Posts by Janneane Blevins

Over the past year, we’ve had the opportunity to participate in the development and launch of the Speak Easy, a place for entrepreneurs, startups, and the folks who support them to work, play, and collaborate. Crafting a brand, web presence, and influencing the structure itself, we couldn’t have been happier to launch the Speak Easy on January 18th.

Taking a cue from coastal co-work spaces like Grind in New York, a group of 8 investors and entrepreneurs (including our own Kristian Andersen) set out to create a gathering place for those active in the startup community. The resulting space is a combination of a 17th century salon, coffee shop, and…

It’s been a few months since I’ve last talked about fashion and tech (see my previous posts here and here), but the topic is ever on my mind. Having linked up with PATTERN, I’ve had the opportunity to become part of Indy’s fashion community and also to help curate some of the monthly meetups. One, that I’m hoping will come to fruition in 2012, is a meeting of the worlds of fashion & tech. Here’s a couple local companies that are leading the way:

My Best Friend’s Hair
If you’ve spent a day in Broad Ripple, it’s likely you’ve noticed the abundance of hair salons. With so many options, how do you choose? Enter My Best Friend’s Hair, where consumers can search for stylists based on…

IFC : Fall Trend Report | Image courtesy of Marc McCoy

KA+A recently partnered up with Indianapolis Fashion Collective, in an effort to transform the way that Indy is building its fashion community. The Collective had been operating for a year, hosting special events and creating a member-based network that would support and mentor designers, photographers, stylists, models, and fashion professionals in the city. The big vision was to create a live/work fashion district in the heart of Indy. It was a great start, and the right minds were coming together, but the burden of the dream was growing heavier and not enough people were joining the group to help carry it.

Understanding…

Do you remember Del.icio.us? Or Delicious as it’s been simplified to today. I’ve been a longtime user now (since ’07). Their simple, but powerful, tagging system immediately became a trusty aid for me to catalog and organize my project management apps, blog inspiration, gift lists, wish lists, wedding, trips, and more. Delicious was a gateway solution for me (and millions of others) to tame the web and cull it according to my personal tastes.

Quickly after joining Delicious, I discovered other, more specialized apps to help me collect & share the web.

First there was Tumblr: a beautiful, engaging, simply designed and very compelling microblogging tool. Links became alive when you could display them…

There’s a great post over on The 99% that advises on how you can get more out of daily to-dos, by applying n-dimensional thinking. The resulting list is more dynamic and will help you (1) Focus on completing the most valuable tasks, and (2) learn new skills while executing them.

But there actually may be a third, more exciting value prop to amplifying your list: innovation, or even invention, of products.

The post details the common scenario of proposal writing:

For example, let’s say you have to draft up a contract for a client project, a rather humdrum task. Applying N-dimensional thinking, you decide to transform this task by increasing its overall efficiency (one new dimension), improving the contract template design (a second dimension), and learning

Recently our team began using Flow – a simple and powerful group task management app. During the free trial, I signed up with a couple different emails to see what it was like to interact with team members on Flow – without putting my team through the pains of dummy tasks, fake scenarios, and unnecessary email.

After signing up the whole team for paid accounts, I let my other test login expire. I had forgotten about it until today, when I had the chance to see some of Flow’s remarketing efforts.

I have to say, their campaign was pretty compelling (and this is to an already converted customer). They tell you straight up that the app has changed; try it again – for free.

My usual approach to project management, is making sure that we’ve planned for everything that our team has to do, and when we need to get it done by. But recently I’ve been realizing that it’s just as important to identify what we don’t need to do.

In a takeaway from The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World by Chris Guillebeau, the Startup Daily recommends creating a “To-Stop-Doing” List:

“Write down all the things you are doing that are draining your energy and are not essential to reaching your goals. Take advantage of the fact that stopping is easier than starting.”

So what kind of things do you need to stop doing? With each new…

Miranda July: The Future on Nowness.com.

I love this idiosyncratic solution from Miranda July, an offcut from her latest film, The Future. If often seems like a battle to be productive these days, with all the sources of distraction, entertainment, and information. Todd Henry refers to it as The Ping in his recent book, The Accidental Creative.

The Ping is that little sensation that occasionally prompts me to check my email or social media accounts. It’s the impulse to mindlessly surf news sites instead of doing something productive… it even has a life philosophy for me: “something out there is more important than whatever is right here.”

I use various software apps and online tools to help facilitate my…

When my friend Jenni and I started IndySpectator, we decided to base our business on email. Not a blog, Tumblr, Facebook, or a custom platform. Just plain jane email. Each week we send a few issues to our loyal readers exposing them to new things to love about Indy – food, arts, startups, music, events, and more.

The result has been a very engaged audience, that I don’t imagine we could have gained through a web-based platform. Our readers like us, because email offers the excitement of exclusivity and being the first in the know. No one feels special “discovering” what’s been broadcasted to millions. Additionally we come to our readers…

You can’t be everything to everybody. The Startup Daily delivered this short yet complex message in their July 5th edition. They advised:

Don’t water down your vision in an effort to appeal to a broader market. Proudly Exclude People. It’s a big world, you can confidently leave out 99% of it. The more narrow your focus is, the more passionate your customers will be about you and your business.

This is a hard-learned lesson, particularly as a young business or startup, eager and cash-starved. However, bloating your product with features to win sales, can quickly carry you away from the original vision. You need to “define the world’s appetite.”

But don’t take this as a writ large invitation to ignore these potential customers…