A pretty smart guy I know has long-run his successful Columbus business by a simple philosophy – hire the person, then create the function. This principal, at least in this instance has proven to be extremely valuable to the organization’s growth. Hire the person right for the organization, provide a little guidance, discover their talent.

Looking at this philosophy through a slightly different lens, one could argue that when “hiring the person”, one considers their talent – as they are clearly and obviously interwoven. My cousin Billy might be the nicest guy in the world, but if hiring a box of rocks seems a better investment, look elsewhere. On the subject of talent (and character), I recently read an article on the World Cup that suggested a Nation’s team is representative of that Nation’s characteristics. The same applies for business. Bring in the well balanced talent, construct a great team, accomplish great things.

And so recently I’ve noticed a bit of a parallel to this philosophy with Facebook. A seemingly endless series of high-end talent acquisitions has me very intrigued by what Facebook might have in store in the near future. The most recent of these buys were announced yesterday – Matt Papakipos and Jocelyn Goldfein. Matt, before leading the architecture team for Google Chrome OS was the director of architecture at NVIDIA and Co-Founder of PeakSteam. Jocelyn Goldfein hails from VMWare where she was VP and general manager of the desktop business unit. A few years back, another Googler made the Facebook leap – Sheryl Sandberg. Previously Google’s VP of Global Online Sales and Operations, she came on as Facebook’s COO. Before that, it was Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt (Firefox co-founders), and more recently is was Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor, the creators of Gmail, Adsense and Friendfeed.

I won’t bore you with analogies to famous international soccer players, but it is fairly obvious that Facebook is (and has been) building an all-star team. Hire the person/talent, create the function.

And even though I would love to be a fly on the wall at those secretive Facebook brainstorming sessions, I look around the dynamIt office and notice something similar occurring here. A microcosm of Facebook-grade talent acquisition. As the freshman on the team (though maybe not for long), I love knowing our team is primed for great(er) things in the near future – and that our bench is ‘deep’, as they say. I see that “hire the person/talent then create the function” mentality in action, and I invite you to come see it for yourself.

Contrary to popular beliefs, creatives can’t just sit down first thing in the morning and produce “pretty” things. The creative process takes time, and more importantly…inspiration.

Sometimes it takes nothing more than an “ah-ha!” moment the night before, where you’re able to envision every little detail about this thing you want to create, and you know exactly how it will turn out. Other times creating a decent concept that you’re happy with is an uphill battle, in the rain, wearing heavy armor, carrying sandbags. It can be a constant struggle.

In my opinion, if you don’t know what great design is, you’ll never be able to create it. Consuming design, of all shapes and forms, is just as important and beneficial as practicing it. So that’s why I make it a point each day to be inspired, and stay on top of the game. Here is how I do it, and what inspires me:

Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. Their aim is to inform readers about the latest trends and techniques in Web design and development.

Abduzeedo

The list could go on, and these are just some of my daily go-to resources on the web, but there are plenty of other places to get inspired off line as well. Take the time out, about 45 min to an hour, to just soak up how-to’s, newest trends, awesome branding, and just overall great design across all mediums. The best thing you can do as a designer is look outside of your box, because you never know what might give you that spark.

In this day and age we hear a lot about ‘personalization’. The concept is prevalent in areas such as healthcare, retail, banking and financing programs, and digital identities on social networks. Data translates to individual profiles and treatment that drill down to me, my preferences and my tendencies.

When The Ohio State Medical Center talked to us about ProjectOne – the 1 billion dollar initiative that will realize state-of-the-art facilities, environmental preservation efforts, thousands of jobs and advances in medicine that will change the face of prevention and treatment – we heard a lot of numbers. Those numbers were phenomenal, exciting and impressive. However, we knew the core of ProjectOne was the people the project will enable and serve at the Med Center, in the community, and the economy. ProjectOne will ultimately be the sum-total of effort, dollars, energy and visions shared and contributed by people.

So, we set to work developing a campaign and an experience for the official groundbreaking to surface the people who will build, grow and be served by ProjectOne.

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The solution needed to be utilitarian. We had functional goals to accomplish. It also needed to coincide in vision and experience with the gravity and future-orientation of ProjectOne. Truly, ProjectOne is helping evolve The Ohio State University from excellence to eminence.

Visit the ProjectOne website to learn about the vitals, to donate and to keep up on progress.

The design showcases the physical representation of the project – renderings of the incredible facilities that will be a reality in the coming years. It utilizes visual RNA blot test results as inspiration to house the fundamental building blocks of ProjectOne: One University, The Future of Medicine, Economic Impact, Community Impact and The Environment.

Click into one of the pillars and see the stream of stories. What makes ProjectOne a success is the personal ownership held by the OSUMC, Columbus and medical communities. The initiative will create jobs and enhance what is already one of the top academic medical centers in the world. However, without people, buildings, laboratories, beds and offices are only spaces and objects. The website acts as a sort of digital time capsule: gathering stories at the groundbreaking and in the months to come which will guide the project and lay the foundation for the future.

To capture these stories, we built an iPad application and installed it on a group of iPads. These iPads made their debut during the groundbreaking event on June 18th. They visit events, meetings and satellite facilities at OSUMC. They make guest appearances in cafeterias, in hallways and parking garages. The app allows people to tell their stories, share their vision and state their expectations for ProjectOne. The stories are collected in a web-based administrative area where OSUMC staff can review and push them live to the website. The stories can be read and shared as they collectively benchmark and articulate the excitement and dedication so many people have to the Future of Medicine and an initiative that will benefit communities in so many ways.

The combination of modern devices, software and experience has allowed the OSUMC staff and community to ensure that the single largest project in Ohio State University history begins and is infused with people.

If you’re around the medical center, keep an eye out for iPads. Pick one up and share your vision for how this endeavor will impact you and your community.

If you won’t be near one of the iPads, hop over to ProjectOne.osu.edu and click ‘Share Your Story‘ on the homepage. Use the site to be a part of this amazing story.

In an always-on, broadband-prevalent digital world shaped by the likes of YouTube, video on the web is commonplace. We interact with video in its various online varieties everyday. However, before the end-user can experience the video it must be sent to them in one of many digital formats using a specific delivery methods. How this happens is currently evolving in order to provide the best quality video to the most people with the least effort.

Whether the delivery method is live streaming, on-demand streaming, or canned progressive download, there has traditionally been a wide array of formats in which the video can be encoded, each with a different browser/OS/platform for which they were designed. For example, Windows Media Player works best in, you guessed it, Windows.

Flash Video Content

For a long time, web types had been looking for that single format that will readily play a quality video to all web users independent of browser or platform. Enter Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash and the Flash Video Format (FLV). The Flash plugin, love it or hate it, is running on 99% of internet browsing desktop computers. This incredible penetration effectively solves the accessibility problem as sites such as YouTube can serve up video in FLV format and be confident that nearly all internet users can easily view it. Today, Flash remains the best solution due to its high level of compatibility as well as its ability to handle high quality videos.

HTML5 Video

The HTML5 Specification, which defines the future of in-browser web technologies, introduces a native video tag that will allow for easy delivery of video content. Moving forward this is the way to go as it works towards every goal of web video usability. The quality of video with HTML5 video is unmatched as it uses newest video formats and the latest in compression technology. Implementation calls for the least effort — it is as simple as dropping in a simple HTML tag. No more building a player and figuring out how to embed it into a page. This aides web developers certainly, but also the web content editor as a Content Management System will be more capable of handling video. Finally, because it is a web standard rather than relying on a plugin, it will have support across platforms and devices. This means videos will be served on mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets that do not support certain plugins (read: iPhone and iPad).

The Future of Video

The future of video will use the HTML5 video spec exclusively, but it won’t happen overnight. The solution will be excellent for content providers, web developers and web consumers alike, but the journey there will not be easy. Many things must happen first.

1. Browsers need to evolve: the support for HTML5 is growing, the latest versions of  Opera, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox all support some form or another of the <video> tag. The nightly builds of IE9 also provide support for HTML5 video. But, the compatibility needs to continue to increase.

2. Old browsers must be phased out. It doesn’t matter how advanced new browsers become if they don’t get widespread adoption. Flash has been such a boon to internet video because of its 99% market penetration. If people still use old browsers the compatibility issues will continue.

3. A single video format must prevail. We are almost seeing a small step backward in terms of video encoding. Presently, there are three common HTML5 video formats (OGG, MP4, and WebM), one of these must prevail (or at least gain support from all major browsers) if HTML5 video is to succeed.

Either way, it is exciting to think of a web where video is as simple to implement as a static image.

Examples and Resources

Several major players are already experimenting with HTML5 video. We’ve been playing around with HTML5 video a little bit ourselves, but presently there are many hoops to jump through to keep the video playing correctly in all browsers with HTML5. Here are some links to examples and resources if you’re interested.

• HTML5 Working Draft
• Wikipedia HTML5 Video
• YouTube and HTML5
• CBS Publicly Testing iPad-Ready Video
• Video for Everybody

Rock on the Range: How State Your Cause used social media and gorilla marketing

In addition to being a developer here at dynamIt, I’m also the manager for the Columbus-based band State Your Cause. 2010 has been a phenomenal year of progress for SYC – opening for national acts Saving Abel and Smile Empty Soul, recording in the Orlando studio of Brett Hestla (Creed, Dark New Day), and most recently, playing on this year’s Rock on the Range. As I begin to look back on Rock on the Range and analyze our execution, I thought of sharing an inside look at what we did through each step of the process.

Leading up to the live performance

Coming off of a few national shows, we were contacted about being part of a “Battle of the Bands” held at the local music venue Alrosa Villa. Just with all other opportunities, we analyzed the cost/benefit of the event and decided to participate. The total bands turned out to be 28, including a number of notable competitors.

After we committed to the show, a full-force push began. While I left all things musical up to the band, I laid the framework for our social media campaign and offline marketing efforts. During this time I planned out the procedures for our messaging life cycle – what message, how often, and what channels for each stage. Ahead of the performance we populated the expected online outlets – MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube.

Our message was simple – We need EVERYONE in attendance. We discounted tickets, made combination deals, and in some cases even offered transportation. A body in the crowd had more value than the price of the ticket. The energy and appearance of a large and excited crowd is invaluable – even more so when you’re being judged. Beg, borrow or steal, we did everything we could do to maximize the crowd.

Secondly, we helped the crowd feel more energized by providing props. The day before the show I bought poster-board, markers and a large number of white shirts. It’s amazing how great a crowd looks when part of a “white-out” and holding hand made signs (college basketball anyone?). Total cost for maximizing the crowds appearance? Less than $50.

Day of the performance

All live performance set times were randomly determined and we were given the first set on day 2 (of a total of 3 days). We didn’t receive any favors – having our set begin before 6:00pm. We began the day making a round of calls to those fans we had yet to get confirmation from, continuing to maximize attendance. In the couple of hours ahead of the performance, updates were sent through all online channels and the core fan group began distributing stickers, signs and posters to be decorated.

Everyone with the band felt that we had a solid performance which represented some of our best work. We cleared our equipment off the stage and then went to meet both our existing and newly made fans. Feedback from everyone was positive. We left the venue feeling content with whatever outcome may be delivered to us.

Text voting period

After the performance we began the push for first-round voting. Voting for this round was done by cell phone text messaging. We’ve all seen/heard it – “text XYZ to 555” to vote for your pick. The demographic for which this is the most likely (about 16-35) was our target fan base. Call us lucky, call us a good fit – we were positioned well for moving on.

Text messaging is an interesting medium. There’s undoubtedly large overlap with those who understand text-based voting and those who use social media. That’s something we knew we could take advantage of and would be a big advantage.

Semi-finalists announced

As results were announced on ABC 6 / FOX 28, all team members of SYC stayed glued to the TV. When we heard our name, the flood of phone calls and text messages began. Selected to advance, we started two additional promotional pushes.

First we quickly realized that distributing the Fox 28 contest URL, the medium used for final voting, was cumbersome at best. I quickly registered a handful of domain names that would be easy to communicate to fans and would forward the visitor on to the voting page. These domains, led by vote4stateyourcause.com, would be crucial to us mobilizing those people we engaged on the street.

Secondly, we designed a recognizable Rock on the Range themed poster to distribute to local businesses. This poster clearly communicated the ROTR event and also included State Your Cause and the previously mentioned domain name. We distributed these to everyone in our collective network. While this primarily included bars and music venues, we also expanded the list to restaurants, coffee shops and a music store. All high traffic, long duration sites were considered.

Winner Announced

As with the previous announcement, everyone was glued to their TV sets. We knew that the competition was strong and we were unsure if the competition had out hustled us. We felt confident that we’d done just about all we could, but not if it was enough.

Then the announcement came – State Your Cause was going to Rock on the Range. When the word came, we all were left speechless. Everything we did worked. While we may not have executed perfectly, it was enough to beat out the other two bands.

Leading up to Rock on the Range

With the competition over, our attention was now focused on maximizing our exposure ahead of the ROTR weekend. We were given the opportunity to perform on FOX 28′s “Good Morning Columbus” as part of winning the contest. We set up our equipment, rocked the house and was subsequently asked to return to the show later in the week.

While it would have been easy to coast into Rock on the Range, we did not. One of the floated ideas we acted on was to capitalize on our tickets with backstage access. Rather than giving them to a select group of fans (and hurt our relationship with others), we did what we felt was fair – raffled them off. This was not the only motivation however. In quickly setting up a contest site, we enabled ourselves to collect contact information from entrants nationwide. Anyone who wanted the chance to win the tickets would provide their name, email, mobile number, and address. All information collected can be used to target communication to them in the future. Total cost? Just $10 for the domain name.

Rock on the Range weekend

Being given access to some of your favorite bands can be an overwhelming experience. Getting access all at the same time even more so. Instead of getting completely wrapped up in personal objectives, I set the ground work for things to come. The level of access to key people within the industry during this weekend is something that we may never have again.

Media outlets flowed throughout the grounds, but most also had a presence in the dedicated media tent located backstage. It was here that I set up live interviews for the band with stations throughout the country. While we’re progressive in our approach to promotion, the level of exposure from traditional radio is still unmatched by most outlets. We spent a number of hours circulating each station and spreading our name.

In addition to engaging radio outlets, we also generated leads from suppliers, potential sponsors, and band management contacts. With a number of the relationships currently in development, the weekend has already proved to be one of the most important milestones in our short history.

We left the weekend with more than we could have imagined. Access to 30,000+ music fans, pockets full of new contacts, and an experience none of us will forget.

Yesterday’s Columbus AMA June Luncheon featured a presentation by Google’s Head of Retail, Mark Marinacci. After delivering last year’s most heralded presentation, Mark was invited back — this time to discuss Google’s latest search innovation.

Keeping the presentation relevant to the marketing community, Mark discussed Procter and Gamble’s research on the importance of the First Moment of Truth (FMOT). In 2005, P&G defined FMOT as “the first interaction between a shopper and a product on a store’s shelf.” This has become a foundational concept in any academic marketing curriculum and, though only five years old, is an absolute given in B2C marketing.

“Yes, and…?” is, as Mark puts it, Google’s approach to everything – they accept truths but always look further. Google decided that, while FMOT is inarguably true, its antecedent must also be true: and so the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) was born. Backed by research in IRI’s 2009 Economic Longitude Study and validated to the general public by John Battelle‘s 2005 The Search, ZMOT is the phenomenon that says a majority of interaction between a brand and a consumer occurs before the consumer ever sees the product on a shelf. With access to – and creation of – data exploding, the ZMOT occurs online.

Where Consumers Are Making Their Purchase Decisions

Having now built rapport with the audience, Marinacci jumped right into his talk about Google’s innovation in search. All else aside, I walked out the door certain of two things:

1. As evidenced by its Super Bowl campaign this year, Google believes (as strongly as ever) in the importance of search
2. With overwhelming evidence on its side, Google believes that the future of the internet is in mobile.

While it might not seem like it, Google is selling out for those two beliefs. Need proof? Look no further than Android. Yes, Google and Apple are battling to be your mobile platform of choice, but as MG Siegler says, they’re doing it with different motives:

At the end of the day, Android exists so that Google can get more people searching — and keep them searching as mobile devices overtake computers. The iPhone exists to be one of the mobile devices that overtakes computers so that Apple can keep selling high-margin machines.

There is no doubt, either, that Google understands that search is fundamentally changing. Just because they’re selling out for search, doesn’t mean they’re selling out for the search we remember from 2005. The six trends Mark says Google is using to innovate search are personalization, language, localization, realtime, video and, of course, mobile.

After looking at these trends, it’s definitely not hard to see why Google believes in mobile. First and foremost, experts are already in agreement that, sometime between 2013 and 2015, mobile devices will surpass desktop computers as the primary vehicle with which we access the internet.

Taking that assumption as a given, mobile is clearly where search can best be personalized, localized, and delivered in realtime. While I’ll be accessing google from the palm of my hand via iPhone, I’m certainly looking forward to everything Google has in store for my mobile search future.