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.

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 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, 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.

Tags: socialnetworks, iamatrailblazersfan.com, substance

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.

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 old son, Jack, just learned how to blow a razzzberry with his mouth. Yes, I’m easily entertained. I also have a job that I love with a great BASKETBALL organization. Funny how things come back into your life. Today I will be playing with some of my fellow teammates here at One Center Court (the home of the Portland Trail Blazers) in a 3-on-3 tournament to benefit Oregon Special Olympics. Great cause and a TON of teams enter. We have over 500 this year! I’ll be playing in the Corporate Challenge against other corporations. I’m not sure if these other teams have practiced… but we did at the Practice Facility and are ready to take it to them. Of course, my hand is bruised, I already have blisters, and I think my left ankle might become dis-attached at any moment, but at least, I get to play basketball.

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 see people here at the Trail Blazers collaborate in making this happen (thanks to Todd Bosma for the originator of the Leatherman tool idea) and for Leatherman to team up with us in creating these one of a kind collectors peices. We did a limited over-run, so you can buy them for $45 in our online store. Seriously, these are going fast. We’ve sold 1/4 of the inventory in 3 hours. Damn, that’s hot.

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!