Our good friends at CreateWowMedia put together this excellent video of the Ignite Des Moines event we had last week…
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iowa
Last night Impromptu Studio hosted the first Ignite Des Moines in their coworking space. It was a HUGE success at around 70 people. There was free beer provided by Olde Main Brewery. There was an Egg Catapault contest and in the end “150 second” mock presentations.
If you are unfamiliar with the Ignite platform it is meant to be a fun gathering of tech/entrepreneur community. These events are held all over the country so you should look into attending one. The premise is to have a group of presenters perform what I call “shotgun” presentations. Basically you get 20 slides that are rotated automatically every 15 seconds. It’s a lot more difficult than it sounds.
Here I am presenting on building hyperlocal communities… And, yes – I am drinking a beer while presenting… So what?
photo courtesy Justin Carlson
There were presentations about a broad range of topics, including…
- 20 Things Des Moines Needs Now!, Nathan T. Wright
- Hyperlocal Localization, Andy Brudtkuhl
- 10 Legal Issues That May Shut Down Your Website, Brett Trout
- Networking for Nerds, Justin Brady
- Nerd Herding, Tony Bibbs
- Homelessness in Des Moines: Why You Should Care, Claire Celsi
- How to Keep Your Business Out of Court, Rush Nigut
- Position Yourself for Success, Brant Ausenhus
More media coming soon… Pictures and videos are being uploaded as I type… Tune back into this post or this bookmark feed for more coverage on this kick ass event.
I also want to let everyone know if you are in Des Moines, Impromptu Studio is offering *FREE* coworking for the entire month of November.
Pictures
- Juice Coverage
- Justin Carlson Flickr Set
- Impromptu Studio Flickr Set
Video
- Ignite Des Moines Video Experience – CreateWowMedia
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Earlier this week Twittad launched a new advertising platform for Twitter. It’s a very ingenious idea – one that Twitter itself should have thought of and probably should adopt to start making money… Basically it allows Twitter users to sell ad space on their profile page. I did a quick interview with James Eliason, the founder of Twittad and also a local Des Moines entrepreneur..
How did you come up with the idea?
I came up with the idea in early July after reading the mashable article regarding extending the background on your twitter profile. I then heard about Scoble putting his background on Ebay..so I thought there needed to be a 3rd party site to handle the transactions between Twitter users and Advertisers.
How long did it take to build from conception to launch?
Conception was around July 5th and we just launched yesterday [August 27th]
What are your plans for the service?
The plans for the service include forming with other twitter “add-on” sites to help the promotion of Twitter users and advertisers. One site in particular, Twellow, I was just informed of today by Mike Templeton and they would be great to work with because they have categorized a twitter user. Advertisers could then target specific demographics for the purchase of their background images by using Twittad. It is partnerships like this that will help TwittAd become a leader in the monetization of Twitter. My ultimate goal is to work side by side with Twitter on creating a truly innovative product for the passionate Twitter community. Many people are going to be suspect of the Twittad concept, which is fine. However, it is my opinion that if we provide a backbone for users to help an advertiser promote their website or product, TwittAd will grow pretty quickly.
Even though you launched this week, has it been successful thus far? Have you had good coverage? Buzz?
We had pretty good response yesterday including a few comments from Wayne Sutton and also a nice article written by Mike Templeton at Microblink. [Link]
For more information on how Twittad works, read the how-to or follow Twittad on Twitter.
More on this interesting service to come…
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Today we announced the 2008 Iowa Web Awards – an effort to honor all the hard work being done by all our local web gurus. it’s pretty much just like the Webby’s only local to Iowa.
Here’s how it will play out…
1. The community will vote on the categories for which we will be giving out awards, ie “best blog”, “best news site”, etc
2. Once the categories have been chosen the community will nominate entries for each category.
3. Once all the nominees have been decided, the community will vote for their favorite in each category.
The only rule is that the nominee must be from Iowa!
This is an effort to promote all the advancements on the web that are happening in the state of Iowa with a hope that these efforts can be recognized by a broader audience.
And yes, these awards will be given out annually.
If you would like to contribute to the Iowa Web Awards, see this post.
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You’ll see me in there somewhere. I think they misspelled my name and may have taken my “corn and pigs” comment out of context. But all in all they did a good job with the story…
Note: I cannot for the life of me get this clip to not auto-play… If you have any ideas let me know. Also note how much Gov. Chet Culver is sweating!
Technorati Tags: microsoft, data center, west des moines, iowa
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