Georgia Tech MBA

Ignite Atlanta

A quick recap of the second Ignite Atlanta:

To get the negatives out of the way - we didn't get to see the Belugas and I didn't win the iPad.

Great job to Patrick Nickles and team for organizing, getting an awesome venue and a diverse speaker line up. The highlights (IMHO) include Matt Smith with his passionate and crazy Hackintoshing presentation (I kind of want one), a happy septic tank success story and a reminder (as if one was needed) that jets - especially F-35's with $1 million prototype helmets for the pilots - are really cool.

I especially enjoyed Karen McKay's urban farming presentation. She uses clay pebbles and felt to grow a sweet salad in her apartment. Sounds like a good post-graduation project for me. Dr. J did a great job presenting the food matchmaking service of Usable Health. We are working with Usable Health at GTRI and they are planning a beta release in the next week or two among the Georgia Tech community.

I would also give a "Like" button to Buzzy for needle pain relief, the super powers of babies (Did you know that if your baby needs to be warmer or cooler, mom's body temperature will rise or fall as needed when skin-to-skin with the baby?!), and MobileZen for text message sharing of contact info.

I think it would be fun for me and Phil to tag-team present on something clever...and it certainly won't be a pitch for something! Any ideas?

Oh - one other thing I wanted to add - I'm surprised that no one gave a presentation about bacon. It's SO trendy right now! Maybe that's what we can talk about next time...

My Video Game Week

The week from November 9 – 15 was a video game week. Woohoo! The Georgia Tech MBA marketing club decided last week to create a video game for a competition entry. I applied for an amazing associate brand manager position at Activision. And then - I worked on a team that built and launched a Facebook game in a weekend! That’s a pretty great week if you ask me. Now that I’m all hyped up about it, I want to work with the resident video game expert in my class to create a Guitar Hero video of me and take it viral! (It’s probably not cool to talk about taking something viral, is it? Just do it.) This sort of viral, guerrilla marketing reminds me a little bit of that girl who made www.twittershouldhireme.com website. Oh – anyone want to help make the video?

We’re still working on the GT MBA marketing club game. There’s not a lot of time to get it done, but we’ve got a great team and a killer offering. I’ll keep you updated on the progress with that. Some key messaging for Georgia Tech MBA marketers has already come out of the project and I can use that to really push the idea to come to GT for fantastic marketing talent.

Now, the Facebook app – it’s actually up and running. Go – sign up today!! (I’m training my team while writing this.) About 100 people got together Friday night and pitched 60 ideas for new startups @ ASW3. Teams were formed and started working on about 15 different ideas. On Sunday night, 12 teams presented and about 8 groups had alpha or even beta products to demo! How cool is that?!? Todaysbrackets.com, gomodo.me, Voicify, xpensetrack.com, FanTrendz, FlexSeats, Moody Tweets, Fake Whale, EventTank. Really great stuff. I worked on a team that was full of awesome talent, cooperative attitudes and a strong work ethic. The game looks sharp and is fun to play even at its basic level. I’m pretty sure the team will keep working on it. The marketing group (including me!) created Twitter, Facebook, a blog, a name, a URL…Touchdown Nation! We tweeted about it, invited friends, posted videos, showed screen shots and built excitement for the release. And it worked! Over 80 users signed up yesterday and the number continues to grow. It was a great experience about feature creep, statistics, Ruby on Rails, Facebook games, revenue models, target markets, key word advertising. Oh, there was also great food (thanks John!) and entertainment (thanks Lance!). Pretty great weekend.

Back to training my team.

And making that Guitar Hero video.

Who Am I Really?

This Saturday I will be immersing myself in the social media/connection culture at SoCon 2009. I think I'm going to have trouble narrowing down my selection of break-out topics, but this is what I'm initially interested in:

• Using social networking for social change
• Social media for B2B
• Return on Investment for social media
• Build your own personal brand

It's the last one that I'm thinking about tonight. A personal brand. With regards to job searching, I have heard this multiple times and, as a marketer, you'd think that I would have a brand already established. And, wow. A Google search on social media personal brand return a lot of hits.

This one is interesting: Success here is simple. I followed the Disney model. I built a content franchise and leveraged it across every community and channel I participate in, including traditional ones like PR and speaking. Anyone can emulate this approach - including brands that want to maximize their use of social media. (from a blog by Steve Rubel) I like this because it is what I would do with my marketing campaigns in the business. I would decide on a theme and a target message and then everything from graphics to emails, invites, signage, and promotional items would match the theme and messaging. It looked awesome and was very effective. Jonathan Gessinger at Twin Engine Creative helped me with a bunch of themes. The guys at TEC do terrific graphic work if you need some help. Maybe I should hit them up for a personal brand.

So in between class, work, group projects, the VCIC competition and trying to find an internship for the summer, I'll be working on my personal brand. Think I'll start with that list I made a while ago of all the things I like and things I like doing. Any ideas or suggestions? Any really good personal brands out there you can recommend?