Have Passion and Be Curious
If you were lucky to attend Verge this week, you heard Kristian Andersen speak to passion and curiosity. As professional individuals, we sometimes think that we are confined by what is said on paper, and to achieve more we must have more letters to put after our name or more accomplishments to list out. However, we shouldn’t limit ourselves and allow our resume to be the sole indicator of who we are.

“Curiosity is the one determinant for success; it’s the source of innovation.”

As Kristian put it, “What makes people special is where disparate interests intersect.” By having passion about a problem, a solution, or an idea you are more likely to push yourself everyday to reach your goal. By having a general sense of curiosity you are more likely to explore other opportunities and interests. And coupling your passion with curiosity is where you start to stand apart from the crowd.

Ask Good Questions
At this week’s Linking Indy Women, I had the pleasure of hearing Heather Haas discuss what it means to “ask good questions”. If you’ve found yourself in a situation where you don’t have the expertise or experience to back up your ideas or opinions, she simply explained asking good questions is a great way to establish or validate credibility.

“Ask thought provoking questions that can get people to start thinking differently about how to reach the end goal.”

You may not know everything about the subject matter, but you are in the conversation for a reason and chances are there is value you can bring. First, listen to what is being said, identify the strong and weak elements, and think holistically about the entire situation. Then begin asking thought provoking questions. These questions should get others to think differently about the subject or see it in a way they haven’t before. In helping others see something in a new light you easily build credibility behind your name. Your ideas, viewpoints, and opinions have become valuable to them.

Pull Don’t Push
Asking questions to establish credibility, in turn, can open up an invitation for you to talk about you. Without it, Haas explained, people are less likely to invest in what you have to say. Only after you’ve proven your ability to understand their problem, do you earn the right to talk about you. So rather than jumping in with a “me-first” mentality, listen, ask, and earn your invitation to talk about yourself. It’s simply creating a pull and not a push conversation. Your chance of people investing in what you’re offering is significantly higher once you have established credibility.

No matter where you are in your career path we have all hit that roadblock where we’ve had to prove our abilities and ourselves before we could continue on. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what advice might you have or have been given when building credibility behind your name.

After being in session for only a few short months, ADI reached out to KA+A for help to develop a brand for each academy that could identify with and garner support from their surrounding communities.

Identity

We began building a foundation for ADI, by developing a parent brand (logo, tagline, and identity system) for their organization. The brands for Andrew and Padua, would then nestle under this system, featuring related design elements (colors and shapes), that would allow the parts to be unified when together, but stand strong when apart.

Mascots

It was important to note the unique personality and community of each Andrew and Padua Academy. Inspired by these attributes, we designed mascots (the Andrew Knights and the Padua Eagles) for the schools that the faulty, staff, and students could really rally behind. Using strong iconic images, we were able to create simple and clean designs that resonated with the elementary students and adults alike.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to build a brand for this Indianapolis academic family. Watching these establishments embrace their identity and become a part of a whole has been a wonderful experience for everyone involved.

Hooking RSS into email is nothing new. But until recently, the simplest way to send automated RSS updates was by using a feed service such as FeedBurner or FeedBlitz. Unfortunately, these solutions only provide very limited font and color customization of the email. And that’s about it.

FeedBurner’s RSS to Email Preview

After some quick research for FeedBurner alternatives, MailChimp’s RSS-to-email feature is pretty much a no-brainer. Using your feed URL, MailChimp can automate emails anytime you update your blog or RSS feed. These updates are then sent according to a defined delivery schedule, and only if there is new content. With MailChimp, not only do you have 100% control over the visual design and layout of the RSS content, but you are also given much more visibility into the activity of your subscribers, unlike the feed services that can only report high level statistics.

At KA+A we endeavor to make our everyday work our life’s work, by finding roles that require use of our team’s insatiable interests. The work day doesn’t stop at 5pm for us, but that doesn’t mean we’re all trapped behind the desk. Being involved in the community and culture of Indianapolis – whether it’s Verge, IndySpectator, events at the IMA, Pecha Kucha, Triton Brewing Co., or Techpoint – it is just as mission critical, as a brand workshop or building a website. By purposefully cultivating an interdisciplinary lifestyle, we gain a wealth of experience to apply when designing solutions for our clients’ pressing problems.

Following this fashion, I’ve found great direction in the Hemingway approach:

I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it. Going down the stairs when I had worked well, and that needed luck as well as discipline, was a wonderful feeling and I was free then to walk anywhere in Paris.

What Hemingway tapped into, that I find so brilliant, is that he’s not neglecting work; in fact, he admits that it’s always in his subconscious. What he realized though, is that by freeing up his mental faculties to recharge and become inspired, he wards against depleting himself of creative energy, remaining engaged in life and work.

If you’re interested in further guidance for finding your balance, here are a couple of recent resources I’ve found:

• The 99% /a>
• The Sabbath Manifesto

“Don’t steal, don’t deal drugs, and don’t miss your chance to hear all the inside stories of how this singular dark-comedy made it to the big screen.”

As I was scanning through the SXSW panel picker, the above description more than caught my attention. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to listen in on the SUPER panel to get an inside look at how this underdog movie struggled to be made.

Director and Writer James Gunn brilliantly thought up this movie more than 5 years ago, and had to wait for March 2011 for opening night! One of the biggest struggles to bring this movie to the big screen was funding. Janneane shared some great insights to their challenges in her previous blog.

As most of you can understand, when the financial means are lacking, there most likely isn’t a marketing budget. Gunn realized that with a DIY movie, social media was the perfect avenue to spread the word and build excitement around the film. He reached out to those in the trenches alongside him, Rainn Wilson & Ellen Page, to take advantage of their online influence and promote the film themselves!

SUPER is a movie made for a specific audience; Gunn, Wilson, and Page understood how to communicate with their online followers and spread the word to the right people. Working as a team they were able to get hundreds of people to stand in line for the SXSW panel & premiere. As I follow their tweets weeks after, the excitement only continues to grow.

When working with a tight budget (or no budget) social media can be a great way to communicate and interact with your audience. I’m sure most of you reading this are well aware of this. This panel only proved once more that social media knows no bounds.

The entire foundation for this movie was supported by the social communications that are readily available at our finger tips!

On Saturday night, our friends at Formstack helped host the Big Party for Small Business at The Highball. Highlights from the evening included my first school bus ride in 13 years; bottomless food and drinks; endless tables full of swag from some of our favorite online tools such as Harvest and MailChimp; meeting the co-founder of Alltop.com, Guy Kawasaki, at his Enchantment book signing; and last but not least, Janneane, Joe, and I dominating the bowling lanes.

Check out more photos from SXSW: Day 1 / Day 2

We have all been there – sitting in a room among co-workers and clients, ready to start (what should be) a crucial interaction to set the tone for the engagement; what is generally known as the “Kickoff Meeting.” If you have ever been involved in one of these meetings, you may remember walking away feeling a lack of excitement for the project, and realizing you spent your time talking about what you already knew.

Hoffman shared a few great insights on how to enhance yourself, your team, and your meetings to ensure they are mutually beneficial for everyone involved.

Every meeting should be a necessary step in accomplishing the final goal.

If your meeting does not apply to this simple guideline, don’t have it! Cancel (or reschedule) a meeting if any individual involved is not aware of their role or is not prepared to add value to the discussion; if you can’t contribute, don’t show up.

Additionally, Hoffman prescribed four simple steps to ensure that your meetings not only rock, but that they are productive and appreciated no matter the role you play.

Rule 1: Know Your Role
There are four roles that make a meeting work; however, the trick here is to ensure everyone involved knows their role and is readily prepared to act on it.

• Facilitator: A neutral individual that coordinates and manages the meeting.
• Recorder: An individual that records the dialogue in real time throughout the meeting. This real time capture (notes on a projector, whiteboard, or Basecamp Writeboard) allows for group members to clear up any misconception immediately and verify assumptions.
• Group Member: People participating in a the discussion; they should contribute ideas, avoid being defensive and provide checks and balances to the group.
• Leader: An individual that is a group member in the meeting, but prior to it, is responsible for establishing the meeting’s necessity and actionable outcome.

Rule 2: Know How to Facilitate a Meeting
To be a successful facilitator, do not evaluate or contribute to the task at hand. Focus on managing time and keeping the group members on topic. Every meeting requires a process and a set of tools to accomplish the goals you want to reach.

Everyone should take turns facilitating a meeting.

Rule 3: Know Where You Fit in the Process
In the words of Hoffman, “Know if you should be a divergent thinker or a convergent thinker.” Working to generate ideas and conduct an open discussion is helpful when discovering the correct path to take. However, it is not helpful at a kickoff; the path should have been identified prior to the meeting. Kickoff meetings require coming to an agreement on the actionable next step, which is undeniably necessary.

Rule 4: Obtain the Right Tools
Tools for a kickoff meeting can range from tangible materials (paper, pens, computers, etc.) to even different types of games/activities, based on the goal of the meeting.

The important fact to remember is: no matter your role, you can influence the energy and productivity of a meeting. Don’t wait around for someone else to take charge –try new processes and make your meetings rock.

This year we had another very successful turnout at our 4th annual SXSW Indy Invasion Crawfish Boil at the Boiling Pot, more than doubling last year’s attendance. Thanks again to everyone who stopped by. We hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we did, and we look forward to seeing you next year!

Check out more photos from SXSW: Day 1 / Day 3

Struttin’ around Downtown Austin

Beers at The Ginger Man

BBQ at Iron Works

Checking in at the Convention Center

Shuffleboard at Buffalo Billiards

Check out more photos from SXSW: Day 2 / Day 3