We’re just getting back from our second stop on the BarCamp Tour: the 6th annual MinneBar held at the Best Buy headquarters in Minneapolis. MinneBar is the largest BarCamp in the country, with about 1,000 people attending this year’s event.
The conference itself was great; lots of interesting sessions, fantastically smart and engaged attendees, and the Best Buy headquarters blew me away with how eco-friendly and employee-focused it was by design. Fellow BarCamp Tour busser and Shopify‘s Tech Ambassador Joey DeVilla wrote up a great post about the day’s event over on his blog Global Nerdy, and Stephanie Bullis from Grasshopper posted on 5 Ways to Make Your BarCamp the Next Minnebar.
The thing that impressed me the most from a sponsor’s perspective, though, was how the event organizers Ben Edwards, Luke Francl and Adrienne Pierce really took the time to make us feel welcomed, included and appreciated.
BatchBlue is on the road again, this time heading to Atlanta to attend the Real Estate & Technology Conference & Expo (RETech South). Pamela will be speaking on a panel about The Small Business Web and using cloud services with MailChimp, Expensify and IfByPhone. I’ll be there, too, armed with lots of stickers, shirts and stories and talking to folks about how they’re using Batchbook to manage their real estate contacts. If there was ever a well-connected group of folks, it’s Realtors! And judging from photos of past conferences, they’re fun, too. We like that.
We can’t wait to meet some Realtors doing cool things with technology in the real estate industry. We’ve even re-vamped our Batchbook for Real Estate page and added a new case study so folks can see how one tech-savvy Realtor is using a variety of web-based services to run his real estate agency.
As always, we’re interested in meeting our friends and customers, so if you are going to be there please let us know! We may put together a hosted Drink-up Thursday night – follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/batchblue) for details as they shape up.
Hi guys – just a quick update to say thanks to all who came to the Big Party for Small Business! We had a lot of fun and hope the folks who came did, too. A special thanks to Guy Kawasaki and Gary Vaynerchuk who took time out of their insanely busy schedules to come by, do a little bowling, and be good sports about getting their pictures taken a million times. Thanks, too, to our Small Business Web sponsors American Express OPEN and to Laura Thomas from Dell for providing some great last minute additions to our giveaway bags in the form of their hot new ruby red laptops, the Vostro V130. It’s great to see how much support there is out there for small business owners!
Here are a few pictures from the party, as well as some other Texas highlights. We’re really looking forward to doing our panel tomorrow with our pals from Google, FreshBooks, Formstack and MailChimp presenting on being Friends with Business Benefits, How Integrations Sell Apps in Salon D at the Hilton. If you are in Austin, swing on by to say hello!
This blog post is coming to you live from Austin, where my need for coffee is seriously battling my good intentions of hitting the hotel gym before we start our busy day. Who shall emerge the victor?!
Christelle, TJ and I are arrived in Austin last night and are looking forward to our first day of events and activities. First, we’re pleased to be a part of AppSumo’s Lean Start-Up bundle for SXSW, which includes a huge array of useful software for folks looking to build a business on a shoestring. We’re all about keeping costs low for small business owners, so we think this deal is an amazing one and gives you access to some really cool apps. The bundle is launching today here at SXSW so be sure to check it out.
Any start-up who purhcases the SXSW bundle can enter their “Lean Start-Up Challenge“. The grand prize is a ton of cool software, mentoring and $100,000 cash – wow that will buy you a lot of Red Bulls and Diet Cokes!
This afternoon, we’re heading over to the Co-Working Unconference where we’ll be meeting with co-workers from all over the world, giving out BatchBlue t-shirts and stickers, spreading the word about our own Providence co-working space BatchHaüs and just hanging out with the cool folks who run their businesses from shared spaces, coffee shops, etc. These are our kind of people!
And for the second year, we’re once again throwing a “Big Party for Small Business”. This year, American Express OPEN has come on as an official sponsor of the Small Business Web. They’re promising some great special guests appearances in addition to the great food, drinks, bowling and karaoke. If you are at SXSW and would like an invitation, please let us know!
Last night Sean Ransom, our Chief of Tech, was given a “Top Technologist” award along with nine other Rhode Islanders who all are doing great things with technology. The inaugral awards were jointly given by the Tech Collective and GoLocalProv.com to recognize exceptional IT practitioners, who are often over-worked and under-recognized (sounds like a certain someone we know!)
In addition to picking up a massive trophy, Sean received an additional nod for “Overall Achievement”, receiving the most votes from the judges for his work at BatchBlue and in the tech community.
While we certainly agree that Sean is a brilliant technologist, we know what he most values is his BatchBlue colleagues and the customers he works so tirelessly to serve. As he said when he received the award, ”The technology aspect of my job is secondary to the being able to work with great people and support our great customers.”
