This year, three (THREE!) members of the BatchCrew gave presentations. They were:
“Wonderful World of Word of Mouth Marketing” by Michelle Riggen-Ransom
Michelle’s talk explored how to create low-cost buzz around a product or business. She spoke about identifying ways to connect with customers, how to get them talking about your business, and providing tools to help your customers to share the love. She also gave real-world examples of word of mouth campaigns both good and bad.
Matt’s presentation, “The Tao of GTD,” combined productivity tips for knowledge workers with martial arts philosophies from the Tao of Jeet Kune Do. “I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone more accomplished than Bruce Lee,” said Matt, “so it seemed only natural that some of the teachings from his book would apply well in other creative fields.”
The talk touched on several strategies for acknowledging your own weaknesses, removing obstacles from your workflow, and keeping yourself motivated. Matt also talked about a few tools he uses to manage his information and gave a quick overview of Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero approach to email. But ultimately it’s not about the tools. “It’s really easy to waste time fiddling with tools, if you forget that the whole point is getting to your real work more efficiently.”
Or as Bruce would say, “It is like a finger pointing toward the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”
“Turning Your Design into a WordPress Theme” by Adam Darowski
In this presentation, I deconstructed a WordPress theme I recently built (the Tabigail theme) and explained what each file does. Then, I took an all-new XHTML/CSS one-page design and combined it with the Tabigail theme code to make an all new original theme. I only had 15 minutes for the actual “building” part, so I didn’t finish the WHOLE theme, but I did get the home page and archives up and running. The theme will be launched in the form of a redesign of my personal site soon.
We love NewBCamp for a number of reasons. It’s local. It’s small, It’s intimate. But there is also an incredible amount and variety of information exchanged.
The Engineers of Tomorrow display their programming trophy
When Pam and I had our first meetings way back in the winter of 2006, even before we had fully fleshed out what our first product was going to be, we talked about what causes we were going to support as a company and in what ways. As a team, we decided that the issues closest to our hearts were promoting technology and education, improving the lives of children, and supporting fellow entrepreneurs.
We were thrilled to learn of kiva.org, which allowed us to lend small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in other countries. We became lenders long before we started charging for our own product. We now get regular updates on our two entrepreneurs, who have since paid back 83% and 50% of their loans respectively! Once the debt is paid off, we can lend it to some other folks. How cool is that?
Over the past year, various members of the BatchBlue team have presented at Johnson & Wales University, the University of Rhode Island, and Rhode Island’s “We Mean Business“, which is an event promote and support local business. In February, we helped sponsor NewBCamp08 in Providence, which was an (un)conference held at University of Rhode Island on emerging technologies, and Adam gave a well-received presentation on getting started with web standards.
This past spring, BatchBlue became a proud sponsor of the Rhode Island Engineers of Tomorrow LEGO Robotics team, who went on to win 3rd place in the programming category of the 2008 First LEGO League World Festival, held in Atlanta, GA.
Because we are such a small company and still getting started, what we do is not a lot. We do what we can mostly by volunteering our time and services. But last week, just before we took the stage at our Providence Geeks presentation, a woman and a young man came up to introduce themselves. It was Mary Johnson and her son from the Engineers of Tomorrow, who had specifically come down that evening to thank us for our support.
Meeting Mary and her charming, delightful son reinforced the idea that even giving a little of your time or money can go a long way in the lives of those you are helping. Congratulations to the Engineers of Tomorrow: we look forward to seeing what your tomorrows will bring!
What I loved most about the NewBCamp conference, Providence’s first Podcampish unconference, was the raw desire to learn. From the newbies to the seasoned vets, there was a constant murmur of eager conversations. Perhaps it was because we were hanging out at a school cafeteria – it was held at the Johnson and Wales University downtown campus. Being an exceptional culinary school, they apparently have a dining hall every other room. And that is what it felt like for me. Those lingering conversations with friends and professors in the undergraduate days when you first discovered learning is fun.
And this learning was fun. It was an unstructured, unpretentious, go-at-your-own-pace taste testing of an impressive array of technology topics – from social media to web design to wireless hardware to virtual worlds. I’m in the biz and I still had a hard time deciding which sessions to attend. Of course, I had to check out fellow Bluer Adam Darowski’s talk on web standards – his passion for the subject evident as always. I learned I need to quit being lazy and using the “face” tag. Luckily I don’t write much html anymore. I also caught Brian Jepson’s session on mobile lifecasting. I learned how to blog from the beach. Good thing I live in the ocean state. Unfortunately I missed some of the afternoon, but many of the presentations are linked from the website.
And the real highlight of the day was my parting gift. Conference make-it-happener Sara Streeter presented me with a delightfully festive bag with a very crafty, very Rhodie business card holder with 4 custom designed NewBCamp cards titling me the “Vice President of Cheerfulness”. I’m interpreting this to mean I was an early-encourager of a concept she and the rest of the hard working NewBCamp folks hyper-achieved tenfold. Or that I just smile a lot. Regardless, I’m now making it my personal mission to find 4 other newbie ideas, people, functions, concepts, or cafeterias to encourage and support and give a “cheerful” card to. And hopefully there is another NewBCamp soon so Sara will give me some more cards.
This coming Saturday (wait, I guess that’d be tomorrow!) I’ll be presenting at NewBCamp at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. This is the first NewBCamp and this will be my first time giving a presentation in front of people I don’t know (unless you count my clicky-clicky as Pam presented at DEMOfall07).
NewBCamp is an unconference, meaning it is an event organized and run by the people. Sara Streeter (a Johnson & Wales student—who I happened to go to high school with) has been organizing the event. She’s gone from “zero” to “event” in no time, like she’s done this many times before. She’s secured sponsors. She’s gotten eighty or so folks to register in advance. There’s even an afterparty booked with live music after the event (as AS220 in Providence).
Unconferences typically don’t have a pre-determined speaker lineup, but with this being a first-time event I think Sara did the right thing by making sure a good number of the slots were claimed. There’s still plenty of room to be flexible, but there’s enough planned so the “first time event jitters” can be eased a bit.
I’m speaking about Web Standards. Since this is NewBCamp, it is for newbies. So, I’m going to try to keep it as uncomplicated as possible. The main sections of my presentation are:
What are Web Standards?
Why Web Standards?
Getting even more semantic: Microformats
URL as UI
Resources (web sites, books, plug-ins)
All nervousness aside, I’m really looking forward to it. If you’re in the Providence area, go ahead and register and come on down for the day. It is Saturday, February 23, from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. And yes… that information is marked up in a microformat.
While the “work from home” stereotype of stubble-bearded zombies working in pajamas twenty hours a day doesn’t really apply to us (check that, most of it doesn’t), we at BatchBlue (a virtual company) still have to work extra hard to get the human interaction that most take for granted.
Every month, BatchBlue has some representation at the Providence Geek Dinner meetups. I’ve also recently started going to Web Development Lunch Hour meetups in Providence. And just last week, Michelle & I made the 182-mile round trip to a North Shore Web Geek Meetup in Newburyport, MA.
Why meetups? Let me give you a few reasons.
It’s good for business.Allofourearliestpress came directly from folks we hang out with at Providence Geeks. Don’t be a nag. But form relationships with people in the community. People will come, Ray.
See what else is going on. This, of course, can be huge for those of us who work in our kitchens. But remember that meetups aren’t just for those who work from home. Simply talking to other folks in your industry (or those just outside of it) is a great way to get your own creative juices flowing.
Get involved. At Geeks, I ran into Sara Streeter, a high school friend (and Johnson & Wales University student). She is organizing an unconference called NewBCamp at a J&W. BatchBlue is getting involved by helping support the event and by presenting.
Make friends. Isn’t this the most important? Home-based web workers don’t get to have water cooler chatter. You need to get this social interaction elsewhere. Meetups are perfect for this.
I didn’t attend a single meetup while I worked in Boston. The one Boston meetup that Michelle and I attended was what you may expect—huge, loud, and not conducive to having real conversations with people. That’s what I love about places like Providence and now Newburyport. They are the perfect size to have manageable communities.
So, step away from the computer. Meetups might seem like they are frivolous and lack ROI, but when your company doesn’t have a neon sign outside the building (or a building, for that matter), your employees need to be that neon sign.
To find meetups in your area, a good place to start is Yahoo!’s Upcoming.
