We’re excitedly preparing to attend to Chicago-based events later this month. The first, Start-up Weekend, takes place June 
25-27 at the Illinois Technology Association. Here, aspiring entrepreneurs get together on Friday to come up with an idea, form teams to build it, and present at the end of the weekend. We love being around folks who are filled with ideas and just starting out (both Pamela and I are on the advisory board for Providence’s own Betaspring accelerator project) so I’m really looking forward to what the teams come up with.
We’re also hoping to sponsoring one attendee, so if you know some one in Chicago who wants to attend, let us know! Be warned, this person will receive our unconditional public support!
On June 26th, we’re also sponsoring Chicago’s first Freelance Camp. Freelance camp is an unconference environment where a bunch of people get together to learn from one another: in this case, people either working as freelancers or building products/services that support the freelance market.
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Tags: batchblue, chicago, Community, freelance camp, freshbooks, mailchimp, moo, small business web
Now that the weather’s finally getting nicer, more people heading outside to do their thing. A pleasant way to spend some time might be to grab your laptop and head outdoors, fire up the wi-fi and ice up a glass of coffeemilk to check out some recent BatchBlue press. Relaxing AND informative!
BatchBook & Google Apps Marketplace
Our big news of the month was that we were one of the 50 companies selected to launch in the new Google Apps Marketplace. As one of only two New England companies selected, we were excited to be a part of it and our local Providence Business News was there to cover our big moment.
Our friends at Small Business Trends also wrote a post on the Google Apps Marketplace launch, “Getting to Know the Google Apps Marketplace“, which gives a nice overview on how the services there can benefit SMB owners.
Small Business Web Directory
We launched the new version of the Small Business Web Directory at SXSW last month, which a quite a few folks wrote about. There was great write-up in Inc. magazine by Howard Greenstein, who was nice enough to attend our SXSBW party in spite of being sick.
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Tags: batchblue, chris brogan, Customer Service, google, google apps, google apps marketplace, google marketplace, ReadWriteWeb, small business trends, small business web, WebWorkerDaily
Recognizing our "Most Connected Customer" Brandon Dunlap at the SXSBW Happy Hour
In preparing for the launch of the new Small Business Web Directory and for the SXSBW (South by Small Business Web!) party that we co-sponsored at SXSW last week, we came across someone who we think just might be our “most connected” customer, Brandon Dunlap from Brightfly, Inc. Brandon uses several of the Small Business Web members applications to run his business.
We were delighted to bring Brandon to the party as our Special Guest of Honor and showered him with all sorts of hip and useful schwag from the thirteen sponsoring companies of the party.
Here’s Brandon’s story:
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Tags: batchbook, freshbooks, mailchimp, small business, small business web, SXSWi
Today, live from the action at SXSWi in Austin, we launched the new version of The Small Business Web. This site has grown from a single page put together on the fly at last year’s SXSW, to a full-blown Directory that includes categories, screen shots, pricing info, links to integration information and more.
Helping small businesses navigate and use technology has always been part of BatchBlue’s mission. It’s why we write our “Blue Papers“, it’s why we started the Twitter chat for small business owners #SBBUZZ and it’s the reason we’re now so excited about the new Directory. We think it will be very useful for folks looking for ways to grow and manage their businesses using some of the best tools out there.
Here’s a short video our friends at MailChimp put together to help explain what the Small Business Web is all about:
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Tags: batchblue, mailchimp, small business, small business web, SXSW, SXSWi
You may have noticed our big announcement yesterday that BatchBook is now listed in the Google Apps Marketplace. We’ve since gotten a number of people (including reporters, other SaaS companies and even a few customers) asking us simply, “Why did you join?” So I thought I would share my response with you all.
As I explained to Mike Pearson who wrote an article about the new Marketplace for the E-Commerce Times, it just felt like the right thing to do. Let me explain why.
Google understands the value of giving customers control of their own information. All of the Google Apps business products have a publicly available API. You may think this is only important to tech addicts and uber geeks. But THIS IS HUGE for every entrepreneur who cares about growing their business. You see, this is Google’s way of saying (and something BatchBook says as well), “the business information that you trust to our care is yours – do what you need to do with it to succeed.” Yes, Google Apps let you send e-mails, schedule events and create spreadsheets. But they’ve just increased 20 fold what else you can easily do with YOUR information including tracking deals, sending newsletters, generating invoices, scheduling appointments, managing your projects, sending surveys and so much more.
And they were able to do that because a few years ago they made the decision to make their API, the gateway to the data stored within the Google applications, available to anyone their customers chose to grant access to it. They did it in a smart way, in a secure way and honestly, in a pretty gusty way. They knew customers might take their data and run. They knew competitors would have a peek at their inner workings. But they focused on empowering their users to take control of their own data, whether through a geeky friend, a trusted reseller, or another SaaS product. And their users are now benefiting immensely.
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Tags: api, batchblue, batchbook, google apps marketplace, small business web
