Over the past year and a half, KA+A has been in league with Indiana’s leading minds in the local agriculture and culinary worlds to bring back a revitalized Taste of Indiana, Dig-IN. (Read more about our re-branding process here.)

Set to premiere this August 29th, Dig-IN will take place at the White River State Park, featuring a rockstar lineup of Chefs (Neal Brown, Chris Eley, Greg Hardesty, Regina Mehallick, Eli Anderson, Scott Wise and many more) who are paired up with local producers to masterfully create an all-local dish. In addition, there will be over 20 local wineries and breweries brought together for you by the Indiana Wine Grape Council and Brewers of Indiana Guild. All of these tastings are included in the $15 ticket price.

Dig-IN also will feature a stellar lineup of speakers, discussing everything from nutrition to gardening, from cooking locally to a farm-to-fork panel that traces the journey from field to tabletop. Urban gardening sessions with Laura Henderson and Growing Places Indy, delicious sweets for sale prepared by Indiana Artisans, Food for Thought exhibit by the Humanities Council, a Pedal and Park program, and musical performance by Jookabox, jascha. and Kate Lamont will be occuring throughout the event.

Check out Dig-IN’s newly launched website for more information, and follow on Twitter to make sure you are up on all the latest. Tickets can be purchased at Marsh Supermarkets, or online. Be sure to reserve your spot in advance – tickets are limited!

The Extraordinaries
The Extraordinaries, a micro-volunteer network offers a platform to connect non-profits with skilled professionals. Non-profits submit requests for work to be done, and a network of skilled volunteers (who are looking for small ways to give back in their free time) fulfill it. All of the interaction takes place online or on your iPhone, resulting in less time from volunteers and less “management” from the non-profits. I’m eager to try this out for the non-profit I work with, Training, Inc. The Extraordinaries is equipped to serve as your company’s volunteer program as well, meaning less time focused on finding volunteer work for your employees to engage in, and more time giving back to the community.

Like the idea? Take a look at txteagle whose mobile phone platform allows subscribers in developing nations to earn small amounts of money or airtime in exchange for work.

Giggil
This one is a little bit of a twist, but still follows the theory of small efforts that add up to a big impact. Giggil (Green is Good, LLC), a local new startup, helps businesses and non-profits turn “stuff” into cash by facilitating the re-use and recycling of goods, adding value through their efficient processes and technology. As anyone who’s done some fundraising knows, donors are still strapped for cash. I guarantee they’re not short of stuff though. What Giggil offers is “Stuffraising.” Through this program your donors can easily donate the stuff they have lying around their home (golf clubs, electronics, books, etc.). Giggil collects and sends you a check in the mail. Easy as that!

Flattr
This next solution doesn’t necessarily address the non-profit sector, but it does attempt to bring profit to a “product” that we’ve been struggling to monetize – content. I had the chance to hear Peter Sunde (formerly of The Pirate Bay) speak about his new social micro-payment platform at SXSWi 2010. Called Flattr, the basic premise of the app is to monetize content. How does it work?

I’m happy to say that I’m a Beta user, and the concept is as cool as it sounds, but there’s not too much, um, English content up there now, so until I learn Swedish, German, and Dutch, I don’t’ think I’ll be able to Flattr much.

Some other ways that you can get paid for the work you do: Field Agent.

Want to share some of your favorite crowdsourcing ideas? Drop us a line; we’d love to hear!

With the advent of a particularly complex project, I began to have my doubts that Basecamp could handle it. The need for Gantt charts was especially desired, so that I could get a good handle on where each task was taking place in time and space. Fortunately Basecamp has a large following, so there’s a plethora of third party companies offering integrations that fill in missing functionality. Think of it as a Basecamp app store. This is where I found PlannerX, an app that allows you to plan projects in Basecamp “up to 5 times faster” with their easy outline view. Even better, PlannerX generates the Gantt charts I was missing from Basecamp.

After trying their live demo, I was hooked. Planning projects was so intuitive, and noticeably faster than planning in Basecamp. Rather than clicking between Miletsone and To-do screens, I had everything at my finger tips nested in an outline view.

I could add start and finish dates for each task and milestone. A click over to the Gantt chart gave me the live read on where these tasks existed in time & space.

Basecamp is just one of many companies that are switching from offering fully integrated software, to providing best-of-breed, focused offerings, that work in concert / integrate with third party developers. This trend was really brought to the forefront by Salesforce’s AppExchange, and has also been implemented by local stars, ExactTarget. It’s not effective or necessary for Basecamp to be everything to everyone, but by opening up their API, they are able to bring on third party vendors who can provide the particular set of features that a specific customer needs. And by doing so, they retain customers like me, build healthy relationships with new partners, and create a more powerful and sophisticated product.

The Big Idea
@BettyDraper and @Roger_Sterling’s entree into the Twitterverse was not AMC or even Matthew Weiner induced. Rather it was born from the fan base. The people behind these handles wanted to see where the story of Mad Men could go between episodes, between seasons. By crafting a version of the brand that played well on Twitter, but didn’t lose the integrity of the characters – they were able to use brand fiction to engage a whole new audience.

Soon, other Mad Men fans were embracing the person of their favorite characters on Twitter. And soon, they started to coordinate events together. I first picked up on the Mad Men Twitter phenomena when I caught wind of their event, Mad Worlds Collide. Staging the premiere of the 1963 movie, “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,” the characters Tweeted about their dresses, pre-party drinks, gossip, and of course the show – and the whole world was invited. Here’s just a few inspirational ideas employed by @BettyDraper and @Roger_Sterling to pull the event off:

• Set the stage: An online version of Radio City Music Hall, was created to aggregate the tweets from the characters & attendees in real time. The stage also archived the tweets allowing them to live past the short life of Twitter’s log.
• Online ticket sales: Twitter followers were invited to join the Mad Men at Radio City by “buying” a free ticket on Evenbrite. User data collected from this sign up could be useful for future events, advertising, etc.
• Orchestrate: A timeline was circulated amongst the characters. This loose script of events (pre-party cocktails, arriving on the red carpet, curtain call, etc. ) fueled the improv tweets of the characters.

The Results
@BettyDraper and @Roger_Sterling started to realize that there was more than fun to their tweeting, but that it could also be quite beneficial to the Mad Men brand. Some of the many benefits they began to identify included: deeper audience engagement; new audience (they were turning people on to the show); good will for the brand; and creating deeper profiles of fans for advertisers (through event sign ups, etc.). Brand Fiction had evolved into a new way to create an environment that fans could participate in, engage in, and easily stay involved in.

How-To: Rules of Brand Fiction
Interested in creating your own Brand Fiction? Here are the Rules of Brand Fiction as presented by Ross and Bissell. We hope to hear your story soon!

• Content is king. Appoint a brand fiction manager, and design a canon (accounts of characters, settings, vernacular)
• Maintain continuity across platform. You’re not creating an alternate universe, but rather expanding on it.
• Be authentic – the content must embody brand values.
• Be relevant to your audience. Respect the unique conventions of Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Share- allow fans to engage, retweet, respond, and refrain from being too controlling.
• Don’t trust a bot to do the job of a human; don’t automate content!
• Don’t dilute the brand; stay true to the brand.
• Campaign assessment (does is have the Scheherazade factor?)
• Don’t underestimate the time/effort necessary for success.
• Have fun!

Overview
Conventional wisdom calls us attention-deprived, constantly seeking the next scrap of info. But Google reveals our true desire: Context. (Wikipedia entries, This American Life’s financial crisis explainer, Gizmodo’s definitive guide to smartphones, etc.) An exploration of how journalism and media must adapt to meet our insatiable hunger for the bigger picture. (www.sxsw.com)

Presenters

• Jay Rosen – New York University

• Matt Thompson – NPR
• Staci D Kramer – paidContent


Tristan Harris – Apture

Recap
The news is more constant and torrential than it’s ever been. We think that all these articles, TV stories, radio blurbs, and other news medium will somehow cohere into real knowledge if we absorp enough of it. This sort of works, but evidence indicates that when you’re faced with headlines of an ever increasing variety, you tune out and start focusing on the things you don’t need to know much about to understand (e.g. celebrity gossip, sports, etc.).

Most news requires some understanding of systemic knowledge, and not just the episodic news knowledge. In order to fully appreciate and understand the buzz on, let’s say the financial crisis, we need context. We need to have a working knowledge about how financial systems works – ours and those abroad. It wouldn’t take long for journalists to provide this context, and it’s actually pretty easy to explain, and would make the episodic news make a lot more sense. Yet in the current model, episodic “breaking news” sells – not the systemic background information.

So how can journalists provide both systemic and episodic news? The web is a good place to start.

Even online journalism though, will take some work. We like to wedge together systemic and episodic knowledge into one story, by breaking the news and the putting a link at the end with “more info” (the context you may need to understand the article). But this more info link isn’t very useful at the end of the article; you need the context at the beginning so you can fully understand what you are about to read. Some good examples of sites innovating in this space include The Giant Pool of Money; ExplainThis.org; and The Money Meltdown.

The big takeaway for me was readers like you and me, don’t necessarily want “more” information – we want the minimum context to understand the subject.

Paul Boag of Headscape presented some best practices that keeps his team moving through these projects, and ultimately achieving satisfaction for both the client and the designers.

What’s his secret? Collaboration not confrontation.

1. Ensure everyone understands their role in the project.
The client’s job is to find the problems and the designer’s job is to find the solutions. If this breaks down, because the client is presenting solutions (i.e. make the logo bigger), then ask them “why” – uncover the problem.

2. Have a strong methodology.
Explain the process before hand to the client, so they know what to expect, and where they can be involved.

3. Include the client often and early.
Before that first design mockup, collaborate with them, whether through moodboards, wireframes, etc. Make sure that they feel like they helped you shape the final product, and are personally engaged.

4. Educate clients about decisions being made.
Give them the confidence and ammunition they need when sharing the design amongst other stakeholders in the organization. Explain to them the rationale behind the type, layout, color, and further more, document your conversation with them in sharable way (e.g. video).

5. Ask for specific types of feedback from the client.
Instead of the blanket “What do you think?”, ask “How will the users react to the design?” or “How does this design meet the business objectives?”. These are questions the client has the background and knowledge to answer.

6. Avoid saying no.
This can be demoralizing for the client, and a death-wish for the relationship.

It’s a social marketer’s dream, the way they can incorporate all of these mediums into a succinct show. It’s accessible, fresh, and leaves you with the closest estimation to truth by providing you with so many points of view.

What’s most unique is how dependent the show’s content is on the listeners interfacing with one another. There is no script – only a topic for discussion. The host, who greets each guest with an abrasive, “World Have Your Say. What’s your point?” certainly orchestrates the conversation, making sure everyone gets their turn, but the meat of the show is listening to the people proffer up their opinions on a particular issue. Now often, you’ll hear something you don’t agree with, or the host’s bias will come uncovered – and that’s all intentional. The show aims to get you piqued, engaged (or enraged), and want to call, tweet, blog, text to defend your point of view.

I’ve seen many ways that people are using social media to engage people – but this one stands out. Doug Karr sums up well, why organizations like WHYS are so successful with their social media, in his recent post, “Social Media Marketing is about the Social, Not the Media.” World Have Your Say views the social media tools just like any other – Twitter is no better than the website, or even the radio as a medium. All of these are just different ways to reach a broader audience, and involve them in a unified, dynamic conversation. World Have Your Say places the emphasis on the social, and connecting the World to the truth.

Here’s how you can tune into World Have Your Say:

Tune in: 90.1 FM, 1-2PM weekdays
Email : worldhaveyoursay@bbc.com
Call: +44 20 70 83 72 72
Text: +44 77 86 20 60 80
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Sure, there were the American giants present – McDonald’s and Starbucks. And international fashion stars Chanel, Dior, Prada, YSL, etc., had no problem catching my eye. It was the other 90% (that I could afford) that left me clueless.

Complicating it further was my desire to experience Europe as a local – to not cave to familiar Americana brands (besides the essential Diet Coke), but to go to the well-reputed watering holes, local shops, and cafes that the true Londoners / Parisians / Florentines do. Also, I was crippled by not having the ever omniscient Internet at my fingertips (have you seen the iPhone’s international data fees?!), to aid in the moment decisions and verify the merits of any promising candidates I stumbled upon.

I had to re-calibrate my brand sense. I was used to my usual repertoire of brands, and had to take a step back in the “Consumer Decision Journey” to begin discovering and evaluating brands.

So how did I do? What did I discover, and how did I uncover the good stuff? Here’s a brief recap:

London
While in London, I lived on Daily Candy, “a lifestyle resource dedicated to helping you live the sweet life.” The web site provided loads of great finds for London, including The Tabernacle (former stomping grounds of The Clash), Pix Pinxtos, Melt Chocolates, and LOTS of great window shopping, including the S. Millers Twenty8Twelve. In fact it was so good, that I was yet again in despair when I saw that they don’t yet cover Paris or Florence.

Paris
Alas, in Paris, I came to respect Spotted by Locals, a blog that offered tips on cafes, restaurants, things to do, and led us to some of our favorite stops, including bohemian cafe Les Peres Populaires, Montmartre cafe Coquelicot, and the terroir food and wine bar, Resto Zinc.

Florence
In Florence, the blogs weren’t cutting it, so we took matters in to our own hands and hit the streets. We collected business cards that were deposited at our local bed & breakfast and then mapped them to see which were closest and began trying them one by one. Our trial and error was boosted by some great tips from dear friends back home. Overall, we had some empty touristy let downs, but ended up stumbling across a handfull of gems, including Vestri Cioccolateria, Yellow Bar, and Florentine boutique Echo.

Takeaways
One of the many takeaways from this experience, was that it reminded me of the beauty of good branding. Familiar logos hearken to mind a sense of value, promise, and tell us what’s in store for that particular brand. Every time I ordered a Diet Coke at restaurant, I knew I could count on it for the perfect blend of flavor & fizziness. Seeing the Coca Cola logo was a comforting guarantee of an experience – something I could count on.

Exploring the brands of Europe also reminded me of all the small experiences that go in to making a brand – crafting a compelling environment, delighting your customers, providing quality & service – and delivering it all consistently. These good brand practices help small local shops and restaurants generate buzz, referrals, and ultimately move their customers into the loyalty loop.

During the work week I see a similar situation. We frequently hear the request to make things bolder, make them pop, punch them up and make them stand out. At some point this approach breaks down, when everything gets that “special” treatment. I think the movie Incredibles puts it well with these lines shared between Helen and Dash:

Helen: Everyone’s special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

Designers know that you can’t make EVERYTHING bold or PoP! because you lose all sense of hierarchy and emphasis. What’s special gets washed out. KA+A has a saying that goes:

In a world were everyone is screaming for attention… yelling louder is not always the right solution.

As you develop your message, make sure that you emphasize what is important, and let the supporting details be exactly that – support. You have a small window to make an impression with your audience, so you want to make sure that at the very least they can identify what is most important. The details will have their day, but you can’t overwhelm your audience with them on the first shot. Share the details as you build a relationship with your customer, and continue to WOW them.

5 years ago, Eric Romer of Indianapolis, who had been BBC (Bald-By-Choice) since 2002 in his early college days at Butler University, discovered the solution he had been looking for to keep his head closely shaved–HeadBlade. The ease of use of the product and the results had him hooked for life as a brand advocate, and he began telling everyone he knew about the fantastic product he had found. Last week, Eric Romer’s dream job was announced by HeadBlade in his Twitter feed. Springing to action, he developed a blog, Twitter page and Facebook page for his “Hire Me, HeadBlade” campaign. Within 24 hours he had a phone interview with Todd Greene, CEO of HeadBlade Inc. and began making plans to fly out to LA to meet with him this week.

It’s a story of social media at its best. By using widely available tools, Eric has been connected to his dream company; HeadBlade has been connected to a promising candidate for their position; and the brand has been buoyed up with all the extra eyes following Eric’s story. Some of the takeaways I’ve identified from the present story are:

• For College grads and job seekers, Eric Romer has set the precedent. Leveraging free tools, web know-how, and media savvy he has created a dynamic and real “resume” that actually shows what he can do.
• For company’s looking to hire, this has affirmed that social media outlets can help you attract promising talent; also that it can be a good arena for evaluating candidates.
• As far as branding goes, Eric has already been engaged as a brand advocate on his own account. By officially engaging someone like this in their social media driving seat, HeadBlade can connect with other happy customers like Eric, and amplify their brand awareness.
• There’s also a lot of opportunity for Headblade to capitalize on the extra attention. As Eric’s story continues to gain steam over this next week, more eyes are attracted to HeadBlade, and the opportunity is ripe if they have a new product features or other announcements up their sleeve.
• Third parties in the game, such as Butler and Compendium, are recipients of the Halo effect. Their affiliation to Eric may give their own brands a boost if this all bodes well.

There’s sure to be more best practices as this story unfolds. Stay updated on Eric and see if he gets hired by HeadBlade by following him on his blog, Twitter, and Facebook.