Last night, BatchBlue Onboarding Specialist Stephanie Sweeney and I made the drive up to Boston to attend the Rock Stars of Social CRM event, hosted by Radian6 and Chris Brogan. They had a lot of fun with the Rock Star theme, complete with colored stage lights, concert tees and even a full-blown Rock Band set-up for audience members to rock out with after the panel.
The panelists included were Frank Eliason (Comcast), Paul Greenberg (Author of CRM at the Speed of Light), Michael Thomas (National President, CRM Association), and our favorite CRM go-to guy, Brent Leary (Co-author of Barack 2.0 and Co-founder of CRM Essentials).
Because we consider BatchBook to be a social CRM (slide via Brent Leary), I was curious to hear what the folks at the cutting edge had to say. I was especially impressed with Frank Eliason’s inclusion on the panel, since he represents a company that is actually out there doing all this stuff. While I always appreciate the bird’s eye view from consultants and experts, I have to agree with Doug Haslam of Shift Communications‘ assertion that he’s getting a bit impatient with social media.
After the panel, Doug and I had a brief conversation where I wondered if, when email entered the picture ten years or so ago, there were endless conferences and seminars and articles written about how email (a communication tool in the same way that social media is a communication tool) was going to fundamentally change the business world.
Last month, I celebrated my two year anniversary with BatchBlue. I can’t believe it’s been two years already. I can’t believe it’s only been two years.
I also had a birthday right around that time, so the oh-so-thoughtful Sean figured that made it a perfect time to upgrade my laptop. So, I went from the older white MacBook to the shiny new aluminum one. While I love the new computer, it is with some hesitance I let the white one go. The thing has been essentially an extension of my body for the last couple of years. And let’s just say, it’s been well loved:
This was the first laptop I ever stickered up. Each sticker has a story and now is as good a time as any to share them.
Belle: Before we had our lovely Providence office, we were a completely virtual company. Living rooms became conference rooms. One day, I got up from sitting on the floor at Pam’s house. I had a Belle sticker stuck to my butt. Pam has three kids, so this isn’t very surprising. The laptop was already well-stickered at this point, so on it went.
BatchBook: Well, that’s us silly!
Twitter: When Saul Colt sent me an autographed FreshBooks sticker (see #8), he also tossed in an extra Twitter sticker. While there may not be many things I like more than Twitter, Saul Colt is one of them.
WordPress: I’m a big WordPress fan, and Matt Mullenweg gave this sticker to me at SXSW 2007 after I said something nice to him. I saved the sticker until I finally had something worthy to stick it to.
HubSpot: As the developer of a marketing website, I love HubSpot. So many things that were previously trial and error have become well oiled machines (SEO keyword selection, inbound link monitoring, etc.). HubSpot even interviewed Michelle and I for a case study (and released a portion of the interview for their inbound marketing blog). The fact that I just linked to them with their favorite SEO keyword shows you what I learned from HubSpot!)
SimpleBits: Similar to the WordPress sticker, I had this one for a while (since 2006) before applying it to something. SimpleBits is the design shop run by Dan Cederholm in Salem, MA. I got the sticker (and my trademark SimpleBits shirt that I always seem to be photographed in) at a Carson Systems workshop with Dan. Dan’sbooks and his blog heavily inspired the approach I take to design. And he’s a swell guy to boot.
Creative Commons: Michelle gave this one to me, and Creative Commons is a wonderful thing. Personally, I often pretend it’s a CC Chapman sticker.
FreshBooks: As mentioned in #3, this was given to me Saul Colt (that’s his autograph!). At the time, he was the Head of Magic for FreshBooks. Now he holds the same title for Zoocasa.com.
iStockPhoto: Like HubSpot, iStockPhoto just makes my life so much easier. Specifically, I’ve written before about how Kemie (an iStockPhoto contributor) is essentially an honorary member of the BatchBook design team. I got this sticker from the nice iStock team at SXSW in 2008.
bata: When Stephanie went to Japan, she had a little sticker set to help her learn the language. One of her favorite words in Japanese was bata (butter). It kind of became an inside joke and the sticker found it’s way on my laptop.
Firefox: Along with the WordPress sticker, I got this one at SXSW in 2007 and saved it. While I use Safari for browsing, Firefox simply can’t be beat as a development browser.
Kidoinfo:Kidoinfo is a Rhode Island-based site for parents run by our friend Anisa. Anisa has built an amazing resource for local parents. It’s so handy to quickly find something to do on a rainy day!
Barcamp Austin III: Michelle and I made it for the very end of Barcamp during SXSW in 2008. Barcamp is an “unconference” (meaning it is essentially a “user-generated” conference put on by the attendees themsevles). We missed out on the sessions, but we did get to hang out for the incredible live karaoke band Karaoke Apocalypse. That was the night my respect for Chris Brogan and Laura Fitton shot throught he roof.
DEMOfall07: The very last one is the very first sticker to grace the MacBook. When we launched our public beta at DEMOfall07 in San Diego, this laptop was the demo unit. It’s just a simple inkjet label with the company name, station number, and date & time we presented (which actually changed, so it’s not totally accurate). But it might be my favorite of all the stickers.
It’s been a while since we’ve done a round up of all the nice things people are saying about us and how they are using our product, so we thought we’d give you an update on what’s been going on in the Wonderful World of Press.
BatchBlue on TV
Since we last checked in, we’ve been on TV (well, Hubspot TV) talking about using social media tools for business. Adam and I touched on many of the topics we cover in our Social Media for Small Business Blue Paper and we enjoyed a nice sushi lunch with one of our favorite Hubspotters Rick Burnes afterward. Fun! And delicious!
All the Chrises in the house
Chris Penn, who runs the successful Financial Aid Podcast, wrote an excellent post about how job hunters can use BatchBook, which is very timely in light of the present economic climate. And social media wunderkind Chris Brogan proved he’s not just another pretty face by showing us how he uses BatchBook to help him beat Dunbar’s Number.
@sbbuzz is buzzing
As Pam wrote last week, we created @sbbuzz after receiving a plea from a small business owner to help her better understand what tech tools are out there and how your average small business owner should be using them. @sbbuzz is a weekly conversation taking place between techies and business owners on every Tuesday from 8pm-10pm EST addressing these very issues.
Inspired by Chris Brogan’s Rockstar badges and by the special request of some of our more ardent admirers, we’re pleased to announce BatchBadges! These are little badges you can post to your website or blog that will display not only your love for BatchBook, but also how smart and well-organized you are. Nothing says “I’m a savvy business professional” like a well-organized contact network!
Please feel free to choose your favorite from the ones below. And thanks so much for being a part of the BatchBlue community.
BatchBlue and BatchBook have been getting some great reviews and other exciting coverage over the past few weeks, so I thought I’d give you the highlights in case you missed any of it on our press page.
Earlier this month, our friend and a man with excellent hair Chris Brogan wrote up a product review of BatchBook on his blog (complete with screenshots and everything!) Here’s an excerpt:
I recommend BatchBook for the list sorting ability, for the tagging and slicing ability, for the Super Tags…and if you have no other form of client relationship management software, this would be a great lightweight tool.
Chris is what they call around these parts “wicked smaht”. We’re thrilled he’s using and liking BatchBook.
Another great guy and a long-time BatchBook user (since alpha, baby!) is Scott Blitstein, who writes over at Web Worker Daily. We love Web Worker Daily since we are all work-at-home Web workers ourselves. Scott wrote up his nice review highlighting our BatchBox email forwarding feature here.
