1. Magnolia mud from Magnolia Cafe
2. Steak & egg migas at South Congress Cafe
3. A cheeseburger from Whataburger
4. A margarita on the patio at Hula Hut
5. Fish tacos at Guero’s
6. A Shiner Black at Alamo Drafthouse
7. Something delicious at Moonshine
8. A barburrito from Fuschak’s
9. Mexican vanilla from Amy’s

Did I forget anything?

The seven man-animal hybrid combos I’d most like to see science work on are:

1. Rhinoceros - Body of a man, but with the horned head of a rhino. Nobody would dare step to Rhinoman.
2. Giraffe - Start with four giraffe legs, incorporate human arms and head. Next stop, awesome.
3. Shark - Basically imagine a mermaid, but way more extreme and kind of vampirish.
4. Sloth - Sloth body + human head. In essence, just a hairy dude that moves really slow.
5. Squirrel - Dwarf-sized human with a bushy tail and prolific leaping ability.  An army of Squirmen would be a fierce opponent.
6. Cheetah - Pretty sure this already exists, more commonly known as Usain Bolt.
7. Bear - Imagine a 9-foot human body with a bear head.  Basically, manbearpig with less pig.

That being said, while the event is fresh in my head, I do want to run down the lessons learned and things I would do differently, so we can make sure to address them as we look ahead to Vegas and Blogs with Balls 2.0 in October.

In no particular order:

1. If you’re thinking about throwing an event — if it’s even a fragment floating in the ether of your imagination — just throw it out there to prospective panelists, attendees and/or sponsors, and see what they say. Ultimately it’s their enthusiasm that will make or break your event — so if you get a positive reading from them, chances are you’ve found a ripe one.
2. If you’re planning an event with panels, be smart about managing your panel inventory.  You will get a rush of people interested in speaking on your panels.  Make sure you acknowledge their interest, but don’t rush to confirm everybody too quickly.  Other people will come out of the woodwork as word of your event spreads — you want to give people a little time to learn about it.  This isn’t to say I didn’t love every panelist at Blogs with Balls 1.0 — our problem was that we couldn’t bring ourselves to turn away many of the outstanding guests who expressed interest later in our planning, and as a result we had a pretty insanely packed lineup for a one-day event.
3. Having panelists and event organizers get together before the event is a great way to get the conversation revved up.  We had a terrific conversation over dinner and drinks with a handful of panelists on Friday night, and I definitely think that contributed to the quality of dialogue on Saturday.
4. If you plan to do A/V stuff involving TVs and computers, then (a) probably best to use a Mac and (b) make sure you bring all the potentially necessary cables and dongles you can think of.  I’m not 100% positive on the former (but most people I talked to Saturday seemed to think it was true) but I know without a doubt on the former. Bring the HD converter. Bring the SD out. Bring a French power converter. As long as they aren’t ridiculously long, cables don’t take up enough space to justify NOT being ready for anything.
5. Having to change a monitor or projector’s source mid-show is a pain in the ass.  Try to get every screen set-up in such a way that you can use the same source — be it a laptop or video input — all show long, or at the very least keep the switches to the breaks. Unless you’ve got a big crew of pros with equipment they know in and out, switches are your enemy.
6. If your panelist shows up in a white suit with booze in-hand, you just got yourself a winning lottery ticket.
7. Good food goes a long way towards keeping people there.  I’m sure the promise of free booze at an after-party doesn’t hurt either…but I can’t help but think the mini-burgers and paninis played a hand in the almost perfect attendance we held down through the end of the event.
8. People like it when you give them free booze. They like it 10x more when the free booze has their picture on it.
9. The recipes for successful panels and good salad dressing both start with oil and water. Regardless of how focused your panel topic may be, do whatever you can to find a range of perspectives for every single group.  And sometimes, the more questionable fits will wind up being your strongest contributors.
10. Acoustics are key. Having a room near the stage that’s playing the event audio twice as loud as everywhere else is going to make people try to talk over the event itself. In most cases there probably isn’t a ton you can do about it — except to know that when people leave the main room, chances are they want to talk, not watch.  So turn the volume DOWN in the areas outside the main venue/event space.
11. After-parties are good.  After-parties with silver-haired women giving away free tequila are better.
12. As with any venture, having a core team that can wear a wide array of hats is a must.  Blogs with Balls’ success was built on the hard work of so many — more than I can thank here — but even with so many generous people giving their time and energy, a lot of it still came down to Don (and his lovely wife), Chris and I tackling an array of challenges that weren’t necessarily our core competencies.  Having a group comprised of members with different strengths (who were always willing to take on new challenges in addition to those aligned with their core skill sets) divide and conquer enabled us to have a lot more success than we would have with a team of more similarly-skilled members.
13. Above all, remember this  — there is no name too silly for your event.

That’s all I’ve got for now.  More as I think of it.

First off, there was Ray at Cut & Paste — he didn’t win, but just the fact that he got in and got to be part of the madness of a real-time Photoshop contest with thousands watching is epic:

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Then there’s Diego’s awesome “Career Evolution” work (technically post Q1, as it made the rounds in early April):

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And finally, while it’s been out for awhile, I’ve yet to give props to Rich & Joe’s book,  “Strategic Mobile Design”

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Can’t say enough about working with really talented people like these who not only do exceptional work for clients, but live/eat/breathe this world so much, they go off and do cool stuff like this in their spare time.

If you have the means, I highly recommend picking some up.

Representatives of the four largest newspapers of Tennessee — Nashville’s Tennessean, Memphis’ Commercial Appeal, Chattanooga Times-Free Press and Knoxville’s News Sentinel — met Feb. 4, 2009, to explore opportunities to cooperate to leverage their resources. During the discussion, all agreed that readers would be best served if the papers found ways to eliminate duplicate effort and share content of interest throughout the state.

The article, which is more of an open letter, goes on to detail the sort of content-sharing proposed between the four papers. Some of the guidelines spelled out in the letter include:

• Once any paper publishes content, in print or online, the others are free to use it.
• Content can be used in its entirety in print.
• Online, a headline and paragraph or two can be used, with the story then linking to the originating paper’s web site.
• Lists of subject-area editors also will be exchanged, and those editors will be encouraged to develop direct links with their counterparts to communicate about upcoming stories, exchange story budgets and e-mail each other photos and stories, including enterprise stories, according to their judgment. It’s understood, however, that the generating paper controls the release of the content, and the papers realize that budgeted stories will sometimes be held.
• To facilitate the exchange of photos and graphics, an FTP site or similar shared resource may be established.
• This is intended to be an informal, handshake deal that any party may terminate at any time. We will endeavor to address any problems that might arise as they come up.

I thought the note about excerpting and linking was interesting/smart.  And I was intrigued by the reference to sharing infrastructure in the form of some sort of FTP server.   I imagine that sort of infrastructure could be valuable not only to the four papers, but to bloggers writing about the area as well.

Which serves as a nice segue to the ensuing discussion on Twitter (aggregated here) between Jay Rosen, the influential New York University journalism professor, and Kent Flanagan, now at Middle Tennessee State University, but formerly the Associated Press’ bureau chief in Nashville:

Rosen: What would happen if you hooked up to that content-sharing agreement in Tennessee the state’s largest J-schools?

Flanagan:  I’ve already approached other j-schools about starting online news a la CUNY’s NYC’s news bureau … with fewer decent internships available, i feel students need another venue to show prospective employers what they can do. … my plan is to emphasize new media skills and encourage more than basic text from all students participating … in a democracy, we need more voices covering state capitol news, not less, and that’s what I am aiming for.

Rosen: Another piece ‘o puzzle. Take Knoxville’s good relations with the blogosphere; spread those across the system.

I could go on forever about the future of local media, but I’ll break that up across a few posts.  But the short version of my response is: this is a great step in the right direction, and the notion of integrating bloggers and j-school students would make it that much more inspired.  There’s a genuine opportunity to cut costs in the short-term by better utilizing the resources available, while establishing a new infrastructure for information-sharing that will be increasingly valuable in the years to come.

What could make things really interesting would be someone with a strong technology background got involved to help facilitate the development of that collaborative architecture.  I’ve been thinking for some time that perhaps Yahoo!, who’s already developed relationships with hundreds of newspapers nationwide, could find an interesting play here.  With pieces like Flickr and Delicious, it would seem as though they have some of the most important technical components for information sharing ready to go.  If I were at Yahoo! right now, I’d totally reach out to these four papers and see if they were interested in some tech help in exchange for being a test case/pilot program.

9 Simple Ways (That Have Nothing To Do With VOD) To Fix Netflix
February 10, 2007

I’ve had a mini-manifesto (can I call it a ‘minifesto’?) brewing in the back of my mind for awhile now, and it’s time I just put it out there: as a long-time Netflix user (with over 1,300 movie reviews logged), as well as a casual investor/market watcher following their stock (Nasdaq: NFLX) and its fortunes over the past two years, I can’t help but feel like Netflix has overlooked a lot of “low-hanging fruit” opportunities, possibly in favor of its VOD efforts. And most of these are opportunities that remain on the table today, and which I’ll sum up here.

Netflix is, and has been for some time, on the verge of grabbing the coveted “coolest site connected to the Series of Tubes” trophy (handed out annually by the Bunch Athletic Club), with its combination of excellent website and (once upon a time) innovative rental business model.

But more importantly, Netflix is THE cool because it has grown into something its founders most likely never really imagined — it is one of the web’s most thriving and active communities, from a “consumer-generated media” standpoint, with millions of users contributing new review data on a daily basis. At the risk of showering in new media cliche, Netflix was one of the original “Web 2.0″ sites.

That being said, there is a reason why Netflix is “on the verge” and not hoisting that “coolest site” title I referred to — several reasons in fact, all of them being features that Netflix has overlooked, as it has focused a large chunk of its R&D efforts over the past 3-4 years on its various forays into the nascent video-on-demand market.

Hopefully you get the premise — I humbly submit my list of changes/new features Netflix could implement, which would cement its position as THE movie site on the net (not just the top movie RENTAL site), and along the way, give it additional advantages in its wars against Blockbuster and Amazon, not to mention all of the VOD comers.

The suggestions break down into two main categories:

1.) New Stuff for Paying Members — There’s an active community of millions of movie-loving folks on Netflix; it’s time to give them some new tools that will help enhance their Netflix/movie-watching experiences, in the same way that the core Netflix app has.

2.) Stuff for Everyone — Netflix’s UI and database of movies is too great to not open up to everyone. Let people create movie profiles, rate movies, maybe even add movies to a list of movies they want to see — whether or not they’re currently paying customers. Because once you’ve got a few hundred movies reviewed in Netflix, the site only becomes that much MORE powerful.

That being said, without further ado, here’s the 9 Simple Ways To Fix Netflix:

~ NEW STUFF FOR PAYING MEMBERS ~

1.) DVD Library Manager

Think iTunes for movies. Actually, just go out and buy Delicious Monster, and invest in a port of Delicious Library to Windows. Incorporate something for rental management — so your Library could keep track of all the movies you owned and all the movies you’v seen. Rename it something like Netflix Library (I’m sure your marketing wizards can come up with something more catchy), and give it away to all paying members (and offer it free to non-paying users — see #4 for more on that).

2.) Rip-off Learn From Digg & Threadless
In this case, the application of a Digg-style system (submit, vote, highest voted stuff goes top of the homepage) that lets users vote on movies — including submitting movies that are NOT on Netflix. Let users vote and help you determine which foriegn titles people really want to see — much in the same way Threadless lets visitors vote on designs they’d buy.

3.) Consumption Monitor
Something that lets you visualize what you’ve been watching — make it sexy, with big splashy cover art. (NOTE: This one can get a lot more powerful if you implement #4 and 7.)

~ STUFF FOR EVERYONE ~

4.) Accounts for ALL
A Netflix account is a great thing, and that’s only partly due to the whole ‘they mail you movies’ thing. Netflix has always made rating movies easier than anybody else. Tear Down That Wall, Netflix! Let everyone have access to your wide open spaces filled with movies as far as the eye can see.

5a.) Get Googled…
Honestly, is there anybody who’s been around on the web longer, with worse search rankings than Netflix? Obviously the member/pay wall has done them no favors there. But if that wall were torn down, then suddenly all of Netflix’s movie pages are in play alongside IMdB, Yahoo! Movies, and the other sites that dominate Google listings for any given movie (say “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″ for example). Toss in some more data (see 5b) and Netflix quickly becomes one of THE top rankings for just about any/all movies in its index. I can’t say for sure, but something helps me that would have a positive effect on business.

5b.) …and be the New Metacritic/Rotten Tomatoes
Why nobody’s built out a Web 2.0 version of Metacritic and/or Rotten Tomatoes is beyond me. How many people are reviewing movies now, between traditional critics, web critics, bloggers, etc? And if Netflix were to get behind something like Microformats and/or Structured Blogging, I’m sure they could get a more than a few people on board as well, which would only make the review aggregation process that much easier. Heck, if you’re afraid of doing it yourself, partner with someone like Technorati, to get some extra blogsavvy behind it.

6.) Sell DVDs Better
How does Netflix not make it easier to buy any of the movies on there? They sell cheap, used DVDs, and as far as I know, that’s it. Why? Would it be that problematic or difficult to just work out an affiliate sales relationship with Amazon or any of the other online DVD merchants out there? If I’ve told Netflix I like three movies, and there is an obvious fourth that I would also like, it seems crazy to me that they wouldn’t take steps to sell me that DVD and make some change from it.

7.) Online Movie Trailers & Video
(Ok, so this one does technically involve video-on-demand. But I’m talking about a much smaller scale of VOD than what Netflix has been aspiring to.)
Yet another one that I’m shocked hasn’t been implemented yet. Just add the trailers for all the stuff I want to see, in a new “Trailers” tab on the main UI. With recommendations based on my previous choices, and the ability for me to rate trailers and my interest in seeing any of the movies advertised (only providing that much more data to Netflix’s coffers.) Is the prospect of serving some 2-minute video clips that daunting for someone like Netflix? (If yes, then I’d definitely suggest they step away from any VOD plans.)

8a.) Help Me Find Movies in the Theatre
Much like #7 — how expensive/hard is it to do movie listings? I have to imagine there are already companies doing it — data feeds you could form partnerships/pay to tap into. With your knowledge of MY movie preferences AND what movies are playing near me, it seems like you could direct me to quite a few movies, and help sell quite a few tickets along the way. This has to be monetizable on some level for a site/company the size of Netflix.

8b.) Be There With Me After — To Get a Review
Once you start down this road of getting really into current movies, there’s obviously no need to abandon your current policy of collecting reviews as soon as people are done with a movie; heck, you could let them choose in their preferences if they wanted to get an email the day after they booked tickets, to see what they thought of the movie. You could even step it up a notch, and hit them up on SMS — and provide real-time, opening day crowd reaction from a Netflix Live Buzztracker.

9.) Embrace Your Technology Roots
Contests that reward code solutions are a good start — but give us some sweet APIs, to utilize Netflix’s vast (and if you follow these other steps, only getting more vast) databases of movie info and reviews. Give us a site whose membership is open to everyone, not just paying customers, and some data to work with, and see what the tech-savvy masses can deliver.

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In closing, let me stress — I’m one of the die-hard Netflix users, not someone waffling between Netflix and Blockbuster, or just a tech geek with an axe to grind or Diggs to seek.

I know that most of the items I list above are more easily said than done. I’m not suggesting Netflix rush out and try to do ALL of this at once. Quite the contrary, I’m merely suggesting that there is an abundance of things Netflix could be doing, all of which would help to improve its competitive position within the space.

As someone who’s invested a lot of their own time in Netflix, and feels at least somewhat locked in — with no good way to extract my 1,300 reviews from Netflix — I want to see the red envelope purveyors get better. And for me — barring a sudden flood of cheap bandwidth — that doesn’t have a lot to do with VOD for at least another 2-3 years.

What is it?  We answer that question over on the official site:

Blogs With Balls is a series of regional social sports blogger and new media gatherings featuring speakers and panelists specifically focused on sports fans, writers, sites, teams, athletes and companies; and their ability to maximize new media outlets for promotion and advancement.

Our first event will happen June 13, 2009 in New York City, with subsequent conferences to follow in cities around the country as demand/opportunity dictates.

As an active sportsblogger since all the way back in 2003, I’ve watched as things have grown up quite a bit between then and now, and I’m excited to bring a ton of talented people together to collaborate, share ideas, and hopefully create new opportunities for a number of people.

I’ll keep you updated as details roll out, but for now make sure to head over to the official site, check out the companion BwB wiki or follow @blogswithballs on Twitter to learn more and get involved.

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There, I got through an entire post about it without a single joke about the name.  You know me — always keepin’ it highbrow.

Take a hot viral video (above), produced and starring Lonely Island — the same guys who have an album coming out Tuesday — and featuring a cameo by hip-hop superstar T-Pain.

Lead with it as featured content the morning after it debuts on SNL (where several ads for that aforementioned album played, so you know they have in fact been produced).

What ad would you play as the pre-roll on Hulu?

An Ad Council spot advising on the early warning signs that you might be suffering a stroke rotating with a recruitment spot for the Air Force?!?!?

Sorry Hulu, I love you and your brain-melting goodness, but this is a big ol’ fail whale of a squandered opportunity to showcase the wonders of well-integrated, precisely-targeted advertising placement.

Jack Donaghy must be so pissed right now.

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UPDATE: Looking at the video embed above, it’s actually playing something other than the Air Force and Ad Council spots…an environmental spot for the NRDC on my last viewing. Still no sign of ads for the Incredibad album from Lonely Island.

And in case you were wondering, that album is being released by Universal Republic Records, which, while not owned by NBC parent GE, is still affiliated with NBC Universal — at least enough to have a relationship that lets them sell a record chalk full of content developed for an NBC show.

The guys at UrbanTailgate have put together this handy map for finding a good Steeler or Cardinal bar (in the latter’s case, is there REALLY such a thing?) or just a spot with plenty of plasmas and good drink specials:

View Larger Map

But for those of you who (a) want to get some feeling for the frenetic energy on Sixth Street and/or (b) couldn’t make it to the fireworks show on Town Lake in Austin on New Year’s Eve and/or don’t know what fireworks look like, there’s about 100+ shots that should do a reasonable job of recreating the feeling of walking down Sixth about an hour before the ball dropped and then watching the city-sponsored light show from the front of City Hall:

• Adultswim.com
  As a devout fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and several other Adult Swim shows, the free, mostly commercial-lacking Adultswim.com provides hours of cheap entertainment.
• Amazon
  Amazon’s biggest utility for me, beyond the always-reliable shopping experience, is the Wish List.  I’ve got a 20+ page wishlist on there, and with new tools like the iPhone app making it easier to add new items, it just keeps growing.  An awesome way to find and keep track of stuff you want and/or have.
• Delicious
  Probably would have abandoned it by now, but the last time I did I regretted it, and I have it synced with Tumblr to send new links into there, so I’ve stuck by the old social bookmarking master.
• Facebook
  Increasingly indispensable on both personal and professional fronts.
• Firefox
  Chrome is nice, but just isn’t quite where I want it yet.  Firefox + all its add-ons are still my go-to guy from the laptop or desktop.
• Flickr
  Just gets better and better the more friends use it and more photos I drop in there.  Wish they could adopt some of the social photosharing options of Facebook, but other than that, can’t ask for more than Flickr.
• Google Apps (mainly Gmail, Docs, Sites)
  Been using the premium version of Google Apps from the start, and it just keeps getting better.  Scary to think how much they can/will take over my life once they integrate GrandCentral.
• Google Reader
  If I had to only choose one, this might be it.  I’ve become a complete and total Google Reader addict.
• Hulu
  Cannot say enough about my love for Hulu.  Started out great and just keeps getting better.
• iPhone 3G
  Assuming my wife doesn’t blow mine up/flush it down the toilet this year, chances are I’ll spend more time with it in 2009 than any of the others on this list.
• iTunes Music Store
  The guilty pleasure that I know I need to give up, but just can’t bring myself to do it.  Yes, I know the DRM is terrible for me, but sometimes it’s so easy I just can’t say no.
• oDesk
  Using it as the cornerstone of our SEOintelligence workflow, it’s become a go-to guy how I get business done.
• South Park Studios
  Just like Adultswim.com — the perfect marriage of great content and solid execution gives it primetime placement in my life.
• Tumblr
  Tumblr is the ultimate case of a “so easy, I just can’t NOT use it” apps.  Sure, I’d much rather host my own sites if at all possible…but when Tumblr lets me get a good-looking site with a so-easy-my-dead-aunt-can-use-it CMS from idea to live in a few minutes, I just can’t stop doing it.
• Twitter
  Even though I’ve been on forever, I’m just starting to really get addicted to Twitter.
• WordPress
  Switched from a Movable Type/TypePad devotee to WordPress a few years back, and haven’t looked back since.  Not that MT hasn’t progressed nicely over the years — it’s like the ex you broke up with and know you did the right thing, but who keeps looking better and better enough to occasionally make you second guess yourself.
• Yahoo! Fantasy Sports
  I’ve tried others, including ESPN, CBS Sportsline, and AOL’s Fleaflicker.  You just can’t beat Yahoo’s combination of simplicity and massive existing login distribution.  Hard to find one with enough features to talk everyone into signing up/finding their old login/password.
• YouTube
  How did we ever live without YouTube?
• Zendesk
  Just like oDesk, Zendesk provides the critical customer service infrastructure for SEOintelligence.  We tried out a few options, and thus far Zendesk has been the hands-down best.

And there are a few who just missed the cut.  Some due to the finite nature of attention/time, others b/c they’re social apps that just don’t have enough penetration in my circles (yet):

• Bleacher Report
• Digg
• Dopplr
• Google Chrome
• GrandCentral
• FriendFeed
• MTV Music
• MySpace Music
• Twine
• Yammer
• Yardbarker

I’ve always watched various bloggers keep these interesting logs of all the places they’ve been in a given year, feeling left out b/c my annual travel paths usually don’t take me through more than five or six cities. But as you may know, 2008 has been much more of a road warrior year for me, with work and a surplus of weddings, graduations and bachelor parties taking me all over North America.

So, without further ado, I’m proud to roll out my first ever year-end travelogue of every city I spent at least one night in during 2008:

• Brooklyn, NY
• Manhattan, NY
• Los Angeles, CA
• Berkeley, CA
• Emeryville, CA
• New Orleans, LA
• San Antonio, TX
• Austin, TX
• Spokane, WA
  
• Akron, OH
• Stahlstown, PA
• Cabo San Lucas
• Mexico City
• Irvine, CA
• San Diego, CA
• Portland, OR
• Montreal
• Boston, MA
• Phoenix, AZ

For more of my travel exploits, be sure to check me out over at Dopplr.