This is an infographic from breakingcopy.com. Great site, check it out when you get a chance.

This is pretty accurate and does a good job in not showing all possible networks out there as these are now the major players in the game (maybe minus Tumblr). I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of these come off the table soon (LinkedIN, Foursquare G+) through acquisition or being shut down due to competition passing them by.

Google+ is still pretty new in the scheme of things. I’ve yet to find an audience on there that isn’t on twitter. For me, this infographic for me is partially true. The one workflow arrow that is lacking is the length of the message I’d like to convey. More or less than 140 chars? The ability to write more than 140 chars are Twitter’s strength and hold-up. Message length and threaded conversations (trying to see what someone else is responding to is difficult to follow). The audience on Twitter is right for digital and sports talk, but the medium is limiting to tell longer form opinions.

Facebook is another story as I have so many personal friends from High School and College that get tired of my work geek speak I find it counterproductive to post a lot of sports or digital notes on there. The audience (digital audience, not sports audience) is on Google+ and I’ve used it to be an outlet for longer form geek speak. It is no replacement for personal sharing like Facebook (nor do I need one yet), nor do I think it will become one.

NFC (Near Field Communications) is something out of science fiction. Walk up to a register, swipe your phone and credits are taken away from your bank account. Straight out of Brave New World, eh?

This has become a reality with Google Wallet, which debuted in September.

What you get with Google Wallet (or NFC in general) is eliminating one more thing to carry around in your pocket. Just swipe your card, punch your pin in, and you’re good. You can start to eliminate things in your life. That’s what technology should be for, make things simpler, easier… consolidate. This isn’t always the case (how many more social nets are there to join?) What does this mean for sports?

There has been a lot of focus on moving fans to electronic tickets. This saves money on printing costs, is greener without all that useless ticket stock that gets used per year and will combat fraud with fake tickets. The adoption of this however is the challenge (as most new technologies) and getting fans to transition to using e-tickets instead of their tide-and-true paper tickets. With Google Wallet you can have your “loyalty cards” on your account, so in theory, your Subway card could be on there (if Subway went electronic with their card), your Disney Park card could be on there, Southwest Airlines Frequent Flier Card and yes, your favorite sports team loyalty card. That loyalty card can hold your tickets. Want to go into the game, swipe your card. Want to forward your tickets, swipe your… wait, your friends don’t have a loyalty card. BUT they might have a Google Wallet account and with that, the potential to sign up for a Trail Blazers loyalty card.

In addition to having your tickets in a easily distributable mechanism, teams can provide additional benefits to both the fan and the organization on this loyalty card. This is something that we’ve been looking at doing for our Season Ticket Holders in Rip City United (our Season Ticket Holder loyalty program).

1. You can bonus concessions or merchandise to the fan on their loyalty card, or pass automatic $$ off at the register. This can now be just on their phone
2. As with most RFID/NFC devices, the club can be notified when people are entering the building. So if a high touch customer has walked through the gates, you can be alerted on where they have entered and if you have some proximity sensors, know where they are.
3. The ability to track purchases and habits of Season Ticket Holders in concession stands is extremely valuable for the organization that would be otherwise tough to capture. This might creep some people out, but knowing that Season Ticket Holders consume more of a certain beverage, or consume a specific candy at a certain time, is valuable information.  This information will help organizations make better decisions when planning menus and adding on additional items. There is also additional revenue potential by going after potential sponsors that would offer discounts or exclusive tastings for new products in market.

My 4 year old was able to unlock my iPhone at 1.5 years old. He has grown up with an iOS device in the house. It is crazy on how intuitive these touch devices are. As you can see in this YouTube clip, this 1 year old tries to get the old-school magazine to do things it “should” do when compared to the iPad. My two favorite moments are when she tries to get the page to stay down, and when she tries to pinch-zoom on a graphic in the magazine.

It goes without saying that this is the future of print media. What it means more to me, is how does this effect the way the future generation thinks and interacts with objects in every day life. Objects will start being viewed a multi-demenional, with the expectation they do more than face value. As if things become one large swiss army knife. This will definitely hold true to electronics, but what other things will be consolidated?

What we do here at the Trail Blazers, behind the scenes. We bring the community together. We are charged with coming up with ways for fans to connect to the team and fans with each other in authentic ways. This goes beyond in-arena, on broadcast, on the site. This is something that needs to be woven deeply into the core on who were are as a business and team.

If you’ve followed this rarely updated blog, or more likely my twitter feed (@darbison), you will know that this is the core to the initiatives that we have worked on for the past 5 years. From iamatrailblazersfan.com (v1, v2) to trailblazers.tv live shows, live chats during games and ongoing strategies through twitter (@pdxtrailblazers), Facebook and mobile. This will always be the first and foremost on our strategy, how does this premium content involve and engage. It is one thing to have a player with one of our hosts sit down and talk for an hour, it is another thing for the fans be the ones to ask all the questions.

This next season, I’m looking forward to pushing the envelope on what we do with fans during the games. A lot of people focus on the in-arena experience from a social perspective. I think that’s a short-sighted approach. Of course, these are your ticket holders and are the most important paying customer, however; they are not the most numerous. How we engage the audience that is watching at home on tv or following along in another country. That is where the masses are.

Our challenge is to answer this question. “How do you capture the excitement of being a fan in an arena with 20,000 other people, and bring it to someone who is by themselves on their couch?” As a fan, you want to feel like a part of something larger. Hence, why we have put so much into iamatrailblazersfan.com. Where iama, is a community that runs constantly and is there to fill-in the gaps between games, we need to figure a way to evolve the game-day experience for a digital fan.

In the past two years we’ve pushed our Game In Progress page as the homepage of trailblazers.com during the actual game (~7% of all total page views for our digital properties came from the Game in Progress Page). We have augmented this page as we have gotten feedback on fans like or don’t like. Adding in:

• Live scoring for the Trail Blazers centric mini-fantasy basketball game “Your Starting 5″
• Added live video of the pre game, half-time, post-game show
• Allowed “SuperFans” to be autopublished in the Game Chat
• Pulled in Facebook and Tweets that are tagged with specific game hashtags

Where I would like us build from here is the greater use of video, audio and simultaneous events. How do we as community and brand builders get the people at home to be chanting “DE-FENSE” like 20,000 of their fellow fans are doing in arena. We have some exciting features we are looking at rolling out for the game in progress page, so stay tuned.

So it’s been roughly a month since I’ve had the Apple iPad. Unlike the iPhone, I wasn’t anticipating this release. Well, that’s not true… when the rumors were swirling, I was extremely excited. When the announcement came, I was less excited. I, along with others, see this as a replacement for something. I was already mobile with my iPhone and this wasn’t going to be powerful enough to replace my MacBook Pro. So what was the tablet going to be used for?

I decided it would be wise for the Trail Blazers if I got one to understand the hype and see how our business could apply to the use of the iPad, for both engagement with fans and for our own internal business purposes. Once getting the device, my eyes were opened up.

A lot of people that haven’t used an iPad very much rightfully say “It’s just a big iPod touch”. The key word in there is BIG. The screen is amazing. The iPhone changed behavior, consuming/engaging with content and the full web, **ehem excuse me, the flashless web, wherever and whenever you wanted. It made some interactions possible that was difficult before or impossible (geo aware services, GPS, up to the second Twit Pics, mobile broadcasting). You could do some of these things, but you had to have a laptop strapped to your back at all times.

The iPad is about changing the presentation of the content. You are now able to view multiple pieces of content (video and written word) in a presentation that doesn’t make you multitask in each one of the apps. I don’t think we’ve seen too many apps that have pushed the presentation yet (I like what the NPR app does, Popular Science app) and I’ll do another post with the apps that I’ve found to be good and bad, but that is on the software developers to create those experiences. The hardware that is there (especially the real estate) to make completely new experiences available.

With being able to consume more content at once, the viewing of video is amazing. It is a completely different experience than what I’ve had before. We have a 46″ screen at home (great for communal viewing), I’ve been streaming shows to my laptop for a couple of years ago (anyone remember the Venice Project, aka Joost when it was in beta), and have watched many of episodes of The Wire and The Office on my iPhone. This experience is more intimate. I control where the screen is, what angle, how far to hold it from my face. I don’t have to have to concede watching Ugly Betty, there’s no keyboard to remind me I’m on a computer and the screen is a size where I’m not leaning in the whole time to block out the rest of my peripheral vision. The iPad makes this a unique experience that I can see a lot more solitary watching of movies/shows in the future. (Yeah, who knew we could find a way to NOT talk to each other more in the household when it comes to media). Side note, I would get a stand or something for the iPad on the lap if you are watching a lot of video on it as your arms might get tired after 3 hours.

Reading books have actually been surprisingly good. I have a Kindle and love it. Or loved it. It felt like I was reading a book with the E Ink technology, so I was skeptical about iPad’s backlit screen. That’s actually been one of the strengths. With a Kindle you need a light to read at night. I can dim the screen on the iPad way down at night so it doesn’t bother anyone else, but I can still read the screen. I haven’t had any sort of eye strain after reading 5 hours straight and after 15 minutes I forgot I was reading on a computer. Between Kindle and the Apple Books app, that’ll be for another review, but most of my books are on Kindle and they have some nice features in that app that I enjoy.

I also have made a concerted effort to use the iPad as a laptop replacement. I’m able to use a bluetooth keyboard seamlessly and great success, however, there isn’t a great way to navigate without touching the screen. I know that’s the point of the touch screen, but if you’re using a keyboard with it, it would be nice to have “Command+tab” to be able to cycle through things. (Side note about navigation, I’ve found myself about to touch my laptop screen as a way to navigation or close things out, it is just more natural). The rest of my experience using this as a laptop replacement is pretty good. Web Surfing has been solid. I haven’t run into too many sites that have been inaccessible due to flash. The speed is really good, however my iPad suffers from bad WiFi connectivity in places my laptop and iPhone don’t have issues.

One of the components that I bought for the iPad was the External VGA Video Connection Kit. Don’t buy it. Wait. This only works with apps that have unlocked this feature. You can’t mirror your iPad display to a larger monitor (you should be able to do this). I currently run my MacBook Pro with an external monitor when I’m at work and love the extra space. Why not allow that for the iPad? You can’t play iTunes movies on your Flat Screen TV (DRM issues), or any other VGA monitor that I could get my hands on. The only apps that work so far: YouTube, Keynote (for presentations) and Image Slide Shows. That’s it. If you know of others, put them in the comments… I would love to check them out because the Connection Kit is useless right now.

Word Processing is pretty good with Pages. I have yet to print something here at our office because navigating our network printers is a nightmare. I have cranked out several proposals using the blue tooth keyboard and haven’t missed MS Word at all on my MacBook Pro. Being able to export to Page Format, PDF or MS Word .doc has come in handy. And the new iwork.com has been easy to use, but there should be some Google Doc integration or plugin that you can export to. I know that this would be in direct competition, but would go a long way.

I also would like to see some sort of file structure that I can save and open all sorts of file types. Right now there are a couple of apps out there that does this, but the cost is somewhat expensive. In fact, that has been a gripe. There wasn’t a lot of QA that went into apps that were released for iPad when it first came out. TONS of bugs and several html coding apps just didn’t work and were $9.99 (CodeMonkey and HTML Edit to name two). There needs to be a trial period for these apps if their price is going to be over $4.99. You can plunk down $30 on apps and still not have something that works. You have to rely on user reviews on the App Store and sometimes those aren’t the most reliable… I know, people lie on the internet, crazy… Being an early adopter it is understandable to run into glitches. Totally get it. But if the Apple Store is going to really scrutinize the apps that go up, let’s make sure they work. And please, add a trial version for software.

The presentation of the hardware and what it can do is amazing. It will be up to the apps to determine how useful this will be now and in the future. In fact, my Facebook consumption has dropped off dramatically because there is no Facebook app. I have found myself engaging with Twitter more (TweetDeck looks great on iPad, freezes a ton though) because of so many more apps out there to try out. This just seems like a miss for Facebook. You have to remember “Oh yeah, I should check Facebook now”… and pull up Safari surf over to FB and login. As opposed to it being right there as an icon. The iPhone app ported over to iPad is a poor replacement. It doesn’t utilize the screen size that iPad brings.

This is what kickstarts me again in getting us at the Trail Blazers to do at least one Trail Blazers mobile app (with an iPad specific version). In the future, this is how people will engage with your brand. There will still be an online component… but an app has the ability to be mobile, and a consistent experience that reminds people to engage with you. Our e-commerece will be done through the app, our community building, content creation and consumption because it provides a better experience.

After a month I’ve learned for 90% of the populace, you can get an iPad and use that as your primary computer. You can surf, email, word process, blog, minor photo editing/sharing and other typical computer tasks. When I had to jump into coding and graphic creation I had to get on the MacBook Pro. I’m not the typical computer person though. I pound on my laptop pretty heavily, so if I was able to sparingly use my laptop, I think most will be really happy with the iPad. Check out apps, there are some amazing ones (BTW my EA Sports Madden Football for iPhone looks better for iPad than iPhone, I can’t wait for the next edition). Don’t get the connector kit, do get a bluetooth keyboard. The 1 millionth iPad was just sold (faster time period than the iPhone) so this is going to evolve. I think it will evolve quickly as more apps push the envelope on what you can do on it. I will do another post that includes what I think we can do with the iPad here at the Trail Blazers and would love to hear your input.

Artist: LL Cool J
Album: Radio
Release Date: 1985
Label: Def Jam

LL Cool J radio was the first record I owned. I was given it to me by an older friend of mine, Mike Linn when I was in the fourth grade. I didn’t know that much about LL (knew about his label mates Run DMC and the Beastie Boys) but this was his debut album, and I was in the 4th grade. It was hard to find out about New York Hip-Hop in Sacramento in the mid-80?s. Let alone for a 4th grader, but there I was, shiny new wax of “Radio”.

The track listing is amazing. Truly a work of art from producer Rick Rubin. Sometimes this album is overshadowed by Raising Hell and License to Ill. But this album was about one guy, one DJ and a lot of samples.

Rock the Bells

Episode 005: Dan Harbison of the Portland Trail Blazers from Jonathan Dusing on Vimeo.

I was able to do an interview with the guys at Row27 on their VCasted show: The Row Show. This is their 5th episode and I’m really impressed with not only their content (Interactive Sports Marketing Tips) but the production is killer. Nice After Effects (I think) transitions and graphics. Just like websites, it isn’t all about the design, it’s about the content that goes in the design… but the design helps augment the content. This can be said about their show.

We discuss Live Video Streaming, CoverItLive for live blogging during the playoffs, the relaunch of iamatrailblazersfan.com, passive engagement vs active engagement, how Toyota’s Hybrid Social Net (preview blog post) was an inspiration for a feature in the iama and more.

We used Skype and the audio got a little funky. Sometimes I looked like I was in a 70′s Kung Fu movie. I look tired. Man, that was right before Game 6 and we had been up consistently until 2am getting stuff done for the site.

Big props to Jason and Jonathan for showing the intiative and starting this. Thanks for reaching out. Let me know anytime you would like a guy that talks a lot, looks tired and will try to throw his voice. I know a guy.

This past weekend I did an interview with Arian Karimian for USA Today about Twitter. He created an article and posted it online, here’s a link. It was interesting to remember why we started using Twitter and seeing now where we’re at.

We started using Twitter in 2007 right after we got the #1 pick in the NBA Draft. Immediately I knew we would be getting a TON of more traffic to the site. I wanted to create an extremely robust experience for new fans that were curious about the team. The big question that people would be coming to ask, Will it be Oden or Durant. I went to the guys at Substance and asked, how fast can we create a microsite for this subject.

The guys at Substance rocked and created an amazing microsite that took about 14 days to create. One of the features was a Twitter Feed. I had heard about Twitter, but saw the application for us immediately when they framed it in the site. It totally makes sense as a way to pull back the curtain and let them know what is going on, especially during closed door events like draft workouts.

Back in 2007, there wasn’t @replies, only broadcasting. But as soon as those became functional bringing in conversation into the application made sense. We had a period where we didn’t use it as much as we do now, but I would say 50% of our Tweets now are @ replies.

Another feature that wasn’t around in 2k7 was Twitpics and the like. A picture tells 1,000 words, let alone 140 characters. If that was available during the draft, that would have gone a long way.

We plan on continuing Tweeting, during the playoffs we’re using it to keep the conversation going with fans and also promotion different pieces of engaging content on our site (like live game blogging, play-by-play modules, and post game live video stream). We’ve promoted the hashtag #uprise and you can see the Tweets from the people using it to showcase if they’re talking about Trail Blazers Playoffs 2009.

I see us continue to use Twitter and integrating it more into the design of trailblazers.com and especially the new version of our social network iamatrailblazersfan.com. Being able to push content out of iama, or bring Tweets in is a project for the summer to get ready for the 09-10 season. Seeing such a mainstream influx of Twitter users (1,382% year over year in February) we’ll need to incorporate the ease of use of that platform into iama. Even for my own sake, I don’t want to have to update two or three different sites. I want to update one, Twitter, and have that update iama and Facebook. Or vice versa, update Iama and have that update Twitter and Facebook.

I wonder about Twitter being such a mainstream phenomenon. I think that a lot of people are going to check it out, see their favorite celebrity Tweeting and leave about a couple of months. I’ve heard a lot of people that “don’t get it”. Not all people are content contributors. Even celebrities aren’t content contributors unless it is good content. Now you’ll be more engaged in the mundane content that they create (ate some cake for example) than a random person, but after awhile, that won’t become interesting. That’s why Shaq has been so successful. He’s an interesting person. He writes interesting content. Not all people can carry that… that’s why when people really really want our players to Tweet. If they can’t do it consistently or make it interesting, I don’t see why they would want to on either side.

Here’s an old post from June 2007 about using Twitter.

I’m sure some of you have watched this. It has been floating around for awhile, but I was reminded of it when I was on Pat Coyle’s blog today. You forget how many times this Fat Boy Slim song is used for things like this, but I still actually like it.

I’ve never been into sloppy Tag Clouds. They always seem to be organized, but really not usable. They might look cool, but I never use them to actually navigate someones site. Really, that’s too bad as tagging is a great way to actually help your readers know what you’re talking about.

Thanks to Pat Coyle for the heads up about this link. It is a site that creates a cloud or a visual representation based on indexing your site. It isn’t about tagging or having you organize anything. It is just a visual representation on what you talk about. That is what tag clouds are really. A display on what you talk about, not really a mode of navigation. I like this better as it is indexing and pulling out the topics you talk about on a regular basis, not just 10 tags or so that you use a lot. Go ahead, make your own Wordle. It’s a pretty cool Java app. If you’re on a Mac, use Safari instead of FireFox or Flock. Just a heads up. Leave me a comment with a link to your own Wordle, I would love to see them.