Category: Chicago

Chicago

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Suburban Chicago Silicon Prairie Social Internet and Technology Mixer Thursday

Tim Courtney sent me the following note late last week, I hope to see you there….

When: Thursday, September 20, 2007 from 6:30-10:00pm
Where: Mullen’s Bar & Grill 3080 Warrenville Rd., Lisle, IL 60532

An opportunity to connect in an informal setting with like-minded people in technology; whether you’re an upwardly mobile professional, a job seeker, an entrepreneur, or a VC. We welcome everyone, including IT workers, e-commerce companies, Internet and Web 2.0 startups, mobile and mobile marketing, and B2B services.

The event is free to attend, free drinks and food will be provided. RSVP is required at http://siliconprairiesocial.eventbrite.com.

For more information see www.siliconprairiesocial.com or call Tim Courtney at 630.983.6064 or tcourtney at xnet.com.

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New Chicago Tribune Story Writer For Chicago Blackhawks This Season

Many Chicago Blackhawks fans are understandably quite excited about #1 draft pick Patrick Kane. I am too.

I actually think I might be more excited that there is a new full time writer for the Chicago Tribune, Chris Kuc, assigned to the Chicago Blackhawks this season!  Someone needs to keep Tim Sassone at the Daily Herald honest. Chris seems to have a passion for the role that has been lacking for many years and in addition to his normal writing, he’s the author of the first Chicago Tribune Blog on the Chicago Blackhawks.

To both Patrick Kane and Chris Kuc, I wish you both a long and prosperous journey! I hope the Stanley Cup drought comes to an end sometime during your tenure!

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8 Random Things About Me

I was tagged by Bena Roberts to write 8 Random Things About Me from Paul Ruppert’s original meme. Let’s get to it!

– I love scientific wonders! In Arizona there are many that are well known, like the Grand Canyon or Sedona. But I prefer the unlimited prickly pear lemonade, cactus and scenic beauty of Tuscon, Arizona Highways or my personal overlooked favorite Sunset Crater National Monument! Whale watching in Bar Harbor, Maine is awesome. In Alberta, Drumheller and Lake Louise/Banff are just gorgeous to experience. The west coast surrounding Seattle, northern California and elsewhere is also great, I hope to experience Alaska someday, it’s one of the 14 states I’ve not yet visited.

impressionists I love art, most often that is Impressionist art! When I was younger this meant Claude Monet exclusively. Then I saw Camille Pissaro’s exhibition of “The Impressionist in the City”, a tight cluster of paintings all about the city all from the 1890’s. I was blown away by it! Since then I’ve learned about how he was a collaborator among his peers and frequently experimented and innovated a bit from the efforts of each style. He was poor almost all his life, but always pursued what he loved to do! Pissarro is highly inspirational to me and I try to draw from his philosophies in my start up activities. You should check out some of his print galleries here and here. Also, there is currently an exhibition in Milwaukee “Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape” until September 9th, 2007. The exhibition then moves onto to the Brooks Museum in Memphis.

– I’m a fan of the Chicago Bears, Chicago BlackHawks and Chicago Cubs. Yes, two out of three of those is kinda depressing sometimes. Well OK it’s downright sad! Bright spots in there include many memories of Walter Payton, Steve Larmer (you belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame!) and Ryne Sandberg. I miss Chicago Stadium (should have been an untouchable landmark)) but still have Wrigley Field.

– I’ve presently lived in three different North American metropolitan areas: Chicago, Cleveland and New York City. I love traveling and living in different cities as it opens your mind to different ways of thinking about life and approaching the world. I hope to one day live in other cities to gain even more perspectives perhaps even internationally!

– When I lived in New York City, I worked for BlackRock during it’s 80 to 800 person growth phase, this is why I covet being part of highly entrepreneurial environment, whether that is a start up or a highly innovative division of larger company. On BlackRock, I think most people still don’t fully understand how revolutionary this company was from a technical architecture, data redesign, customer service innovation and revenue diversification standpoint. I’ve often said I’d trade my MBA before I’d trade that amazing work experience and I truly mean it. I look forward to being a critical piece of a company like BlackRock again someday!

– I’m fascinated with history, both from a business, innovation and society perspective. There are many great lessons of the past that can be utilized in new situations to make wiser decisions. Peter Drucker is an idol of mine from an innovation and customer listening standpoint. The Chief Marketing Officer of the future will combine many new elements with traditional elements to create first in class experiences.

– I love meteorology! I almost studied full-time when I was in college. I think that weather events will play a critical role in some of the trigger point variables in the coming era of mobile search marketing and mobile advertising and it is one of the many key relevancy factors I’ve identified that can make a big difference. I’m quite excited by this convergence.

– I love to find the best grub around. Whether it’s fine dining like New York’s Union Square Cafe, pizza, ribs, a kick ass burger or things unique to a place like Italian Beef in Chicago or corned beef in Cleveland. You can be sure that if the food is top notch you can likely attract me there to chat!

I’ll tag:

Cshel

Jason Bartholme

Barry Schwartz – Cartoon Barry

Mike Maddaloni

Kristy Sammis

Not tagged? Feel free to join in anyway!

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Wanted Movie Filming Over In Chicago’s Wrigleyville

Everything is now packed up and gone from filming Wanted in my local area of Chicago, but it was mostly fun while it lasted.

They did shoot a scene with simulated gunfire and they did a car scene as the guy from the Ultimate Arm was here filming with them. Below are two pictures, one of the sets and the Ultimate Arm filming vehicle, the owner says the fastest he’s ever gone in reverse is 40MPH – quite an achievement when you consider the odd weight on his vehicle!!! Thanks for all the people who commented, emailed and stopped by, it was fun meeting all of you! As you can see I need a new camera, donations and review units highly encouraged!

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adtech Chicago: Redefining Search to Realize Its Full Potential

August 1, 2007

MODERATOR:
Jeffrey Pruitt, President, SEMPO, and Executive VP, Search, iCrossing

PANELISTS:
Kelly Graziadei, Senior Director, Agency Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing

James Colborn, Group Marketing Manager, adCenter Communications Group, Microsoft

Kevin Willer, Central Region Development Manager, Google

James Colbourn, Microsoft

Kelly Graziadei, Yahoo!

Think about the many different faces of search.

– The Researcher – look at Yahoo! Buzz to create an audience pyramid. Look at other content. Miller Beer Run. Showed a campaign with getting the beer – Yahoo! created the game and got excellent results

– The Reputation Manager – geo-targeting, ad testing, etc. Jet Blue built a campaign to respond to negative news.

– The Brand Manager – 79% introduced to new brands in search and 61% expect brand leaders to be consistently in the top of search results.

– The Great Integrator – TV, web, games, mobile all at the same time.

– The Advocate – Searchers are advocates that build brands through social media – significant in the pre and post purchase mode.

Kevin Willer, Google
– Information silos in the past. You almost needed a search engine for the search engines. Now all the silos are in one universal search.

Google Promotion – search for Bourne – showed how the site with Youtube

Search for PR. – You need to be ready to answer those searches

Search the New Performance Link – showed Motorola example and Presidential campaign data for Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney (He said the

We want to start thinking about search in different ways.

James Colbourn, Microsoft
Search Today: A Performance Tool
– To increase brand awareness
– To Sell Products
– To Generate Leads
– To Drive Traffic To Company Website

How do advertisers measure success?
– Traffic
– Conversions
– Impressions
– ROI

Brand, Awareness, Acquisition Tool and Lead Generator

Search as a research tool is a leading indicator for:
– A Business
– An Industry

Beyond Search
– Media Buying
– Budget Allocation
– PR Activity

The potential for search is higher than current usage…

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adtech Chicago: Search + Video + Contextual Targeting: Is the Holy Grail Upon Us?

July 31, 2007

Shashi Seth, Head of Monetization, YouTube.com

Rebecca Paoletti, Director, Video Strategy, Yahoo!

Patrick Moorhead, National Manager, R&D Advanced Marketing Solutions, Avenue A | Razorfish

Chris D’Alessandro, Group Director, Customer Insight, Organic, Inc.

Moderator: Curt Hecht, Executive VP, Chief Digital Officer, GM Planworks/Starcom Mediavest Group

Rebecca: Video search is not as important to core clients as media that is relevant to the brand. The off network piece is important as well. Reaching your users wherever they are, walking down the street, whatever…

Patrick: It’s almost the Holy Grail. We need to redefine contextual to mean what the user means at that moment.

Chris: If you are looking at an awareness company, it’s not the Holy Grail.

Curt: How does this scale? How are the agencies? Pre-rolls?

Rebecca: The trend to distribute us towards pre-roll. We are far away from dynamic video smart ads. What they search for. Dynamically delivered video is hard to deliver. Dynamic video is a long ways away.

Patrick: I disagree that we are far away from dynamically generated video.

Curt: Who is digging in on this?

Chris: Emerging and bleeding technology is getting there.

Curt: Are you talking about testing and learning?

Chris: Search is always part of everyone’s repertoire.

Rebecca: Shopping and merchandising makes a lot of sense. We have huge testing and learning going on right now.

Curt: Marketers will have to deal with versioning of creative.

Chris: we’ve had to segment sites. What kind of content do we deliver?

Patrick: We have to measure this stuff from an optimization of media dollars. The same investment can service a much broader audience. Campaign management tools will catch up at some point. Look at things holistically; it’s half about people management.

Shashi: Traditional click through and engagement numbers are not sufficient. We need to come up with standard metrics across the board.

Audience question on pre-rolls and potential attrition to smaller sites.

Shashi: When we announce our ad unit, we will take all those things into account.

Rebecca: We only use it for premium inventory. We balance the pre-roll with the length of the content. We’ve done a lot of testing in this area and found it had no adverse impact.

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adtech Chicago: Tactical Search Strategies: Local and Mobile Search

August 1, 2007 session…

MODERATOR:
Chris Bowler, VP, Media Director, Agency.com

PANELISTS:
Warren Kay, Director of Emerging Products, Yahoo! Search Marketing (not present)

Dominic Preuss, Product Manager, Local Advertising, Google

Janice Rohn, VP of Consumer Experience, Yellowpages.com

John du Pre Gauntt, Senior Analyst, eMarketer

The most important thing about this session is that half of the people from the previous session left – it shows that people don’t understand search and understand its’ importance in the eventual mobile domination. This session was presentations and much less dynamic.

Dominic –
Local and mobile are very much the same. Google Maps changes the way that people uses maps. Google Earth has some great partnerships. Google search on the wap browser. Gmail is an important part of our strategy. It is in a single repository. Discussed local business center. Make sure your information is up to date. Coupons for Maps. Regional targeting, country, state, city and radius. Google Local Business Ads. Google Mobile Ads – shorter messaging, link to mobile website, click to call enabled, carrier targeting, markup language targeting.

Janice Rohn – unfortunately had to leave the room for almost all of her talk…

John – Technical scale is not an issue. It’s about answers not links. It’s about all the collateral as well. The pain is very high. The carriers are not supporting a cookie like feature. Cross-carrier targeting it hard. Talked about a number of challenges facing the space and the fragmentation issues. For every $1 you spend on mobile spend $2 on training your staff. If you have the most wonderful mobile experience and a lousy customer experience, it does not matter! I couldn’t agree more.