Utah Tech Spotlight

Utah Tech Spotlight Events

Local Review: Control4

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Jul 25

It’s been a year since I met with them last time, and we wanted to circle back and see what cool things were in the hopper.  Please join me as we hear from Eric Smith at Control4.

If you don’t see the video directly below, you should be able to access it from this link.

Utah Apple Users Group, Speed Pitching, and MORE!

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Jul 18

Howdy all!

First off, are you an iPhone junky?  If not, you probably will be soon… if not this generation then the next one (I really think the app store, plus GPS is going to prove the new social app platform once we can write deamons.)  I gotta tell you, as a die-hard PC person, I switched to a mapbook pro about a year ago and am really impressed and pleased with it (although Entourage still bugs me some days.)  So do you relate to any of this?  Or maybe you’re just “apple-curious”?  Well, good news: Wade Shearer has started the Utah Apple Users Group!  I’m not sure how exactly you pronounce UAUG… I would guess sort of like the guy in the rabbit cave from Monty Python’s Holy Grail:   The group of AAaaaaaauuuuug :)

In other news: We have done several video podcasts which have been posted and transcribed here.  We have a few more recorded and in the works.  Look to see those online soon, and we will be following up with a mothly newsletter linking to posts about up-and-coming businesses locally.

That leads us into another exciting point I want to announce here.  I had discussions with Brock Blake from Funding Universe regarding their Speed Pitching events.  For those that haven’t already seen me gush about these events, they basically allow a local entrepreneur a chance to connect with local investors.  Well, I will be working with Brock to look at all of the ideas each month, and to choose a few of the most exciting to review here.  We will also be sending out an email newsletter with links to each of the reviews.  So want to know what cool new companies are starting, and ideas are being funded here?  Sign up for the newsletter to stay informed!

Transcript: Jason Alba, Jibber Jobber, Linked In

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Jul 08

Howdy all…. For those that didn’t watch the video, or anyone who was so touched by it that they want to print it out, laminate it, and cover the walls of their strange litle room with it, we wanted to provide you with the transcript of our interview with Jason Alba.  I have pesonally learned so much from Jason about how to leverage social media, and what “hot fads” are realy not worth the effort at the time.

If you want to see the corresponding video interview you can check it out here.

We also have interviews wit Chris Johnson from SCI, and Eric Smith from Control 4 that we will be posting in the coming weeks.

JASON ALBA SEGMENT

[MUSIC PLAYING]
>> Steve Spencer:  Hi, everybody.  This is Steve Spencer from the Utah Tech Spotlight.  We’re here today with Jason Alba.  Or as I like to call Jason, because I’ve Jason for a while, Jason Cut the Crap Alba.

Jason, there’s so much buzz around social media and social networking.  And if you’re not careful, it’s real easy to waste a whole heck of a lot of time.

And one of the things that Jason is spectacular at is really sorting through that and figuring out where there’s value and how to really expand your network without wasting your time.  So Jason really has the yoda of valuable social networking.

I understand that you’ve recently written a book on one of the popular social networking platforms, right?

>> Jason Alba:  Yeah, so in September I came out with “I’m on LinkedIn    Now What?”

And in January, I think, or February I came out with “I’m on Facebook    Now What?” With Jesse Stay.

>> Steve Spencer:  If somebody, especially right now, everybody is wondering about the economy and everything else, if somebody’s wanting to start to leverage of social networking, what would you suggest is one of the first platforms they should look at and maybe throw us a couple of pointers?

>> Jason Alba:  Are you looking at from a personal/professional perspective or a company perspective?  There are a lot of similarities but there are differences.

>> Steve Spencer:  I guess from a personal perspective, an employee who is maybe a little worried, maybe a little spooked, maybe just wants to hedge their bets.

>> Jason Alba:  Okay.  So I mean, obviously, from a professional perspective, I think you should have a LinkedIn profile.  That’s where professionals are.  Whether you’re in transition or not.  It’s like a business card on steroids.

Last I heard, I don’t know if this is an official number, but 27 million people on LinkedIn.  So it’s come a long ways in the last couple of years.  It’s becoming    it has become, I think, mainstream.  And there’s nothing wrong with having that profile on LinkedIn.

Recruiters, hiring managers, vendors, partners, customers, all these people might look for your profile in LinkedIn to see what your background is and how credible you are and stuff like that.  That I would say is the easiest lowest hanging fruit thing to do.

>> Steve Spencer:  It’s almost like your business card/light weight resume online, right?

>> Jason Alba:  Yeah.  The thing about the slash light weight resume is there’s always these questions in the resume world, the objective statement, how many pages should it be, what format should it be in.  LinkedIn has this other kind of format that is what I would say probably the only other professionally accepted format for something like this.

>> Steve Spencer:  Now, this book really    and your involvement in guiding people in LinkedIn really is just a continuation of something that’s been a passion of yours for quite a while, right?

>> Jason Alba:  Passion is such a funny word.  I wouldn’t say I’m passionate about social networking.  But I started in the social space to market my own business.  So all of the stuff I had    well, before my books it was a website JibberJobber.  What I did, because I was bootstrapping this, because I didn’t have money, I didn’t have a marketing firm behind me, no marketing know how.  I basically started to go out into the social environments and try and find people that I basically could communicate my message to.

And I think I had some pretty good successes in that space, and I learned a little bit about the social space.  And then I started getting people that were saying, hey, you’re telling me to get a LinkedIn profile but what do I do now?  That kind of led into going more into the social space.

>> Steve Spencer:  Now, when we look at networking, and even removing the current buzzword, which is “social,” your own platform, your own product and your own company, JibberJobber, really is all about the not just the power and the value but really the necessity of networking.

>> Jason Alba:  Yeah, when you talk to networking people, a few things they talk about like is knowing who is in your network and how you know certain people and what the strength of the relationship is.

And one of those really key things that most of us are bad at, which is following up, these are all things that a typical CRM system would do, sales force gold mine act or something like that.

What I did with JibberJobber I took all the CRM concepts and married it with personal, professional career management and relationship management concepts for an individual.  And with the idea that, like, for example, if I worked for you and we have a sales force, when I leave in two years I don’t get my contact out of sales force.  That’s your company data.

>> Steve Spencer:  Right.

>> Jason Alba:  JibberJobber is the tool that I would have for the rest of my career to keep all of my professional contacts no matter where I was employed.  So it kind of transcends all the different jobs I might have between now and retirement.

>> Steve Spencer:  So when you look at JibberJobber, which is my own kind of personal    even beyond CRM, it really tracks not just who I know.  So it’s well beyond my own personal Outlook address book.

>> Jason Alba:  I would say so, absolutely.

>> Steve Spencer:  It tracks, okay, who have I been communicating with, what message did I communicate to them so that I can really go back and track the history and the relationship and how

>> Jason Alba:  And if you’re using a CRM you’ll be doing a lot of that same stuff.  On of the tings we did with JibberJobber, we took out sales cycle, sales jargon.  It’s personal/professional career management.  So relationships, target companies that I may ever be interested in dealing with, whether as an employer or a customer, vendor, whatever, I can track all of this.  And this is my personal relationship management, career management tool.

>> Steve Spencer:  So you started with JibberJobber.

>> Jason Alba:  Started with JibberJobber.

>> Steve Spencer:  And really started to help people build their own network, their own, not just to go out and find a job, but really to build their own safety net and career expansion program, right?

>> Jason Alba:  I’ve even gone as far to say I don’t believe in job security, but I call it a job security thing, because that’s really how people are finding jobs through their networks.

If you have a network and know what it is and know how strong it is and you know when you last followed up with somebody and you have their contact information, how powerful is that as opposed to sitting down and saying:  I need a job but I don’t really know anybody.

>> Steve Spencer:  One of the things that I found really interesting, because within my own company I’m very passionate about my employees networking and getting to know people.

It’s funny, because, initially, so many employees, if they’re happy with their job, feel like they’re betraying their employer if they go out start building their network.

>> Jason Alba:  I felt that way.

>> Steve Spencer:  I don’t want to imply that I’m unhappy with my job, but one of the things we have found is, when you expand the realms of your relationships, you know what, that not only teaches you things, which makes you a more valuable employee, but it makes you build relationships with people who now know about your company and it tends to drive more business into the company.

>> Jason Alba:  And it should.  Why can’t every employee be an evangelist?  And I think a lot of employers are afraid for that, because what it could lead to.

>> Steve Spencer:  Makes me of, I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “The Butterfly Effect.”

There’s a scene where the guy has his plate in front of him eating his food, protecting it like this.  And one of the other characters says, you know, he must have spent time in prison because in prison you have to be really careful to guard your food or everybody else will steal it.  It’s just funny how many employers tend to feel that, I have to

>> Jason Alba:  And the employees aren’t dumb.  They know.  See, what you talked about is there’s a feeling of could I or should I go out and network.  The last company I was a general manager.  I thought if I went out and networked, even on behalf of my company, it was like I was cheating on my company.  Or cheating on my employees.

I was going to work every day telling my employees why it was great to work there, how could I think of going out and networking.  But I just didn’t understand the whole idea of real relationships.

>> Steve Spencer:  So JibberJobber, building your personal network; LinkedIn really taking that and taking one of the social platforms that’s been really widely accepted I think in the professional community been accepted really more than any other social platform.  And that’s led into a lot of what you’re doing now, even on top of and synergistic with those, which is a lot of speaking, right?

>> Jason Alba:  Yeah, I’ve started doing speaking.  It’s pretty cool.

>> Steve Spencer:  So what are you seeing?  My understanding is that something you really started getting pushed for.  People were saying, you’ve got this platform that does this, you’ve got this book that tells me how to do that, there was demand as opposed to you going out and saying, hey, I want to cultivate being a public speaker.  What is the demand?  What have you seen people doing?

>> Jason Alba:  It’s only recently that I started telling people I speak.  By the way, I’d love to speak at your next annual conference.

But all the speaking arrangements I’ve had so far that were paid, like professional speaking, these are people that have found me online.  They either want me to talk about social networking in general from a professional business perspective, how do I make money with these online tools, what should companies be doing with facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and blogging and all these things you can do online.

We have no idea.  We don’t understand it.  We hardly have our own LinkedIn profiles.  So the biggest question, I think, would be how do you make money from these tools online?  But a lot of people, I’m amazed.  I was at a Silicon Valley, I was on a book tour and I was talking about facebook.  About 10 minutes into my presentation this guy raises his hand.  This is Silicon Valley.  He says:  Can you just explain what social networking is because I’ve never heard of that before.

>> Steve Spencer:  Really?

>> Jason Alba:  And I was like where am I?  Am I back in Utah?  I did not expect that question in Silicon Valley.  It reminded me, though, that so many people, you read about it.  You hear about it and people talk about linked in.  You’ll see their profiles on their e mail signature.  But there’s still a ton of people that have no idea what it is or why they should get involved.  I was speaking just a couple of nights ago at the National Speakers Association chapter in Salt Lake.  And there was, these are very, very sharp people.  And they’re small business owners.  They’re promoting themselves.  And I think social tools are excellent marketing channels for them to find new people, nurture relationships and develop their brand, right?  And a lot of these people have little or no social strategy.

They don’t understand what LinkedIn is or how they can actively use it as opposed to passively use it; the same thing with facebook and Twitter and blogging and stuff like that.  So there’s the question in general and then there’s the actual question of how do we get real business value out of it.

>> Steve Spencer:  Gotcha.  So anybody who is watching or listening or reading the transcription of our video today, if there are more interested in your book or JibberJobber or having you come speak, I assume jibberjobber.com is the best place.

>> Jason Alba:  Jibberjobber.com on the very top, you’ll see a link to each of my two books.  There’s a thing there called CEO Training, which is little one  to two hour webinars that I’ve recorded on various things.  And so you can pick any of those up. And then at the bottom there’s a Contact Us.

I’m actually going to put a hands on workshop at Salt Lake probably in the next month or two and spend about four or five hours going through all of these different tools and how to actually get utility out of them from a professional perspective.

>> Steve Spencer:  Wonderful.

>> Jason Alba:  So I’ll let you know when I do that.

>> Steve Spencer:  Thank you.  Hopefully I’ll be invited.

>> Jason Alba:  Cool.

>> Steve Spencer:  I guess one last question, just to wrap it up on a light note.  If you could choose any one move from a Kung Fu movie to be able to do in real life, what would it be?

>> Jason Alba:  I’ve always been    I’m not a Kung Fu movie watcher, but I’ve always been intrigued with Bruce Lee’s three inch punch.  I should start practicing that.  Three inches.

>> Steve Spencer:  Next time we meet.

>> Jason Alba:  Cool.

>> Steve Spencer:  Jason, thanks.

>> Jason Alba:  Nice to meet you.
[Laughter]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Wingate Web: Jason Mitchell transcript

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Jul 07

For those that might have missed it, be sure to go check out the interview with Jason Mitchell from Wingate Web.  As a follow-up, the transcript of that sessions is posted below:

JASON MITCHELL SEGMENT

[MUSIC PLAYING]
>> Steve Spencer:  Hi, everybody.  This is Steve Spencer from the Utah Tech Spotlight.  I’m here today with Jason Mitchell from Wingate Web.  Jason, thanks for meeting with us today.

>> Jason Mitchell:  Thanks for having me.

>> Steve Spencer:  And as we ever are with the Utah Tech Spotlight, we’re really out to bring more exposure to Utah and the really cool companies in Utah and really the reach and the capabilities of those companies and how it extends so very, very far beyond that.

Jason, I guess to start us out a little bit, can you tell us a little bit about Wingate Web and who you are and what you do?

>> Jason Mitchell:  Sure.

I am the director of product management.  I oversee the product development pipeline and process, kind of the features that we want to build from a strategic standpoint and based on our customer feedback.  I also oversee the marketing activities as well.  So I kind of wear several hats like most people do.
But as far as the company, we’ve been around since ‘98.  So been around for 10 years now.  And we play in the corporate event management space.  We are not event planners.  We don’t plan food and beverage.  We have built technology

>> Steve Spencer:  As you can tell, we

>> Jason Mitchell:  Yeah, I mean we have built technology that automates every process involved in managing large scale conferences that involve thousands of attendees, hundreds of sessions, hundreds of exhibitors over a week’s period of time, typically.

Our typical size event that our technology manages is probably about 5,000 attendees, upwards of 30,000 attendees.

When you get into conferences that size, they have complex needs that you can’t just solve with commodity systems.  So there’s a lot of people that do online registration.

There’s a lot of people that, you could throw up a website, capture people’s names, a little profile information, run their credit card and they’re registered for an event.  But for these very intensive conferences, there’s a lot more information and a lot more logistics that goes into managing them to make sure that this event goes well.  And that’s where our systems shine.

>> Steve Spencer:  Sure.  So I would imagine, not just a CRM, which, like you said, it captures your attendees, what they want to do, but also really manages not just your events within the event, but also quantities, I’ve got this many seats, who is signed up, who is speaking, and really the work flow beyond that as well, right?

>> Jason Mitchell:  Exactly.

>> Steve Spencer:  If somebody signs up, if I have to find speakers for certain things, what are the steps that need to happen and who needs to do those?

>> Jason Mitchell:  Yes, that’s actually    that’s a good point.
One of the things we started out with, in fact, in ‘98 is our content lifecycle management application.  At these events, from conception all the way down to actual execution on site, there’s a lot of steps along the way.

So they have a process called Call For Papers, which any customer, anybody can come in and suggest sessions.  So, say, Cisco Networkers, for example, somebody wants to have a session on new networking devices, whatever.  They submit, I’m Jason Mitchell and I’m really interested in this topic, here’s a speaker I would suggest for it.  Here’s kind of some bullet points.

So you submit it through.  So you get hundreds of these sessions, suggestions coming in, and then there’s a process, an approval process where different teams go through and they look through those and they go that’s a great idea.  No, not so good.  This one’s pretty good.

So then they kind of filter and whittle it down to a set of 100 sessions or 50 sessions that are going to be taught.  And then from there, you know, it just gets    every process along the way is automated.

So the voting process, the approval process, the task management, assigning of speakers.  And then once a speaker and a topic are assigned, then you’ve got all kinds of tasks that then a speaker has to fulfill before they can actually speak at the session.  Some of those are submitting N number of drafts of their PowerPoint presentation, which is then approved along the way.  Submitting their AV requirements.  Submitting their shirt size, if there’s an official shirt they’re supposed to wear.  All of that stuff.

And then once they get on site, the production of those PowerPoints, turning them into PDFs and making them readily available for the attendees to search and to look at during or after the event.

That whole process is one of our core applications that we’ve built on top of registration, on top of exhibitor management, on top of partner management and session scheduling and social networking.  And I mean there’s tons and tons of other applications, but that was one of our core ones that we built first.

>> Steve Spencer:  And add to that the value proposition of the reusability of it, right?  Okay, here’s what I did last year.  Instead of starting from scratch again, instead of winding everybody up.

You hear all the time about these companies that have staff that literally works all year long to put on an event.  This makes it so much easier, because instead of starting from scratch all over again you’re saying I’ve got a template, I’ve got everything in place, let’s just go tweak, poke, tune what we need to tune but let’s leverage the labor we’ve done.

>> Jason Mitchell:  Definitely.  And we see that with a lot of our customers, where we will take their last year’s conference data and we will basically port over the stuff that they want to reuse.  And it makes it that much easier.  And we’ll see that as well where they’ll have an event series, potentially, where they’ll have a West Coast version of a conference and an East Coast.  And it’s pretty much the same.  And they’ll just go:  I want this and I want it instead of West Coast I want it East Coast.  So they’re just up and running and simultaneously.

>> Steve Spencer:  You guys are an ASP, you’re not (inaudible) software.  So no software to buy and install or any of that; they just use the stuff?

>> Jason Mitchell:  No, it’s up and running.  It’s all web based.
All you need is a browser and you’re up and managing your complex events very quickly.

>> Steve Spencer:  So one of the other things that I wanted to make sure that everybody understands, and I already have some perspective on this personally, is really the reach of your company.  Because my own company is a marketing agency of sorts.

And we work with companies to help them prepare their message, and preparing for events is part of that.  So throughout the country we’ve dealt a fair amount with events.  And I’ve dealt with other companies who do registration management and things like that.

And you go around the country, and Wingate Web is a name they know and, quite frankly, are spooked by.  So I think it’s really important that everybody understand we’re not just talking about Utah events.  We’re not just talking about a Utah company.

Even beyond national events, you guys have a very global reach.

>> Jason Mitchell:  Yes, we do.

Actually, we have an office in Bracknel in the United Kingdom, have a small staff there that’s growing.  But our AMEA business will probably be, this year I think it will be about 15% of our overall business.  Might be a little bit more than that.

But I know that going forward, the projections are that the size of the business in Europe, specifically, will probably match our domestic business within two or three years.  It’s even more fragmented in Europe, as far as the event technology providers.

And we’re finding that once we go in with a consolidated solution, that it’s not just registration, but it manages all the details of your events, that they’re clamoring it for it.

They have a lot of meetings going on.  In Europe people travel between countries regularly.  And they’re always going to different events.  And so there’s a lot more events.  They’re a little smaller than they are in the U.S., but there’s a lot more of them.

And we’re excited for the growth that we’ve seen, and we know we will continue to see in Europe.

>> Steve Spencer:  So not only do you have a huge reach, but, really, the scope of the companies that you’re working with is very impressive as well.

Can you talk a little bit about some of the names or the shows that some of the viewers listeners/readers of the transcripts may be familiar with?

>> Jason Mitchell:  Definitely.  I think most of the companies we work with are household names in the tech industry.  Any major tech company who has a sizable conference is most likely using our systems to manage those.

So, for example, Cisco Live, which is Cisco Networkers, large event, about 20,000 attendees.  It’s actually happening next month in June down in Orlando.  Cisco is one of our big customers.

EMC, as well, and all of their sister companies.  So EMC, VMWare and RSA Security are all customers as well, and they have a number of conferences that they have.  HP has been a customer for a long time.  They were one of our first customers that adopted our entire platform.

Novell, of course we’ve done Novell brain share for years.  As well, outside the tech space, we’ve got some traction in sort of the medical biotech industry.

>> Steve Spencer:  That was huge here.

>> Jason Mitchell:  And the education market with Cerner.  Cerner Health is one of our customers.  G.E. Healthcare.

And then as well in the finance, sort of vertical, as well, we do have some traction in there with some very large household name customers that I wish I could tell you about but I’d have to kill you.

>> Steve Spencer:  You guys can’t see the guys in the suits standing just off camera.  He means that.
(Laughter)

>> Jason Mitchell:  So very large enterprise companies that we do business with.  And they spend millions of dollars on their events.  And for them to spend    our software is not cheap, you know.  It’s over 200 to, some customers may spend almost a million dollars with us.  It’s not cheap.  But for a large customer that is spending $20 million for an event to run smoothly, it is a wise investment.  And it definitely pays off.

>> Steve Spencer:  I want to touch on that point just a little bit, because you guys do these big events, but really there is an opportunity for some of the smaller events as well, right?

>> Jason Mitchell:  Yeah.

>> Steve Spencer:  So if somebody’s viewing this later and were interested, how do they really know whether or not they’re your target market, whether they’re the type of event or type of customer that it makes sense to contact you?

>> Jason Mitchell:  Right.  And I should step back and talk about our two product lines.  And the product that I’ve been talking about mostly is called Conference.  And it is built to manage a large intensive conference of thousands of attendees, hundreds of sessions and exhibitors, that type of scale.  And there is the ability for that product to scale down smaller to maybe a thousand to 2000 attendees with or without an exhibit hall.  That’s kind of our Conference product.  It’s a one and done type of system.  You buy it and you manage your conference and then it’s done.

We have another product called Event Console.  That’s where, I think, when you’re talking about going down into the mid market, mid to upper small market, if that’s even a market.

>> Steve Spencer:  I like to think

>> Jason Mitchell:  Upper small.

>> Steve Spencer:  Not fat, I’m largely skinny.

>> Jason Mitchell:  I’ll leave that one right there.  I’m not going to    so Event Console, it’s a persistent system used to manage hundreds of smaller events.

So that one, Event Console will scale about up to a thousand attendees well with much smaller content management needs, much smaller exhibit management needs.  Still very flexible registration.  But that system is helping us get a lot more traction in the mid market.

>> Steve Spencer:  So I’ve got an event coming up, single event, one time thing, maybe 500 people, I should look you up?

>> Jason Mitchell:  Yeah, we would have to see how it would work.  But with Event Console that’s something that we could service or potentially with one of our other product lines within our greater company.

>> Steve Spencer:  So what have you seen as the biggest changes in the way that events and event planning and event execution and, quite frankly, event attendance, what do you see that has happened recently and what do you see on the horizon, where are we headed with this?

>> Jason Mitchell:  I think face to face events, I don’t think they’re going away.  And neither do our customers.
Neither do we as a company.

But what we do see is the ability to have more niche events.  As I was explaining earlier about our presence in Europe, there are a lot of organizations, Cisco, for example, they have a large conference here in the U.S., but they are also having another conference in Europe.  And it’s Cisco Live Europe.

So what they’re doing is distributing it to make it easier, as gas prices are getting more expensive, airfare is getting more expensive.  It’s harder to fly back and forth across the pond.

We are seeing these more niche events being taken to outside of the U.S. into other areas.  And one of the other things that I think is worth mentioning with events, a couple trends I’m seeing, is social networking.  It’s changed our lives.  I can’t live without facebook.  I’m kidding.  But you see there’s a lot of ways for people to interact.

>> Steve Spencer:  LinkedIn.
>> Jason Mitchell:  LinkedIn is a great example.  It’s a business networking site.  It’s got great application in the events industry.  We’ve actually integrated with LinkedIn and facebook with our social networking application that’s integrated into our platform.  The nice thing about having an integrated social networking platform that has been    it’s been very well received.
Cisco is using it.  EMC is using it and a number of other customers, is that you control the data.  And you can control the experience.

You know who the attendees are.  You know all the profile information about them.  You know, when you attend an event and register, you have to fill out a lot more profile data, a lot more than if you were to go buy a shirt on nordstrom.com or whatever.

With that data, we can then customize and personalize that attendee’s experience within the social networking realm, when you get on site everything from your badge, from how you interact with the event is personalized.  So that’s one thing that helps us as a company is we own a lot of the data and we manage a lot of the data.

We can personalize the event exactly to you as Steve Spencer as attending Cisco Networkers Week and roll out the red carpet for you if that’s what the business rules require.

>> Steve Spencer:  Good.  Jason, I sure appreciate you taking a few minutes with us today.  And thanks so much everybody.  We’ll talk to you later.
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