Interactive Director Crystal Olig with Zack, developer with Task Rabbit and Brandon, developer with SendGrid.
Photo courtesy: Malone & Co

My first time at Big Omaha surprised me for several reasons. I expected to meet cool people and hear about cool projects. I expected great speakers. I even expected to have a bunch of fun—after all, a conference that includes yoga, manicures, a fashion and a skate show has to be awesome, and it was.

What I didn’t expect is the spirit of community and inclusion, the overwhelming positivity of everyone I met and the shared excitement about what is going on in tech in the Midwest. It went beyond intellectually engaging to be an experience not only of the mind, but of the soul.

I went to the conference with three goals in mind:

1) To meet interesting people from whom I could learn
2) To hear big ideas I could take back to my team and my clients
3) To be reinvigorated to tackle the everyday challenges of being part of a technology business

I achieved all three. Instead of a long narrative speaker recap, which you could find on Silicon Prairie News, the conference co-organizer with the Kauffman Foundation, here are some quotes and snippets of wisdom that were meaningful to me along the way.

DAY 1

Tony Conrad, @TonySphere, founder of About.me and Sphere. Startup guy with True Ventures, WordPress, MakerBot, Typekit and Blue Bottle Coffee

“Why am I spending my time on About.Me? To reframe social media so individuals have a voice and more control over how you’re presented online,” he said.

“Google algorithms should not define you…My tweets don’t define me.”

“I think of you and me as entrepreneurs and founders, and I get it. It’s a lot of stress, how get funded, stay funded, get hired, no detail is too small for any of us. If you can think, ‘How do you start a movement,’ that is your path to true north.”

Megan Casey, @megancasey, founder of PackLove.com and formerly of Squidoo

Something Megan said really resonated with me, because I’ve felt the same thing:

“[I was] starting to feel a bit of stress about not building anything real, tangible, crafted. But then realized that we’re building worlds. Don’t ever let yourselves think you’re doing something trivial if you’re doing it online. We’re connecting real human stories, creating wealth, supporting families.”

“It’s a really uncanny thing that we’re building worlds— and we’re just sitting there typing.” (She used a great dog on laptop .gif to illustrate.— LOL.)

Megan also gaive special invites to her product, PackLove, to Big Omaha attendees. See my new page for my dog Fenway!

Peter Hudson, @peterhudsonmd of iTriage

The key to getting great talent to work for you: “People can pick cool tech or cool tech + mission,” he said. “People will pick cool tech + mission.”

He spoke at length about making data actionable and working in partnership with people who benefit from the software on both ends of the spectrum—healthcare payors and healthcare consumers— to be truly disruptive with the (free!) product offered.

Catherine Rohr of @defyventures, Defy Ventures

This was one of the most moving stories of the day. While some seminars were based on how software solved a problem, and others spoke directly to entrepreneurs about the challenges of running a business. Catherine started a non-profit, and she had a real mission. She “transforms the lives of business leaders and people with criminal histories through their collaboration along the entrepreneurial journey.”

She told a story about being the child of immigrants, who believed that anything was possible for anyone in America—and found that people who were formerly incarcerated were not able to live the American dream after paying their time.

Her program includes a selection process to “make sure they have the heart.” It’s a one year long, MBA -like program; a semi-shark-tank with more than $100,000 in micro loans available. It teaches character development and life skills that many former cons did not get in their old lives.

There were two utterly remarkable things about the results of her program:

1) These formerly troubled people have since launched 44 new businesses and; the first initial ones made $250,000 in their first year of operation and created 24 employment opportunities.

She had more stats that I didn’t get down, but generally, there were no instances of recidivism. They are paying an immense amount of money through their businesses back into the U.S. economy and tax system. Ultimately, she stopped the cycle of poverty, discrimination and violence for these people—through entrepreneurship.

2) She brought three recent graduates of the program up on stage. For several it was their first time in front of a crowd that large, and it was utterly moving for them and for us to see them stand up, in suits, and share their mistakes and their business goals.

Anil Dash, @AnilDash, Co-founder and director of Activateinc

One of the most intellectual presentations of the bunch, I left feeling like Anil Dash was the Sam Adams of our time. His presentation was about the freedom of information on the web, and the values of those who create technology translating into personal values, not business ones.

“Empathy and humanity helps build open source communities,” he said. “We must not fund our products at the expense of our communities.”

“We want to believe that software is neutral, that it doesn’t affect our culture,” he said.

He spoke vehemently about the need for openness and transparency on the web, repeating that “technology has values,” and “we can do better,” railing against the pages and pages of Terms of Service agreements that we’ve all agreed to, but not understood.

He pointed out real issues with the way personal data like photos and posts are treated by big companies— that it’s disposable and temporary.

“We must build things that last again,” he said.

Something that struck me as a new parent was this comment: “Our kids will know our real life stories by what we’ve posted in our lives.” I stopped and thought about what feelings and stories my son will know about me, simply because I’ve posted them along the way. That’s transparency in parenting redefined.

Ben Milne, @bpmilne, of Dwolla, an internet payment network

This tech and finance entrepreneur is trying to revolutionize how payments work on the web. As I know from working on numerous e-commerce web projects, our monetary system is untenable today for the way real consumers and businesses need to share money digitally. His Dwolla product has the potential to be transformative across the web.

His technology was impressive, but I was just as heartened by his perspective on the values of the Midwest.

“You probably want to see your kids and eat dinner with them; you don’t want a future on Skype,” he said.

“There are a lot of people on the [East and West] coasts who are creating and consuming. But having a family out there is at astronomical cost. We have something special in the midwestMidwest worth protecting.”

His company is based out of Iowa, and he shared why:

“I’m happy we didn’t leave, I think it was the right choice,” he said. “There’s a certain level of humility that is unique to the Midwest. Those are traits that are unique to this area, don’t lose them.”

Ben also shared his belief, with which I agree with, that, “Creation is greater than consumption. We should create vs. just overwhelmingly consume. The person who can create no content creates no value and maybe isn’t that valuable.”

Other gems from Ben Milne:

“Ask people around you to go home.”

“Scale how you think, not how much you work—you won’t do more efficient work.”

“Adopt new methodologies, find ways of making the world work for you. Figure out how you can operate, not just take on more work.”

“If you make decisions about who people should be without their consent, trust me, that will go sideways.”

“People are not empowered because they have these views about what normality is. It creates what average people should be.”

Next Post: Day 2, coming soon.

Postscript:

As a Gen Yer I just can’t help but mention: I’d say the majority of people at this conference were under the age of 35. Despite the general bad press Gen Y gets today, I was heartened to see the passion, humility and drive of the young professionals I met at Big Omaha, and believe our generation will do great things.

Some of the speakers I’m looking forward to include Gentry Underwood, co-founder of Mail, one of the hottest apps of the year;  Megan Casey, founder of Pack (gotta love a female Gen Y entrepreneur in tech—who loves dogs!); and Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups accelerator program.

I’ve been eyeing this event for several years, as I’ve watched all parts of the Midwest become more focused on growing technology business and talent. As a Nebraska native and graduate of that other football-playing college (my Buckeye colleagues have forbidden any Husker references at the office), I was intrigued to find a mini technology hub popping up not only in Omaha, but in Kansas City and Des Moines as well. And they say Columbus is a cow town! Apparently in the Midwest we are just teaching the cattle to code.

I’m going to bring new ideas to the team, expand Oxiem’s network of smart folks and rejuvenate my own perspectives. As this is probably the coolest conference I’ve ever heard of—featuring three evening networking parties (one including a fashion show, the other a skate show), free yoga and manicures, a Twitter scavenger hunt and a “Style Your Startup T-shirt” contest—I’m pretty sure I’ll be back with stories to tell.

I’ll be posting and tweeting throughout the conference, and sharing some wisdom from the speakers here on the blog. Keep up with me @SparkleGem or @Oxiem and stay tuned!

The site design is organized around key audiences and utilizes colors for major site sections, like Healthcare Providers, Hospitals and Patients, which correspond to colors used in printed literature and other marketing materials.

A new location finder shares all the regional offices and testing locations for CompuNet, including profile pages for each office to help customers reach the offices via Google Maps and get information they will need for their visit, such as medical forms. An enhanced news and resource center shares crucial information for customers like quality updates, infectious disease bulletins and case studies.

“We have a VERY excited staff here at CompuNet this morning! The kudos are rolling in about the new website and how easy it is to navigate along with how appealing and friendly it is overall,” said Kim Stanforth, director of marketing and communications for CompuNet.

“I cannot thank you and your team at Oxiem enough for your hard work and patience,” said Stanforth in an email to Interactive Director Crystal Olig.

CompuNet is an affiliate of Quest Diagnostics, the leading national laboratory, giving healthcare providers access to vast resources including the complex and specialized testing capabilities of Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute.

Oxiem and Genessa Health Marketing frequently partner to deliver technology solutions to customers in the healthcare arena.

The new site is a significant improvement in terms of design, usability and functionality. It features a News & Events feed throughout with easy-to-use filtering options, a site language translator to accommodate foreign language site visitors, a dynamic staff directory, and a very unique Experience Center.

The Experience Center is made up of in-class learning experiences across various educational programs such as Business & Information Technology, Construction & Manufacturing, Health Science, and Human Service. Web visitors can visit the Experience Center to learn more about the hand-on learning projects taking place at Tolles.

The new website was presented to the Tolles staff and educators at the tollestech.com launch party. Tolles is excited to share their unique education center via their new website!

I’ll Use My “Real” Number in my Local Listings, and my “Tracking” Number in my My Site

Nope. Due to most local listings requiring near-perfect “NAP” consistency, this approach will leave you wanting for better optimization. This means that you’ll need your company name, your company address, and your company phone number to be identical on your website and on all local listings you want want maximum impact.

But “It’s Better Than Nothing” If my NAP is Inconsistent, Isn’t It?

I hear this a lot in discussions about optimization. It usually sounds like this: “Yeah, but this will be better than what we’re doing now right? I mean, it won’t HURT anything if my info doesn’t match will it?”

I’ll answer this question with our mantra here at Oxiem. “Doing No Harm” is probably what most of our customers are doing before they hire us. Avoid the DNH trap at all costs. Our customers don’t pay to do “better than nothing”, our customers pay us to optimize them. So, of course “not hurting” is a fundamental goal, but our top goal is to help them beat their competition, and just “not hurting anything” will not get us there.

Why Don’t I Just Use My “Real” Number Everywhere?

You can, if you have a “real” number that allows for transparent reporting. We’ve found that most numbers do not. At Oxiem we use a modern phone number provider (ifByPhone) for our tracking numbers for the following reasons:

• They offer a rich API allowing us to bake phone call data into monthly reports
• They offer call recording (but it’s not required)
• We “pre-buy” numbers and monitor whether they see a lot of telemarketing or wrong number calls prior to using them
• We can add our tracking numbers to “do not call” allowing for a cleaner data set in your reports

OK, Then I’ll Just Use My Tracking Number Everywhere

Yes! But. Of course there’s a but.

You need to be sure that you “own” that number (in as much as you can “own” any number). What if you disengage with your agency or phone number provider and they tell you “Sorry to see you go, we’ll de-activate your number at the end of your campaign”? This means that you’ll need to go through each of your campaigns and change the number. This will get harder the longer you use the tracking number.

Enter the Portable Number

The LNP act allows you the right to “port” your number from one carrier to another. The carrier cannot stop this from happening – you just need to be sure that your partner will not become an obstacle if they bought the number.

Work with a Transparent Partner

Be SURE you have the right to exercise number portability before you allow anyone to use a “purchased” number on your campaign. Oxiem allows our customers to port their numbers when the campaigns end, and so should anyone you work with. Ask this question before any numbers are setup.

The annual award is voted on by the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce board and recognizes the top small business with 25 employees or less.

As part of the ceremony, award winners were featured in video interviews on the big screens in the Grand Hall of the Hollenbeck Bayley Creative Arts & Conference Center. Check out our fearless leaders’ thoughts on the Small Business of the Year recognition!

The site, developed for the worthy cause of fighting cancer through food research, was a result of our relationship with Trupointe Cooperative. As a regional member-owned and controlled co-op headquartered in Piqua, Ohio, Trupointe is a sponsor and huge supporter of Growing the Cure.

To quote our co-founder, John Fimiani: “When we were presented with the opportunity to design and develop the Growing for the Cure site, we jumped at the chance. As anyone in the industry knows, there’s a different level of creative freedom and emotion inherent in cause-related projects and we’re always looking for new opportunities to test our abilities. We’re proud of the end result, and hope that in some small way we’ve helped raise awareness in the fight against cancer.”

In total, our team won 10 Silver and Bronze Hermes/ADDY Awards from the American Advertising Federation Dayton.

Oxiem’s Silver ADDY Awards included: Dublin, Ohio CVB collateral material; Experience Columbus mobile site; Greater Springfield, Ohio mobile site; SO Springfield campaign.

Oxiem’s Bronze ADDY Awards recognized the following work: Hughey & Phillips Anniversary Ads; Arts in Ohio website; Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce & CVB, Ohio website; Peerless Food Equipment mobile site; Ridgewood, Ohio Book Promotion website; Shopsmith interactive video.

In all, a very successful haul for Team Oxiem. Congratulations to everyone whose hard work contributed to this big win!

Searches for “Coffee Maker”

I don’t have much in the way of clever observations, I just found it oddly comforting to see such uniform zealotry regarding coffee maker gifting. I also sort of feel sorry for the coffee maker manufacturers – I imagine them desperately vying for the world’s attention all year, only to receive stalker-like attention (and it seems to be growing each year) for about 3 weeks.

What to look for in an SEO Agency

Guarantees

Run. Sorry, there may be some valid shops out there that offer guarantees, but I see way too many “you don’t rank, you don’t pay” emails and I know how they work. Essentially it’s some variation of “If you don’t rank, the next 6 months are on us”. This means that you paid double for the first 6 months and anything after is gravy.

Response & Communications

How quickly did they respond to your first inquiry? Were they friendly and knowledgeable? Did they read your emails carefully? Did they provide a customized proposal?

Their “Way of Working”

This is another key area for a mismatch. Some agencies take a very systematic and almost assembly-line approach to SEO. Others take a very customized and highly hands-on approach. Either of these approaches might be good for you, but you might also hate them. Think back over some previous relationships you’ve had with service vendors and try to get a feel for which approach you like best.

Experience

Do they have experience in your space? Direct market experience may not be critical, but it’s absolutely critical that they can show results for clients your size. I’ve found most issues are from agencies and clients being mismatched in size rather than market.  You might be too big or too small for some agencies.

The proposal

Here is a great question to ask yourself. Would I have paid for this presentation? The presentation that you receive from your agency should be packed with information you didn’t already have.

I’m a big supporter of green initiatives (specifically with respect to renewable energy). I’m also an expert in Search Engine Optimization. The two are interrelated as whether you are discovering a new technology in the form of invention, or discovering a new technology in the form of research – you’re still in the discovery process. What I love about promoting discovery is that making your discovery or invention “find-able” allows people like me to share in the discovery process.

Discovery is About to Get Some Legislative Support

What inspired me to create this post is news that thanks to a new initiative, we’re about to gain access to an enormous mountain of federal research data. This means that in addition to all of the previous information you couldn’t find online, there is about to be an exponential explosion of new information that you won’t be able to find.

I’m Uniquely Positioned

When I became interested in alternative energy, it began the same way it probably begins for everyone – with a video I found online. I believe the first tingle of interest came from a video on thorium reactors. This led me along a 4-year journey where I learned more than I’d ever expected to about alternative energy. One such discovery was my disappointment in how the best resources (articles, videos, etc) were tragically under-promoted. It occurred to me that my weird combination of hobbies, interests, and career choices have positioned me well for helping those who create, discover, and invent to find creative ways to share it.

The Secret Sauce – The Citation

Citations exist in a few forms. There are the “scholarly traditional citations” such as publication in journals, the more vernacular citations such as a post on YouTube, and the “search engine citation” which could be defined as “whatever the search engines choose to credit as a citation”. With that being said, there are two basic types of citations:

• “Overly Simplified and Much Hyped” and
• “Understated, Boring, and Fascinatingly Factual”.

I’m going to give you two guesses on which type of citation gets the most play online. While this seems terrible, I suppose there is some good in exposing the world to new technologies and discoveries even at the expense of journalistic integrity. The consequence of this practice I fear however is the desensitization of the public to the sheer magnitude of discovery. When the public sees a new cure to cancer every 4 days, they tend to stop listening. I have to believe however that we can do a better job of getting the word out while still “keeping it real”.

Turn that Recogni-shun (help me I can’t seem to stop) into Recognition

One resource that you can turn to for traditional citation is journal publication. Finding reputable journals isn’t easy, but there are resources that can help. If you’re on the hunt for great journals, start with the Directory of Open Access Journals. This publication acts as a clearing house for scholarly journals and they add about 4 journals a day to their catalog. If you did the math and determined that they only added 1254 articles in 2012, and that 1254/365 is only 3.43, then I ask that you stop being such a nerd and give them credit for major holidays (I used 10) you’ll see the number becomes 3.53, (and I KNOW you didn’t want the number out to 2 decimal places) which rounds to 4. Step off.

The Value of Traditional Citation

If you search on Google Scholar for medical articles, you’ll find a clear preference for cited works. For example, the example below certainly does not meet your standards for editorial punch or for timeliness, but boy-howdy, those citations. You can clearly see how much weight Google places on the number of citations – and rightly so – as this generally is a great indication of the popularity of an article withing the scientific community.

 It’s pretty clear from this example that citations from journals can impress the search engines.  Our next goal will be to find new ways to put our discovery in front of those not searching for scholarly articles using Google Scholar.

Citation != Promotion

If you take one thing away from this post – remember, citation does not equal promotion. Somewhere between “9 Year-Old Scientist Discovers Canned Corn Cures Gout” and ”Catheter replacement of the needle in percutaneous arteriography” lies the best “headline” to describe your article. Follow the simple rule of “know your reader”. If you are posting to a scholarly journal, of course a more dry approach is appropriate, but you can’t stop there. Promote your article on social networks and “spice it up” with descriptive language that helps everyday readers understand the significance of your work. Consider online resources such as LinkedIn.com using the “publications” section of your profile. Take a look at this Vitae article for some other helpful tips.

In my next installment I’ll list some great places to share your discoveries using social media and other methods.