danliveshere.com » iamatrailblazersfan.com

My Video Interview on The Row Show

Dan — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:22:11 +0000

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. After watching the interview, things I learned, I talk a lot. I think I need to work on having a dialogue. 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. Episode 005: Dan Harbison of the Portland Trail Blazers from Jonathan Dusing on Vimeo.

Social Design Blog bokardo.com

Dan — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:15:33 +0000

I try to keep the number of RSS Feeds that I subscribe to a minimum. I have read about people like Robert Scoble that read some insane number of RSS Feeds a day, I just don’t have time. I find that if don’t read the RSS feed in over a month, I dump it. I look it almost like subscribing to someone’s email list. If I haven’t read their email in awhile, I should really unsubscribe… unless it is IMPOSSIBLE to unsubscribe (I’m looking in your direction eHarmony… subscribed for purely research purposes, I swear). A blog I have recently subscribed to their RSS feed and have been extremely happy with is the blog bokardo.com. Written by Joshua Porter/a>, author of Designing For the Social Web, the blog details examples of good and bad design throughout sites that are in the Social Web space (ie Web 2.0 sites). Below is an example of his review of the homepage of Freshbook’s homepage.

I still need to pick up his book which was recommended to me by David at Substance. This is a space that I continue to look at for inspiration. A lot of the social networks and social sites that have been built out have been built with development in mind, but the experience or UI is secondary. How will people use the cutting edge functionality that your company has invested in if your design and UI was the last thing that you looked at, and didn’t invest really any money or time in… that is a bridge that a lot of people like to cross after they have gone live with their site. I think this is a mistake. In this day in age, there are so many sites out there, first to market IS extremely important, but having your users understand how to use it is equally important. If you turn people off once they get there, you’ll have a hard time with them being a regular user. Then your competitive advantage is wasted because you will have to rehaul your design and relaunch. This approach is how we are looking at iamatrailblazersfan.com v2.0. We’re bringing in a lot of new features, so our UI and design needed to be really solid to support these features and to make it easy for people. The team at Substance has been amazing and I’m really excited to bring their designs to life over the summer. We will learn a lot once we get live, but if we just went with some generic skins, the Trail Blazers brand wouldn’t sing in the site and fans would become frustrated. We will of course need to change, evolve and learn once we go live, that is inevitable. BUT, because we took the extra time with the UI, I believe (and the focus groups we’ve held believe) that this will a design that will support the community.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: socialnetworks, iamatrailblazersfan.com, substance

Mobile Social Networking?

Dan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:54:54 +0000

Great post on TechCrunch today talking about the future of social networking (I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Other Day) Mike Arrington talks about a company that he has seen that could be diving into waters that Facebook and MySpace have yet to fully embrace, Mobile Social Networking. Yes, there are mobile version of both of these sites, but neither harness the power of your mobile phone. The mobile phone is an amazing device that continues to get crazy cooler as the months go by. Not once have I ever regretted waiting in line and dropping cash on my iphone. There are few things these days that I at least don’t double guess myself from purchasing later (ahem, Netflix… at times). Back to my point… mobile phones are no longer your phone, they are your microcomputer. You can do a run a ton of apps on your smartphone that eliminate having to use your laptop. So this is quickly becoming a replacement in someways, and in others an augmentation to people’s digital experience (web, video, photos email). If you have this microcomputer everywhere, why not have your web experience be in relation to where you are at. You see more and more mobile phones tying in GPS (Boost does this, iPhones Google Maps has a triangulation feature). Having contextual information of the people that you are having online relationships while you are interacting physically. Arrington’s thoughts:

Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

So picture being in arena at a Trail Blazers game and you fire up your iPhone. You are able to do a multitude of things on your phone, watch instant replays from different angles than what was on the big screen, get coupons for the merch store, and firing up your social network to see who in the arena is there that night. A map comes up and shows all your friends’ thumbnails and where they’re sitting in relation to you… so you can say “hey”! You could also see in general others at the game that you might not have met yet, or the guy who sits next to you that you’ve become friends with is on iamatrailblazersfan.com, but you never knew. The game operations people can see use this to create a better experience based on the psychographics of the people in the arena that night. A snapshot of tonight’s crowd might say that 85% of the people sitting there that night are fans of Jay-Z, so they’ll play more Jay-Z that night. All of this could be possible. It sounds like Arrington saw a start-up that is harnessing the iPhone SDK to make this happen. I’m really excited to see what happens. I really think this could be an awesome addition to existing social networks for Facebook, LinkedIN, MySpace, Flickr and also niche sites like our iamatrailblazersfan.com or MyColts.net. Having something like this only available for one phone is a problem. It would need to be cross carrier/cross model. Alas, that is a problem with our system in the states, standardization is lousy on mobile phones. That’s for another post.

The Season Is Underway

Dan — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:57:16 +0000

What a crazy last couple of months. We really have had no downtime here at work… 1) We took on the interactive marketing for the Rose Quarter. This is no small feat as there are a lot of events that go on at the Rose Quarter. 2) Upped our coverage of the team in the off-season (Jim Taylor, BlazersEvangelist, traveled to New York and Las Vegas to cover the draft and summer league) 3) Brought in a new email marketing tool, Eloqua. This tool has some really remarkable features including a good integration to CRM and automated work-flows for drip marketing campaigns. 4) Greg got hurt. This one was tough since there was so much buzz about all the guys coming back early and playing together. Greg doesn’t get out on the court, but we will cover his comeback (video features of his rebhab, checkins with the trainers etc) and will be able to involve him more than if he was playing. 5) Launched our new season campaign titled “Rise With Us”. Pretty cool in that it goes beyond the organization. We will be placing cameras in the hands of the players, fans, employees to show what it means to be a part of this team. We should capture some really exciting footage of locker room talks, fans getting ready for the games, players on the road. I’m excited to see some of the stories unfold. More about Rise With Us in a future blog post. 6) Make It Better. This is relaunch for our Community Outreach program. We are launching this today and is to show how the whole organization “Makes It Better”. I think it is really cool all the work that the employees here take part in on a weekly basis. From the weekly projects in the summer to the larger projects during the season. One of those large in-season events is coming up on Monday next week (Harvest Dinner). We will be feeding over 5,000 homeless people here at the Rose Garden. The players get involved and man the food line, I think this year I’ll be helping with haircuts. I doubt I’ll be giving haircuts, that duty ended in college… probably helping with crowd control. 7) Upcoming Greg Oden Bobblehead night (Friday, November 9) and 90 & 92 Heritage night with Drexler, Porter, Williams, Duckworth and Kersey (Tuesday, November 13). I don’t want to turn this into a promotion of all the events the Trail Blazers have coming up. More of, wow… there is a lot of work that has been done here at the organization… and still a lot more to come. Iamatrailblazersfan.com continues to grow (over 8,500 members) and will be working on getting more this season. This is going to be a focus of mine in the next couple of months on how we can improve involvement in the social network. I will save all my current thoughts about social networking in upcoming posts, but they include: Facebook (I’ve found really good value so far with FB), LinkedIn (Is this like collecting baseball cards?), Twitter (one of the reasons I haven’t blogged in awhile), blogs in general, and finally Google’s announcement to Open Social.

Review from Pat Coyle

Dan — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 04:42:00 +0000

Check out this great Sports Marketing Blog from Pat Coyle (Director of Database Marketing & E Commerce for the Indianapolis Colts), shares the observations, research and results that will inform the Colts digital strategies.

He recently reviewed IAmATrailBlazersFan.com. He has some great insight as he is going through a similar adventure as we did with the Trail Blazers. The Colts have been working on a social network for some time now. I’m eager to see some of the features they roll out with. The name is My Colts Network

One thing that seems that they will be focusing on Colts Fans around the world. I think that’s great to look outside of their normal geographic territory. One thing that the Colts have to their advantage is that their team has been performing well. That is something that you need to focus on… if you can’t sell any more tickets, but still need to bring in revenue, you can A) sell more sponsorships B) sell merchandise. That is where I think focusing on a world wide marketing (especially after winning the Super Bowl) is so key for them. They’ll sell out next season, but where can they go beyond that.

Mock-ups of mycolts.net

AMA Luncheon

Dan — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:48:00 +0000

Thanks so much to everyone that came to the American Marketing Association’s February luncheon today. I really enjoyed a lot of the questions that people asked and it always inspires me when you get a room full of people in the conversations you can have.

One of the questions had to do with culture. This is something that we continue to work on. Your company’s culture can A) Help or hinder productivity B) Help or hinder creativity C) Help dictate on how you are perceived (in other words, shape your brand). Some of the people we have had talk or I have seen speak recently include:
Patrick Lencioni, phenomenal speaker about building team and creating a healthy working environment.
Doug Mendenhall, who help build teamwork from the inside out.

I will be blogging often about this topic as I think this is one of the most important aspects of a business. For example, if you manufacture toilet plungers (and my apologizing for singling out manufacturers of toilet plungers) and your work environment is fun, engaging and rewarding. Your employees will rave these are the best “damn toilet plungers in the world”. Your turnover will be low and you will continue to be efficient and productive. If you have a crappy work environment and people are always looking for a way out… your business will fail due to turn-over and lack of passion.

For the presentation I did today, you can click here.

To get a sweetheart of a deal on tickets go to:
http:tickets.trailblazers.com/deals
promocode: danismyfriend
Or, click here

Once again, thank you Tara and the rest of the crew at the American Marketing Association ama.ppt

I Am A Trail Blazers Fan LAUNCHED!

Dan — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:34:00 +0000

That’s right… after many many months… 8 months to be exact, we have finally gone public with IAmATrailBlazersFan.com. This is the first social networking site for a single sports team.

The NHL launched NHL Connect in late October. It is one social network for the full league. One reason I don’t like it is it each team’s brand is watered down to be more generic. I applaud them though for the feature set they rolled out with and being the first.

Our social network was developed by the guys at Affinity Circles in Mountain View, California. They had done social networks for university alumni associations (I found out about them when they did the “Duck Pond” for University of Oregon). We will continue to partner with them to help build this network into something really special for the fans. By no means is the site a finished product. When people become complacent on the web, their site will fail. You must always be evolving your site to make it more usable and more relevant.

Feel free to give IAmATrailBlazersFan.com a spin, even if you’re not a Trail Blazers Fan. You will see the passion of the fans there, a pretty solid design (thanks to opus:creative and a unique website for the Portland Trail Blazers.