Great to see this happening in Seattle! Visit today: http://www.SurfIncubator.com

Why is this important?

Seattle is not Silicon Valley froth with money and risk taking. Seattle burns on coffee not nitro. We need more centralized space that is affordable for startups. Even more space the city needs more central gravity, community and something easy to get to by train, plane or ferry!

Concept:

“People are most productive when they work within their core competencies. Unfortunately for entrepreneurs this isn’t always possible. Launching a startup requires founders to become a jack-of-all-trades. Founders are required to quickly learn new skills in order to overcome a diverse set of business and technical challenges.” – Surf Incubator

Growing at SURF:

“SURF Incubator is a collection of great minds from different technical and business backgrounds that collectively represent a wide variety of core competencies. This diversity of thought and talent enables entrepreneurs to gain exposure to new perspectives while learning from other experienced professionals within a collaborative ecosystem.”- Surf Incubator

Mega Startup Weekend 2012, Microsoft Campus, Mountain View, CA

“Mega Startup Weekend” is grand daddy of all Global Startup Weekend Events.  It is hosted by Startup America Partnership , DEMO.com – the longest and largest running venture launch event in the world.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark program – http://www.bizspark.com
Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools, connecting them with key industry players, including investors, and providing marketing visibility to help entrepreneurs starting a business. The team at Microsoft was great! They invited a number of their best and brightest employees working on Windows 8, Windows Phone and other divisions to provide insights into Microsofts technology ecosystem.

Web: http://mega.startupweekend.com | Hashtag: #SWBayMega

Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets – primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people – to build applications and develop a commercial case around them.The event is hosted over a weekend. The first meeting on Friday night teams meetup to pitch and create a startup under the categories Mobile, Gaming and new for this year Robots.  The addition of Robots was especially cool as startups in Robotics take a lot of effort combining skills across software and hardware.

Co-Host of the event T. Scott Case, CEO, Startup America Partnership hosted the opening rally for the U.S.A. to support startups.  Later at DEMO 2012 Scott announced Startup America Partnership new deals for startups for Spring 2012.  What a great program with so much support from across the USA to support our future.

DEMO SXSW 2012 Contest Winner – Nick Tippman
We had a special guest Nick Tippmann join the New Media Synergy team to shoot impromptu videos with event co-hosts such as T. Scott Case, CEO, Startup America Partnership.

Nick Tippman (@nicktippman) with Liarry Chiang (@larrychiang)

Microsoft’s BizSpark and Developer Relations Team

This year Mega Startup Weekend added a new track “Robots”. Here are a few videos covering this track.

Overall this was a great event made up of some of the smartest people on the planet. Pure creativity amplified by the valley’s huge cash reserves. It was not hard to miss some of the top silicon valley mentors, financiers and mavens join the event to server as mentors and judges for the Mega Startup Weekend event. Here we have a DEMO alumni show off their latest robots!

The first part of the event is a pitch session then a poster board session where you try to recruit people to your team. Next teams are selected and paired down to compete. Only one startup from each category from win. The prize is huge expose at the DEMO conference hosted the following week.

The Mega Startup Weekend 2012 Winners for Gaming, Mobile, and Robotics.

• Stinky Da Vinci (@stinkydavinci)
• PredictGaze, (@predictgaze)
• Eyes on Demand (@eyesondemand)

(Above) Neal Silverman – DEMO | Claire Lee – Microsoft Biz Spark | Derek Holt – Startup America Partnership

We then took the Mega Startup Weekend Winners and let them Pitch at DEMO 2012

“Produced by IDG Enterprise in conjunction with VentureBeat, the DEMO conferences in the United States, China, Brazil and Singapore focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow’s cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launchpad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Salesforce, Webex, Tivo ,VMware and Fusion-io and thousands of others, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters.”

Visit http://www.demo.com to learn more about the above companies. Look under the DEMO 2012 Alumni Directory.

Fusionio DEMO Enterprise Disruption 2012

New Media Synergy provided the social media and real-time events team to power DEMO Enterprise Disruption 2012.

At the event Fusion-io announced that it “achieved one billion input and output operations per second (IOPS) in a technology demonstration conducted at DEMO Enterprise: An Evening of Innovation, in a preview of the company’s latency reducing Auto Commit Memory (ACM) extension, part of the Fusion ioMemory subsystem.”

New Medis Synergy created the event’s social media strategy leveraging a team that created real-time photography, HD Social Lounge video studio and live-tweeting the event. Our friends at Evergreen Productions coordinated the main stage and provided live streaming support with Dave Washburn. Fusion-io’s team is a mastermind of buzz and big productions NYC style. Led by Trip Hunter the Fusion-io team had a “Fog Screen” visual projection curtain installed to create a silky smooth entrance to the party. This party was top down, off the charts.

Photos by Stephen Brashear & Richard Brown

Photos by Stephen Brashear & Richard Brown

Yes, that is the man, the myth the legend… Leonard Nimoy. Can you believe a special guest appearances from Mini-Me via a pre-recorded video skit. The “Woz” Steve Wozniak, Fusion-io Chief Scientist (Apple Co-Founder).

Photos by Stephen Brashear & Richard Brown

Photos by Stephen Brashear & Richard Brown

Social Photography Studio

The New Media Synergy team did a great job. What a blast and tough job for Richard Brown in the basement Fusion-IO photo lounge.  We hit HUGE, HUGE numbers of social media photo views and glad our business model is working for clients. There is a massive uptake in photo and video views across mobile and tablets.  This was especially true for this event. I suspect the new wave of devices received as 2011 Holiday gifts have increased our content views by a large amount.  Social Media is still an explosive space and exciting to watch grow from the front lines.

HD Social Lounge – Video Studio
We setup custom visuals to carry the branding elements across the back wall’s tripple LED array.  All controls were remote to iPad or iPhone including the house DMX lighting system.

DEMO
http://www.demo.com

http://www.youtube.com/democonf

http://www.flickr.com/democonference

Fusion-io
http://www.fusionio.com

http://www.twitter.com/fusionio

http://www.facebook.com/fusionio

About:

The Startup America Partnership is based on a simple premise: young companies that grow create jobs. As a core American value, entrepreneurship is critical to the country’s long term success.  The board is first class and it’s directors represent American brands from American Express to Dell.  Visit: http://www.StartupAmericaPartnership.org and sign up for their Startup America Growth Kit.

Digital Signage
When we help produce a million dollar event such as DEMO, we like to carry the experience from the freeway to the convention center interior. This was accomplished working with SpotFocus who operates digital signage from the Great America Parkway to inside the Santa Clara Convention Center.

HD Social Lounge

We created a Startup America Partnership HD Social Lounge at DEMO Fall 2011 for C-level guests, investors and press to network and gain exposure at the event. The HD Social Lounge was created in two parts a private deal-making room for the client and an open social lounge for DEMO event guests.

The HD Social Lounge features a social photography studio, HD video interview studio, real-time social media team, social CRM, analytics station and networking area with coffee service. The client was provided with an end-to-end, fully staffed environment with branded signage and production crew.

We team up with Infocus Corporation to provide 55″ Mondopad touch screen computers to highlight our interactive HD Social Dashboard http://hddashboard.com/startupamerica/ . The dashboard features real-time photography streams, Videos, Twitter feeds, Facebook, client blog and website integration. The dashboard was programmed to work across HD display monitors, laptops and iPad / Tablets for this event.

The HD Dashboard is also wrapped in sponsor branding with sponsor deliverables that the client includes in their master sponsorship packages. Sponsors included: The Case Foundation, Kauffman Foundation, American Express, Dell, Intuit and Microsoft.

Social Photography

We provided both DEMO and the Client with the Official Photography team for the event. Our lead photographers were Stephen Brashier and Richard Brown who operated the main DEMO event on stage photos, DEMO Pavilion, Dinner events and the Startup America Partnership HD Social Lounge.

HD Video Production
We were really excited to not only partner with NewTek for the HD Social Lounge but also have NewTek’s own team show up to be part of the team. NewTek actually launched at DEMO and today is the leading video system used by MTV to the Oscars.

HD Video Channels

New Media Synergy worked with Startup America at TiEcon 2011 and DEMO Fall 2011 the largest and longest running venture events in the world. We create video strategies tied to social media, SEO and syndication. Often we are able to rank a video in a search engine such as Google within one day.

Press & Buzz

Our content created for Startup America Partnership and their guest DEMO companies was syndicated across the world generating over 25,000+ views from the Wall Street Journal to industry blogs and twitter feeds.

Microsoft Digital Art is a realistic painting system prototype created by Microsoft Research and was recently installed as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA, in the museum’s Material Lab interactive installation. The lab setup includes three terminals where users can draw and paint in oils, pastels and more, using their fingers or actual paintbrushes.

“Microsoft Digital Art simulates the experience of traditional painting and drawing. It provides an intuitive and natural-feeling environment that allows artists of all ages to create art digitally… Microsoft Digital Art achieves a high degree of interactivity by taking full advantage of touchscreen input and realistic modeling of natural media and brush stroke effects.”

Visit: http://www.microsoftdigitalart.com

“New Media Synergy was excited to be part of this high-profile project that involved MoMa. It was amazing to watch a wide range people from kids to adults experience this new program for the first time. The Microsoft Digital Art  program uses a touch screen monitor. One person on the Microsoft team tried using a paint brush on the touch screen and it worked with superb results. We appreciated the creative process working with Microsoft’s team and Steyer Associate’s team to deliver a final product that was accepted by MoMa.” – Tim Reha, CEO, New Media Synergy

Video is the New Black

Everyone is jumping on the band wagon of the video culture.  Video can now be streamed seamlessly from various devices at any moment in your busy, very interactive day. Besides Google using video as their media for their logo doodle, Bing has also changed up their home page media to time lapse photos, or video. More and more we are seeing companies changing and upgrading their media to be moving, animated or interactive. Video is the New Black.


Yesterday’s flurry of comments about the Halloween video on Google’s home page has been the buzz because it is different and playable. It is not embedded via YouTube and does not start playing automatically. It stops playing the moment you leave that window and is short enough that people enjoy playing it over and over. Is this the new break through for the google doodles? Here is a look at Google and their doodle’s for Halloween over the years. Guaranteed that their views online for this years Halloween doodle increased over 200% than all past years.
Mashable Halloween Google Doodle through the years

Video Stats

Here is a brief review of some recent video stats and what our engagement is really like as an online audience. Granted this is a quick compilation and also that this part of the tech industry is constantly growing with more devices being able to accommodate all these interactive medias.

References
Sysomos Report, 2009
TMG Report, Engage the Blog

Google+ is a new layer of technology built on top of Google’s expansive range of services and Android Mobile Application.  The service is compared to Facebook, Twitter, Micro-Blogging, Video Chat and more. The key to understand Google+ is to think of what we see now as just the tip of the iceberg.

Google+ in our prediction will expand to envelope consumers. Next Google+ will envelop local businesses with the integration of Android, GPS location services and Google’s Near Field Communication, first seen in the Nexus S phones. A more bold prediction is new local retail functionality in the form of a point of sale Android tablet application for business that ties in transaction processing to near field “tap-in payments, offers, rewards via +1 and a whole layer of integrated services.  Google+ looks like the future of the Google’s Operating System and strategy for “Cloud” only computers such as the Google Notebook.

The Big Picture – Google+ is a Walled Garden Data Ice Breaker

As Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb States in this article – Google+ is a way to create a massive consumer demand for Data Portability and force Facebook and other “closed systems”such as Apple to open up their current “consumer lock” on data. Remember we live in a “winner take all” economy and Google has an endless thirst for data that it then turns into dollars. In the end Google+ is all about “Liberating your data and using “friend circles” you create to establish deep contextual / semantic knowledge to create a global predictive intelligent brain that monetizes your data via ads, monthly web service fees and more.

Here is a list of what we see under the Tip of the Google+ Ice Berg:

• Google Search, Adwords and new form of Social Search
• Google Places for Business and Goole Offers tied to Mobile Checkins, Google Maps, Google+1 and new forms of “social advertising” and semantic social ad targeting
• Google Maps
• Smart Photography via facial identification, photo editing, search and location
• YouTube Video and Video Discovery, Deep video linking based on video analytics / facial recognition and speech recognition
• Social Media Discovery – Recommendations of who to connect with based on a deep social graph tie to search graph
• Social Music discovery and sharing tied to Google’s music cloud service
• Google Docs for Business tied to Gooogle+ Hangouts Video Conferencing. Currently this is primitive but will expand likely with collaborative browser push, content annotations and more.
• Last but not least Google Analytics!

Google+ is quickly evolving with new features that are added daily.  Thus, it is critical to “watch” how new features are rolled out as they are often set to “Expose our Data” openly, unless you customize your privacy settings. Often the settings menus are hidden. Below we will try to expose a few of the critical hidden privacy settings.

New Media Synergy Google+ Event Invitation: RSVP for New Media Synergy Event July, 20, 2011, Seattle, WA covering Google+

Link: https://plus.google.com/

Support: http://www.google.com/support/+/

The Google+ Leader Board: http://socialstatistics.com/ (Lists top Google+ users)

Google+: Technical Lead Q&A (Very informative!) Blog post on IEEE with audio interview

Google+ YouTube Channel Playlist (Corporate Videos)

Google+ is an new service and “Glue” that connects the Google Ecosystem of Services

• https://plus.google.com/

Why Would you Use Google+?

• Selectively Share Data
• Manage and build your personal digital brand reputation
• A different / better user experience & engagement than other social networks
• Integration with your other Google services
• Gain exposure to interesting new people and content through social discovery
• Create conversations on top of content such as photos, posts, etc.
• Video Conferencing and Collaboration
• When Google+ opens for business it will be a huge opportunity tied to Google Places and Google Offers + Mobile

What are the Negatives for using Goggle+?

• Too much of your data controlled by one company.
• A security breach across Google and all of your profile data, photos, docs, email, etc.
• Use of your data for advertising
• Yet another service to manage – Time management
• Competitive Intelligence issues
• Personal security as photos are geo-tagged to your location
• Personal security as your time stamp is on posts and many of the services that you are not aware of

Google+ is an New Tool Bar on top of GMail

Google+ Feels like Facebook, Twitter and other Services all rolled into one…

Google+ is a new social network, content syndication and collaboration system created by Google. Think of it like Facebook, Twitter, Today just a few weeks after launch Google+ has 10MM+ members. First they tried  Google Wave that many argue was a head of it’s time, but since it did not gain enough traction, Google closed the project.  In short, Google plus is the first look under what is sure to be the future of Google’s social media strategy. The company said that all employee raises are tied to the success of their social media efforts, thus expect a huge amount of resources going into this effort. Google+ is not your blog according to Chris Brogan.

Getting Started with Google+

Start by Setup your Google+ Account .

Next you will want to customize your Google+ Account. The first thing to dive into is Security Settings – here is a blog post by Chris Brogan with videos.  After you setup your security settings you can view your profile as someone else would see it. Use this feature to test your settings.

Email Settings

Next you will want to setup your Email Settings. Most will remove most of the Google+ email alerts as they are annoying.

Email Visibility

Set up your Email Links Visibility on your profile. Then your email settings for who can email you…

Connected Accounts

Google+ is about liberating content and connectivity according to some sources.  Thus the service create a profile for you that ranks very high in search results when people search for your name.. The system therefore is part of your personal brand and reputation management strategy. Linked accounts are simply links to your accounts such as Facebook, Yahoo, Flicker, LinkedIn, Quora, Twitter, Yelp, Hotmail and Plaxo..  It is interesting how and why Google only chose these accounts.

Connected Accounts & Personal Brand Reputation “Digital Ecosystem”

One thing to think about is your personal brand as part of an ecosystem from your personal blog to all of the new social media and media hosting web services. This network of content plus context creates a “digital footprint” of your online DNA. Remember that all of this data will be mined for predictive advertising. In the near future, as you carry your mobile devices and have near field chipsets in your phone with GPS, your digital finger print will be geo-targeted and tagged to a map.

Note that Google+ is built on top of Google’s Facial Recognition, thus, their goal is to leverage your photos and other people tagging your photos to create viral spread to suck people back into the Google Matrix. In the long-run, real world digital systems will follow you from online to in the real world, i.e. smart billboards for advertising to new forms of digital incentive cards that give you deals based on your influencer network ranking and purchase history.

Google Profiles May Rank #1 in Search for “Your Name”

Google is ranking your name search in Google Search Results (SERPS) to your Google+ / Google Profile. For my name, the result is the first search item on the list.

Check How Others View Your Personal Google+ Profile

Google’s goal is to expose as much of your data as possible as it creates new places for advertising and engagement. Thus, you will want to check your profile how others view it weekly in this fast moving digital landscape.

Google+ Mobile

Google+ Mobile App is currently only on Android and provides a more geo-location centric experience with additional features beyond the web interface such as instant uploads for photos.

• iPhone Mobile Client

Instant Mobile Photo Uploads

Google+ Circles

Circles are a way to group your contacts into different clusters. This create a way to push content to each specific circle and view the circle’s collective stream of content. Basically Circles provide a visual interface to give you granular control of your Google+ contacts.

Google Sparks

Google Sparks is Googles attempt at the semantic web and social sharing. The Google search engine alogrithm is likely tied to Google+ links passed through your Circles. Passing links through Circles creates Contextual data-points based on who is in the Circle and what they are “interested in sharing and consuming for content”.

Google Hangouts (Video Collaboration)

This is basic video conferencing with minimal collaboration such as screen sharing, web surfing, annotations, etc. Really the features are not that innovative. The main innovation here is that the service is free and connected to so many users via Google, so it is easy to connect to the service. There will be more interesting applications if they develop an open API for developers to connect to the service. In addition, this may get more interesting and useful with their mobile experience for Google Hangouts.

Photos

• Google has Facial Recognition built into their software. Thus it identifies faces then allows you to tag those faces. Once a person is tagged they receive a message.
• There is a good article by ZDNET on Google’s Picasa photo service that allows you to share photos to Google+.
• Comment streams are located to the left of the photo presentation area to create conversations on top of photos much like Facebook.

Videos

• Video are uploaded from your local drive or via YouTube Links.
• Google wishes to keep you in their “ecosystem” so they can glean data from your behaviors and overlay targeted advertisements over YouTube videos.

Google +1

• The +1 button is a shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.” Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts and others find the best stuff when they search.

The Future – Google+ for Business

Google+ will roll out for businesses soon. I found a secret invitation while tracking Google+ employees who have been leaking out new features via their Google+ streams. Currently there is no way to register for the Google+ Business Beta Application, however you may glean what it will be like by exploring Google+ and Google Services.

Tips & Notes for Business

Google will reward your business if you integrate into all of their services such as Google Places for Business, Google Offers, YouTube and more…

• Rich Analytics, Ability to connect your business identity to other Google services like adwords

• The Google+ Mobile interface has built in Checkins using GPS location based data and links to Google Places for Business - www.google.com/placesforbusiness
• New Google Offers - www.google.com/offers | www.google.com/offers/business/

Google+ users are a persistent bunch .
Here is a quick update on Google+ and businesses:

We have been watching Google+ take shape over the last week and we’ve seen some really great companies get involved. But frankly we know our product as it stands is not optimally suited to their needs. In fact, it was kind of an awkward moment for us when we asked Ford for his (or was it her?) gender!

How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands, and we want to create an optimal experience for both. We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have something to show the world later this year.

The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.

Over the next few months we are going to be running a small experiment with a few marketing partners to see the effect of including brands in the Google+ experience. We’ll begin this pilot with a small number of named partners. If you represent a “non-user entity” (e.g. business, organization, place, team, etc.) and would like to apply for consideration in our limited program (and be amongst the first to be alerted when the business product launches) you can sign up here: (SIGN UP IS CLOSED)

New Media Synergy Google+ Event Invitation: RSVP for New Media Synergy Event July, 20, 2011, Seattle, WA covering Google+

The first stop on the trip was to visit Infocus Corporate headquarters in Oregon. We met Scott Niesen, VP of Marketing and the rest of the team and had a splendid tour of the office.

Then had a sneak peak at the new Infocus MondoPad, a break through design that merges collaboration technology in a slick, user friendly, giant tablet format. At this time the Mondopad was pre-released and a secret.  From our first impression the feeling was “Wow, this thing is actually something I could see in offices everywhere”. Immediately, we were given the overall details for the MondoPad and then enjoyed experiencing the system.

Illuminated City Event

The event was the 2nd Annual symposium sponsored in-part by InFocus Projections, SpitBall Media, the Regional  Arts & Culture Council and the Portland Development Commission. hosted on April 9th, 2011 at Portland State University. The speakers and guests involved were amazing and content was programmed with an international presenter list from around the globe. The USA has been slow to adopt new lighting techniques, whereas many countries in Europe, Asia and Australia have caught on to the moment.

As you see in the photo, the event was standing room only. The crowd was totally engaged as they should because the event was all about new forms of visual communication.  Our interests were how to leverage new approaches to projections and lighting designs to enhance real-time social media for events.  With the latest visual mixing software, GPU processors and spanning graphics cards from Matrox, there are new methods to create a more viral photography opportunity for events. Brands embed embedded in backgrounds projected in new ways on various surfaces – “known as mapping visuals”.

“This symposium, the second in a new series of annual events, brings  international perspectives into the local and regional debate about architectural issues that affect us all,” said Clive Knights, Chair of  the Department of Architecture. “As a school fascinated by the  capabilities of material to embody meaning, it seems imperative to talk about what is perhaps the most pervasive medium of all – light.”

Some notable speakers at the event were:

• Leni Schwendinger of Light Projects, LTD
• Ali Momeni of Minneapolis Art on Wheels
• Thomas Schielke of Germany’s arclighting, and the founders of Urbanscreen, a light projection company from Germany.

Visual Accents

Spitball Media a Portland based web, visual and marketing agency, sponsored the event and provided some very clean and good looking visuals to complement the stage. The beauty of their work was how it made the venue space come alive subliminally without competing for on stage attention. The accenting ambient approach as executed using Modul8 by http://www.garagecube.com a popular visual mixing software from Europe.

PechaKucha

After the event there was a special PechaKucha (“chit-chat” in Japanese) night.Devised in Tokyo in 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network and show their works in public, PechaKucha hinges upon a 20-image x 20-second presentation format, which keeps the event concise and rapidly paced. The presentations were fun and informative while the format pushed the pace forward and a nice speed.

Summary

The entire team in Portland produced an amazing event with a diverse audience of visual artists, photographers, architects, planners and creatives. In the USA the use of progressive lighting techniques in our urban spaces is in an infant stage while the rest of the world is moving far a head.  The speakers that presented had numerous ideas from data driven, real-time, motion graphics to far out, super creative, light show parties. Outside of the event around the corner of the auditorium we were delighted to experience visual projections on multiple aluminum coil curtains.

As GPU computing speeds go up in a small form factor such as 1080p HD video capable mobile chips and super bright projectors we will see a new wave of visual applications. This will transform our cities night-scape and turn it alive where now today it is basically dumb and dead.

StartUp America Partnership invites you to share your ideas, gain insights, network and learn more about them at the TIEcon event 2011. The Startup America Partnership wants to hear your entrepreneurial story in the Startup America HD Social Lounge.

For more information, Visit http://www.startupamericapartnership.org
Follow StartUp America on Twitter @StartUpAmerica

The HD Social Lounge is a New Media Synergy creation. Connect with us for a custom lounge for your next event.

The wines that earn recognition in the Seattle Wine Awards must achieve tasting panel consensus where they earn one of the following awards ~ Double Gold, Gold, Silver and Bronze Grand Awards of Excellence in their respective price/wine categories. The wines that do not receive a Medal of Excellence, earn our Vintner’s Honor ~ Outstanding Washington Wine Award. This means we recognize the Washington wines that are truly outstanding! Our experienced Tasting Panel employs a modified 20-point system to score each wine. Wines are reviewed in flights that reflect the same price and varietal. Each wine is tasted and considered on the following criteria: Color / Aroma / Flavor & Palate / Balance / Finish / Overall Impression.

Creating a “Real-Time” Event

The Seattle Wine Awards was unique because it was the first wine event that offered participants a complete new media package that included content production from live HD video streaming to professional photography tied to social media syndication. We also assisted with”wiring up” the Washington wine industry by providing the first time anyone has coordinated the industry by helping the wine makers setup their first Twitter accounts and basic social media operations. Without Twitter accounts we could not mention the wine makers in our real-time event conversations. One winemaker was shocked when he received a phone call from a new customer that learned about his wines via a link posted to Twitter.

Digital Brand Infrastructure

The first project was to capture and brand the Seattle Wine Awards off-website properties such as the @wineawards Twitter channel. Each of the web properties were custom branded and customized using search engine optimization techniques. NExt we built the Seattle Wine Awards social media team was to create an out reach program to connect with local wine influencers. We setup the #wineawards official event hashtag to work with the rest of our branded sites like @wineawards on Twitter and branded YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/wineawards .

Web: http://www.seattlewineawards.com/
Twitter: http://www.wineawards.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wineawards
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/wineawards

Pre-Event Social Media Campaign

Six weeks before the 2010 Seattle Wine Awards we created three wine tasting tweetups where we released a sneak peek look at a few of the 2010 Seattle Wine Awards Winners. Christopher Chan, the Seattle Wine Awards invited our social media team to pre-taste the top Seattle Wine Award Winners paired with the host restaurants cuisine specialities. This provided a double win by generating buzz for both the Seattle Wine Awards and local area restaurant and their sommelier. This campaign generated a number of re-tweets and social media buzz that generated event ticket sales and even press mentions.

Seattle Wine Awards – On Location Day of Show

Operating a real-time event is an intense endeavor as all systems must function in parallel from coordination of the real-time media studios to making sure the venue’s bandwidth is working under heavy loads.  The team we built was first class and this made the event run fairly smoothly considering that we had to shoot photos and videos of 80+ wine makers in a half a day.

Real-Time Photo Studio

For the second year we worked with two of Washington’s leading photographers Richard Brown and Stephen Brashier.  Richard and his assistant setup a photo studio complete with branded backdrop in a side room at the event. Then we coordinated wine makers to shoot both personal profile and wine bottle shots. This provided both personal brand building for the wine makers and per bottle branding for each of their award winning wines.

The photos were processed with borders, posted to Flickr and then syndicated across Twitter and Facebook. The wine makers were instructed to leverage the photos on their website and blogs using structured search engine optimization tagging to drive traffic to their ecommerce operations. Richard Brown focused on shooting the event and worked with our social media team to post photos to Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. We backfilled the Press and Bloggers with professional level photography. Photography is the primary digital asset on the social web, thus it is critical to have an A+ photography team to deliver both quality with rapid turnaround.

Search Engine Optimized HD Video Interviews

We setup “Studio A” to shoot 3min wine maker interviews. Wine makers signed up for their interview session and were invited to complementary hair and make up as a way to build their confidence for the video shoots.  Each video was shot with multiple camera angles with close up bottle shots and lower thirds, then syndicated using search engine optimization techniques. Over sixty plus videos were produced and provided the wine makers with an additional exposure opportunity to highlight their award winning wines.

Live HD Video Streaming

We setup a live streaming video channel on uStream.TV to create a window on the web for people to peer into the event. This provided the wine makers with an additional channel to reach potential customers live during the event. The videos were also saved and syndicated with search engine optimization techniques. Colin Christianson volunteered his time to help shoot videos along with Greg Young to stream videos. Typically I will pull in smart people to work events “on demand” so we collaborate with gear, technology and ideas.

Mobile Social Media Team – Photos, Facebook & Tweets

At the event the Seattle Wine Awards social media team used their cellphones to capture images of the wine makers and bottle art. Next, they posted the photos with short tasting notes to Twitter with our official hashtag #wineawards.  This created a very quick and efficient mobile method to create and syndicate content at the event.

Portable WiFi Hotspots

Most event venues provide limited internet bandwidth and are not setup for our bandwidth needs. To resolve this issue I created a partnership with Clearwire to sponsor the event’s bandwidth by proving us with the new Clearspots 4G WIFI Modems. Then I instructed our wine blogger / twitter team to pair up and share the Clearspots. This worked well because the Clearspots are portable and were placed in the pockets of each team cluster, thus providing a very portable bandwidth solution.