo is from here and has family here, but local tweeps sure generated a ton of interest and buzz about his visits last spring. Local Twitter users and Vaynerchuk fans mobilized on Gary’s message boards and pleaded with him to bring the thunder to Des Moines on his book tour, and they were successful. Thunder was brought in great doses. Sarah chose Des Moines as one of the cities for her UGBT based largely on the amount of enthusiasm generated for her on Twitter.

Sarah Lacy hanging with the Lava Row crew in 2008. Image via sarahlacy on Flickr.

Visits from thought leaders like these can have profound ripple effects on a city: helping people get inspired to cut the corporate ball-and-chain, to push them to start thinking about starting their own business, to get affirmation on why they started their own business, to rethink old ways of doing things, etc. So, who should we bring to Des Moines in 2009? Charlene Li? Guy Kawasaki? Tara Hunt? Tim Ferris? Let’s start this conversation, now.

4.) Des Moines gets a co-working studio

Co-working (a national trend that involves a gathering of people in a shared space, working independently, but leveraging the synergy of working alongside like-minded individuals) has finally taken hold in Des Moines in the form of Impromptu Studio. The first conversations about co-working in Des Moines happened in late 2007 on Twitter, and over time more interest built up, more hands were raised, and then Daniel and Abbie Shipton took the discussion from “What if?” to “We’ll build it.”

If the Twitter glue wasn’t in place at the time, I doubt we would have seen a co-working studio emerge in Des Moines until 2-3 years from now. The movement is accelerating fast here in Iowa — there’s even a co-working studio (called CoLab) under way up north in Ames, a smaller college community.

5.) A brand hijack used for good

SmartyPig, a social savings site born here in Des Moines, has some damn loyal customers. When faced with a blatantly illegal copyright infringement issue, SmartyPig announced it to their Twitter followers. Fans of The Pig rushed to the company’s aid and mobilized / educated the local Twitter community on how to perform a brilliant SEO-powered brand hijack on the offending party. Within days, the issue was resolved, and SmartyPig ended up spending zero dollars in legal fees.

Hyper-connected smart people using their brains and talents for good = awesome.

Okay, it’s late at night, my eyes are tired, sentence structure is getting questionable, so it’s time to wrap up this long-winded post. My own experience with Twitter is that, personally, it has allowed me to meet lots of fantastic, bright, kind, talented people. Professionally, it has created an opportunity to be written about by national media (BusinessWeek), and it has also acted as a referral network and outreach post to attract new clients. Now that’s just one person (me). Imagine that times ten people, or times one hundred people, in a small-ish community such as Des Moines. Now you see the power that I’m talking about.

I honestly believe our local Twitter community is one of the best things to ever happen to our city. It’s helping us connect to one another more efficiently and effectively, it’s helping out on a scale bigger than its own borders, it’s forcing rapid innovation, and — best of all — it’s advancing Des Moines as a city with cultural relevance.

How has the Twitter network in Des Moines changed you, personally or professionally, in 2008? Please leave your thoughts and comments below.

2008 has been a great year for us — many thanks go out to our wonderful customers, supportive friends and family, and of course all of our good pals on Twitter!
I captured a few thoughts on the flipcam and posted them below.

Looking forward to a fantastic 2009!

After moving the Lava Row office twice in the last six months, we’re finally in a more permanent (and awesome) space. Sure, there is still some IKEA furniture that needs assembling, but we’re slowly settling into our new home. We are located in the Soho Lofts building in Des Moines’ East Village. Below is a compilation of a couple videos that we filmed while moving in.

I’m a couple of weeks late with this post, but here it is anyway. On November 6th, Des Moines had its very first Ignite event at Impromptu Studio, our local coworking space. What is Ignite, you ask? These events (which are becoming wildly popular across North America and Europe) are highly entertaining get-togethers that typically combine two things: an Ignite Contest and Ignite Talks. (Oh, and booze!)

The Ignite Contest is basically a battle of engineering skills and pure luck — think junior high science bowl meets Mythbusters. In Des Moines’ case, contest entrants built containers that would (ideally) protect an egg while being catapulted into a wall.

(Egg catapult in foreground.) Photo courtesy of ImpromptuStudio via Flickr. View the entire Ignite Des Moines photoset here.

Ignite Talks are based on one question: If you had five minutes to talk your city, what would you say? The only rule is that you get 15 seconds per PowerPoint slide (20 PPT slides each) to make your point. The slides go faster than you’d think, especially after a few frosty beverages. I’ve posted a few of the talks below, but you can enjoy the full line-up on the Ignite Des Moines blog.

Hyperlocal Localization by Andy Brudtkuhl:

20 Things Des Moines Needs Right Now! by yours truly:

10 Legal Issues That May Shut Down Your Website by Brett Trout:

If you haven’t had an Ignite event in your city yet, I highly recommend it. I’m so proud that Daniel and Abbie Shipton brought it to Des Moines and organized the event, and special thanks to Olde Main Brewery for supplying the free booze.

Des Moines, we can’t have enough of these events — keep ‘em coming!

Last Wednesday we took a jaunt down to Kansas City to attend Highlight Midwest, a day-long event that spotlighted all sorts of interesting tech-related projects, people and companies from the Triangle of Awesome: KC, Des Moines and Omaha.

The daytime event (held at RecordBar) was structured as an Unconference: three presentations being held simultaneously, only a few feet away from one another, with attendees listening and participating packed in shoulder-to-shoulder. Some might refer to this as complete chaos, but it’s really part of the charm of the Unconference format. Projector screens are literally sheets hung from the wall with duct tape, and at any given time, somebody might set their iPhone on the mixing board and knock out the entire sound system with an ear-splitting jolt of feedback. (I loved this.)

Above: Andy Brudtkuhl’s presentation at Highlight Midwest

My main takeaway from Highlight Midwest is that, in terms of Web and new media innovations, things are moving fast here in Flyover Country — very fast. Dozens of smart entrepreneurs are following their hearts and talents and creating amazing new products, despite everyone telling them they are crazy. I learned about StorEnvy, Swindlr and Social Radar for the first time (all born in Kansas City). I was also introduced to BetterOmaha.com — a news resource built by a couple of guys who decided they could build something better, and more intuitive, that any of Omaha’s traditional media outlets.

I enjoyed finally getting the chance to see some friends and colleagues from here in Des Moines speak, as well. Daniel Shipton talked about the co-working movement and his space, Impromptu Studio. Mike Templeton discussed his Microblink project, a portal for microblogging-related news and information. Andy Brudtkuhl spoke about “hyperlocal” content and communities. Mike Ferrari showed off his company, SmartyPig, a social savings site. @livecrunch talked SEO, blogging, and streamed most of the event live. Brett Trout gave a presentation on digital copyright and legal issues, although it was happening the same moment that Hillary and I were on stage, so I didn’t get to see all of it. Ironically, both Brett and I had PowerPoint slides up at the same time about social capital — AKA the “Whuffie” Factor.

Often we’re asked if Lava Row is the only company of its kind (social media strategy firm) in the Midwest. This event proved that we are certainly not alone — and that’s a good thing. We discovered two emerging groups (The Social Lites and Ideas & Angles) both based in Kansas City and comprised of extremely bright, talented people.

Below is a quick video that I captured at the event. My two interviewees are Jon and Janette Crawford of StorEnvy. (I swear I didn’t bribe Janette to mention Lava Row!)

For the evening event, we moved over to the Kauffman Convention Center for a panel discussion about the technographic and entrepreneurial DNA of Des Moines, KC and Omaha. The crowd was welcomed by video remarks from internet superstars Gary Vaynerchuk, Sarah Lacy and Chris Pirillo (video embeds are at the bottom of this post). I sat on the city panel along with fellow 515ers Jason Walsmith of The Nadas and Aaron Webb. Admittedly, the discussion was a bit dry at first, but it got more interesting once the crowd stared to participate. If we could do it again, I’d probably recommend throwing the microphone into the audience halfway in, instead of going for questions during the last five minutes.

Above: Residents of Kansas City, Des Moines and Omaha discuss movements within their cities. Photo via Swindlr on Flickr.

Highlight Midwest was an extraordinary success because it brought us all out of our geographic silos and connected us on a regional level, further expanding each individual’s network, reach, and voice. We can’t let this become a larger silo — we’ve got to stay loud and vocal and we’ve got to keep educating. I am already looking forward to next year’s event — rumor has it that it will be held in Des Moines!

Opening video remarks from Gary Vaynerchuk, Sarah Lacy and Chris Pirillo:

Related blog posts about Highlight Midwest:
Highlight Midwest 2008 by Christina Maki
What I Learned at Highlight Midwest #hm1 by Troy Rutter
Highlight Midwest: The Midwest is More Than Flyover States by @jeffisageek
Highlight Midwest Recap by Zachary Cobb
Highlight Midwest… A Swindlr recap by Swindlr
Highlight Midwest 2008 Rocked by Andy Brudtkuhl

Flickr photos from Highlight Midwest:
http://flickr.com/photos/highlightmidwest/sets/

On Wednesday, October 29th, the Lava Row crew (Hillary and myself) will be heading south to Kansas City to attend the very first Highlight Midwest.

The event, as described on the official website, is a gathering of “the region’s [Kansas City, Omaha, and Des Moines] finest entrepreneurs, technologists, social media experts, and new media success stories.”

HM was born from a shared sentiment among Midwest cities: There are hundreds of incredibly smart, passionate, creative and interesting people working on amazing things inside “Flyover Country,” but they remain hidden and ignored. It’s time to celebrate these individuals, companies and achievements.

There’s no rock star keynote speaker at Highlight Midwest — we’re all going to be on the same stage, as equals, learning from one another. The daytime events will be somewhat Barcamp-ish in style, relying on an attendee-generated schedule of presentations. The evening event will consist of community-centric panels, discussing each city’s cultural and technological “DNA,” as well as how the cities can work together to further the relevance of the Midwest.

At some point during the day Hillary and I will be presenting Cleared for Landing: Building a Social Media Business in Flyover Country. We’ll discuss the challenges and advantages of bootstrapping a company that teaches social media in little old Iowa. During the evening event, I’ll also be joining Aaron Webb on the Des Moines panel.

We are so excited to meet new friends and neighbors, and stoked to see fellow Des Moines entrepreneurial ass-kickers Andy Brudtkuhl (48Web), Daniel Shipton (Impromptu Studio) and Mike Templeton (Microblink, Dosovo) give their presentations. You may view the full list of presenters here.

And yes — because tech events aren’t anything without killer parties — there will be TweetUps! The Flying Saucer will be hosting one at 5:00 pm on the 28th, and another will take place at 810 Zone on Wednesday evening at 8:00 pm.

So, are you coming? We can’t wait to meet you at Highlight Midwest!

Here at Lava Row we’ve got an abundant supply of outdated business cards that we need to get rid of, and we’ve figured out an alternative to throwing them away.

Here’s the deal — Grab a card from Hillary or myself at tonight’s Des Moines TweetUp at The Underground. Then, your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to come up with a slogan / motto / tagline for Lava Row, write it on the card, and TwitPic it or upload it to Flickr for everyone to see. Be sure to tag it with #LavaRow. And take your time — we don’t expect inspiration to strike overnight.

We may extend the contest into future TweetUps until all the cards are gone, so if you can’t attend tonight’s event, don’t worry! The person who wins best slogan (determined by us) will have a couple of drinks bought for them at the following TweetUp.

Just to recap: Write a cool tagline for us and you could win booze! Sweet deal, right? We’ll see you tonight, and have fun!

This past weekend I attended the BlogWorld Expo 2008 in Las Vegas, and had a wonderful time re-connecting with old friends and making new ones.

As I attend more conferences more frequently, I’m finding that the panels aren’t as important to me as the personal connections I make in the hallways, parties, and various evening adventures. Simply put: It’s all about the people.

Another thing I love is that conferences force me to sharpen my social skills — I tend to get extremely rusty. If you’re lucky, you’ll have someone’s attention for a only minute (or two), so you’ve got to have razor-sharp focus and efficiency with what you say. I’ll never forget the escalator conversation I had with Maggie Fox back in March at SxSW, where she packed so much insight, advice and direction into 30 seconds, from which I will draw on for years to come.

The people: It was fantastic to re-connect with Sarah Lacy and bump into Gary Vaynerchuk again. I also met the gracious and wise Chris Brogan, Brian Solis (FutureWorks), Gwen Bell (prolific content creator, Kirtsy advocate and all-around charmer), Geoff Livingston (Head of Livingston Communications and someone I follow as a model of how to grow a social media business), Jason Falls (social media guru and fellow whiskey enthusiast), Lee LeFever (Co-Founder of CommonCraft), Scott Monty (head of social media at Ford) and Annie Lynsen (from the super-awesome non-profit KaBOOM!).

I could take or leave the city of Las Vegas itself, but I really loved this conference and I’m happy to see it growing beyond expectations. Congratulations to Rick Calvert for organizing a great event! I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to check it out in 2009.

Below are some photos of Sunday night’s roving tweetup / chaos spiral that moved locations at least five times. The top two photos are from Steve Hall’s Flickr photoset, and the bottom comes to us via Tessa.

Tweetup crowd at Rouge. Believe it or not, that isn’t daylight pouring through the windows, it’s just Vegas.

Here’s the hungry tweetup crew rumbling into a diner for some food. We rolled 40 deep that night.

Greg Swan (Twin Cities music blogger, social media strategist at Weber-Shandwick) and yours truly.

Earlier this week, many of us in the Des Moines Twitter community learned about a rip-off of epic proportions: Local web startup SmartyPig had its CSS layout, logo and name carbon-copied by a Romanian company called TrustyPig.

Here is SmartyPig’s website (a legitimate, FDIC-insured company), designed by the legendary HappyCog:

And here is TrustyPig’s blatant rip-off:

A representative from SmartyPig had this to say in their Twitter stream to all their followers:

SmartyPig: B aware of trustypig.com. We are in NO Way affiliated with this Romanian ad outfit. Not sure what they are up to. But they have good taste.

Mike Ferarri, one of SmartyPig’s founders, expressed to me that he didn’t think there was any possible legal recourse since TrustyPig is located in Romania. That’s when the Twitter community decided to take matters into their own hands. I called for the organization of an angry mob. Andy Brudtkuhl got more specific and demanded a brand hijack, an effort which he led and organized with other Twitter users and bloggers.

A brand hijack is basically an orchestrated way to use blogs, SEO and social networks like Twitter and FriendFeed to “hijack” a brand’s placement in search engine listings. Andy further describes it in his blog post from August 11:

A brand hijack is an attempt to infuse a message as related to a brand. Often times companies do this internally or accidentally. Sometimes it starts from an external source. Most of the times it is viral. Rarely it is organized. Our goal is to takeover search results and word of mouth for the TrustyPig brand in order to communicate our message to any of TrustyPig’s potential customers.

Below is a screenshot of how effective Andy’s efforts were:

So this is a perfect example of why every company, including yours, should work their asses off to have brand enthusiasts — loyal customers who will take time out of their own schedules to defend your image.

In the first year that they’ve been in business, SmartyPig has fostered a community of customer evangelists by accomplishing the following:

• Creating an innovative, killer product: An online piggy bank that helps users visualize and share their savings goals while allowing others to contribute.
• Providing amazing customer support.
• Use of a popular social network (Twitter) to engage in real, authentic conversations with their customers. This beats an advertisement any day.

Two days after the brand hijack project began, TrustyPig changed their web design and we declared victory:

Let’s sum this up. By working hard to foster a loyal customer base, SmartyPig ended up spending zero dollars in legal fees when faced with this trademark infringement issue. The Twitter Mob took care of it for them.

Screenshots courtesy of Troy Rutter and Andy Brudtkuhl.

Follow the SmartyPig vs. TrustyPig conversation:
TrustyPig steals SmartyPig website via NerdFlood.com
TrustyPig - A Webjacker Gets Pwned via BlawgIT.com
TrustyPig.com Rips Off SmartyPig.com design via TroyRutter.com
Brand Hijack - Blogging via Getanewbrowser.com
TrustyPig - Social Brand Hijack via Getanewbrowser.com
(More links to conversations can be found on del.icio.us.)