danliveshere.com

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.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="73" caption="danstwitter badge"][/caption]

This past weekend I did an interview via email 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…

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…

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

…

Ok, there are so many of these services out there… Qik, Justin.tv, YouTUBE is rumored to be bringing live streaming… so I’m testing out Yahoo Live to see how I like it for the Trail Blazers. Getting behind the scenes footage is always a challenged, but sometimes it is the editing that is the largest hurdle. Finding time to edit the 4 hours of video that is shot into a 1-2 mintue short. Streaming live from certain events might be the way to go. So, I’ve created a really boring live stream of me working. Yeah, boring, but I’m going to see how it works from the backend.

Ok, let me start off by saying, I played highschool basketball. By no means was I the best player on the team… however, I was fortunate to start most of my career. That was waaaaaay too long ago. And as time has eaten away at my vertical leap, it has also eaten into the amount of time I can set aside to playing ball.

College was the first time in 10 years when I hadn’t been on an “organized” basketball team. I played intramurals and loved doing so, but that is a poor substitution for having strategy, plays, a game plan for your own players strengths, a game plan for the opponents strengths. Practice. These are all things that go out the door during intramurals. Now, some intramural geek will probably comment saying that they were hard-core and had some crazy 1-2-2 press they ran when they made a basket. (These are the same nerds that tape a playbook to their arm for football intramurals). Meeting people, joining organizations, school work, staying up late… all these things got in the way of playing basketball.

Once I graduated college I went into the work-force and had to work two jobs to make sure I could pay rent. I didn’t live in some pimped out palace, my jobs just didn’t pay. So between two jobs and staying out late, and of course, meeting people, basketball suffered. Now I would play an occassional pick-up game or in a rec league, but once again, it pales in comparison to actually playing on an organized team.

That brings me to today. I have an awesome family which I want to spend as much free time with as possible… Jack, my 4 month…

Sorry about the complete slacking in blog posts. Wow. I’m one of those guys who didn’t keep their blog up to date. Here are the excuses… please indulge me.

1. Had a baby (I’ve been concentrated on his blog | Jack Lives Here)
2. Brandon Roy won Rookie of the Year. Yes, Brandon did all the work on the court, and off for that matter, but we had to get the word out.
3. Transferred blog over to Word Press. Glad I did, but like anything, it is a process…
4. I went to Hawaii with the family (in-laws included)… more on that trip in a latter post.
5. We win the NBA Draft Lottery. (Holy Crap we weren’t expecting this!) Talk about excitement. This made the off-season that much more crazy.
6. 
   Launched new micro-site for Oden or Durant debate. Courtesy of a lot of “kick-assery” from the guys at Substance, we were able to concept, design, develop and launch this puppy in 3 weeks. No joke.
7. iPhone is being launched soon. This has sucked a lot of time away from my casual internet browsing. June 29th!
8. I discovered Nip Tuck on DVD. A good time-suck.
9. Tried to watch everything else on TV… bad time suck.

I am now making more of a commitment to blog. Seriously. In fact will work on one later today.

A couple of months ago we brainstormed to come up with an idea to help promote Brandon Roy for the Rookie of the Year in the NBA. We wanted to send a fun press kit to the voting members of the media. We tossed around several ideas, but one stood out, using a local Portland based company product that embodied Brandon Roy’s game. The idea was to send a Brandon Roy Leatherman tool to the members of the media. Leatherman Tools (founded in 1983) are known for their versatility. Brandon’s game is very similar. He isn’t a one dimensional player. Leading the rookie class in points per game 16.3, assists per game 4.0, and 5th in rebounds per game 4.4, Brandon consistently has filled the boxscore with stats that usually have a number in each of the columns (sometimes 0’s for turnovers).

We’ve been getting some good press about the tool (check out this MP3 from Jim Rome, courtesy of 1080 The FAN) and momentum for Brandon’s bid for Rookie Of the Year. It will be a tough case for anyone else to make an argument for the award. Bargnani is sidelined the rest of the season with an appendectomy, Garbajosa has to have surgery on his leg, Rudy Gay isn’t on a team that has won more games than Portland AND he doesn’t have as good as numbers in any of the categories.

Brandon’s stiffest competition might come from his teammate LaMarcus Aldridge. Aldridge has been putting up really good numbers since All-Stars. Especially since Joel Przybilla went down with a knee injury and LaMarcus became the starter.

The Leatherman tool promotion was great to…

Ok, friends, family and people coming to my blog. I was able to get a friends and family discount for people from SEMpdx and of course, friends and family for the Detroit Pistons game on March 14th. We want to sell this game out for when ‘Sheed comes back into town. To get this deal that gives you 1/2 off prices in a couple of the price categories, click here.

You will get the following discounts:

Yellow Seats: $24.50 (normally $49 for lower level)

Purple Seats: $12.00 (normally $24)

Red Seats: $10.00 (normally $17)

Top see some views where those seats are, check out the sweet 3-D seating chart that we recently added to trailblazers.com. Click here.

I will be sitting on a panel at SEMpdx tomorrow around 9:15am. Hopefully I’ll see you guys there!

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 Associationama.ppt