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.

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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’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 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…

For those that have known me for some time, you know that I’m passionate about music. I used to work in radio for a number of years and even got to put my 2 cents in for the programming KNRK for a little while. The biggest chunk of programming came when I picked all the music, elements and interviews on my own show (the Warped Hours). I did a 2 hour punk/hip-hop show that got great ratings on Friday nights. I loved doing the show but found my life getting too hectic between my day job, building a family and eating… so I stopped doing the show. One site that I used to use a lot (sometimes even more than what the “labels” would send me) was 3hive.com. I was turned on to it by Sean Ziebarth from Nitro Records who used to write for it.

Well, fast forward two years and I’ve found a void in my life – listening to NEW music. I find it really, really hard to find new music that I instantly like. I think it is really difficult to find music that you haven’t heard before, but have it relevant to you. The closest has been listening to Pandora and Last.FM. I LOVE Pandora, and I LIKE last.fm, however I still think that I find myself hearing a lot of music that either doesn’t hit the nail on the head, or hearing songs in which I like. But they’re songs I’ve heard.

Re-enter 3hive.com. On a whim today I went to check out the site today. Wow, I miss…

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

…

Two things stood out for me today…

1) Passion – I was on a panel today with Paul Colligan at Searchfest 2008, and he has passion for what he does. He has several podcasts and is a person neck deep in social media/web 2.0. If you ever get a chance to pick his brain about all things in the Web 2.0 space, do it. I will blog tomorrow about the presentation.

2) Over-reaction. Wow, there was a TON of buzz on Techmeme and blogs throughout the internet about the SWSX interview of Mark Zuckerberg (founder/CEO of Facebook) and internet reporter Sarah Lacy. People were just SLAMMING her on the blogs and in the audience at this session of SXSW. I’ve linked to the video from allfacebook.com. I guess after all the hype, I was disappointed as she didn’t do that bad of a job. She kept it casual and tried to have a conversation with Mark. She obviously has a past and tried to showcase some of those stories. Yes, she does a lot of self-promotion of her book, and no, she doesn’t get extremely technical… but by no means deserved the rousing she got. Someone in the audience heckled her for asking bad questions and then turned around and asked the most generic question in the world “What is the biggest obstacle to Facebook”. That’s like asking a band your interviewing, who their musical influences are. If you know who your subject is, you won’t find out anything new, therefor it is a question just to ask one.

She could’ve improved this interview if she would’ve had some specific direction on where she wanted to take it, rather than a fire-side chat with Mark. That I think would have shaped…

Ohhhh, the web. It brings us all together. We talk to each other on email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace… and probably something crazy that I haven’t heard of. Buuuuuut… people who like the web, and who talk about the web like to go to conferences. Probably to meet others because they bore their everyday friends talking about “social graphs” and “api’s”, or so I’ve been told.

So, I’m in San Diego at PacNET, our ticketing provider’s (Paciolan) annual conference. I’ll be presenting about Web 2.oh and how we’ve been using it at the Trail Blazers. PLUS, I’ll be talking about SEM (we’ve done a little of that) and multi-media with your websites (we do that too!). I think I’m going to be tired of talking, and if you know me, you know that doesn’t happen often.

Another sweet ass conference is in New York right now… Sports Marketing Web 2.0 conference. My colleague, Pat Coyle has put this together to bring the people who bring sports marketing onling… all in NYC. This is a series of conferences that we’ll all be trying to put on over the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait to be able to attend one (I’m in San Diego for PacNET, read the paragraph above)… so I’ll have to wait until March. It’s a bunch of guys and girls from sport teams (most of them pro teams) and talk about the good and bad things that are going on in our world. We’re shooting for one to be in San Francisco in March. Who wants to go? If you are interested in this space, let me know, I can invite you to the Sports Marketing…

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…

That’s right, a week ago at 5:38pm John Gary Harbison (aka Jack) was born at Good Samaritan Hospital here in Portland. He was born 8lbs and 21 inches. If he waited until his due date (March 28th) he would’ve been 9+ lbs. He has his own blog here. Plenty of pictures on the blog and some on Picasa.

Also, I will be speaking at the March meeting for the Portland Social Media club. Tim Germer saw me speak at SEMPDX and asked me to speak. Here are details:

March 27th
7pm – 9pm
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave
Portland, OR 97253
(503) 708-0851

Should be a really cool setting to talk with some of Portland’s bright minds in blogs, podcasts, social networks and other social things, like drinking? Does karaoke qualify as social media? We’ll talk about why we’re using Web 2.0 at the Trail Blazers and how it is working for us. Hope to see you there.