The finalists were selected by KC Roundtable, a local young-entrepreneur group. Four judges – Grant Burcham (Bank President), Sam Meers (Marketing Expert), Grisel Wiley (Angel Investor), and Mark Allen (Successful Entrepreneur) will critique the finalists and ask them challenging questions. At the end of the night, the audience will decide the winner.

We will be hosting the event live and talking about it throughout the night @freshid and using the #starters hashtag. If you want to attend in person, buy a ticket now, or pay at the door. Registration includes attendance, alcoholic drinks and food and it will be a wonderful time!

Find out if Muslim Ranch can beat out the Pocket Shocker; or how a brand new construction company expects to be successful in this economy. See our Intefy product in action and hear what we have planned for it. Is there a KC entrepreneur who will revolutionize collection practices in the US? You must attend to find out the answers to these exciting questions and more!

Thanks to Diana Kander for inviting us to take part in the competition and allowing us to share the event live with our online friends. We’re crossing our fingers Matt brings home the prize, but even if he doesn’t we’re pleased as peaches to be selected as a finalist, and so proud of Matt we can’t even talk about it without sounding like we’re gushing (or like we’re his Mother.) We are so grateful to have him on our team, and will be cheering for him!

Watch the action live at www.twitterface.com/justforstarters starting at 6:00 pm CST tonight, July 15th.

Kristi

Like Minds begins with demos of augmented reality technologies, educates with a mix of informative speakers, continues with discussion while the community around the world virtually participates, takes a break over canapes and cocktails, and wraps up the best bits of the day before the closing keynote by the one and only Joanne Jacobs.

All in all, it’s an event like no other. It’s Like Minds Conversation Helsinki, and it’s truly Real Time in Real Life.

This is the schedule for Like Minds Conversation Helsinki, happening tomorrow! Times in parentheses are US CST, so if you want to watch the conference from the beginning, prepare to be online at http://www.twitterface.com/likeminds by 6:30 AM CST.

Thursday 17th June

1:30 (5:30am) – Foyer and registration open
Drinks are served while you experience the technology that is filling the foyer. Augment yourself!

2:30 (6:30am) – Introduction
We welcome people in style, with our thoughts for what the day holds.

2:40 (6:40am) – Keynote: Real People, Real Time, Real World
The first of 4 keynotes, given by Oisin Lunny from Habbo Hotel.

3:10 (7:10am) – Panel: How do Social Participation and the Virtual World Merge?
The first of 3 panels, with with Alastair Duncan, Molly Flatt and Antony Mayfield.

3:30 (7:30am) – Crowd Discussion
The first of 3 crowd discussions, where participants will discuss the ideas and concepts shared with those around them.

3:40 (7:40am) – Like Minded Endeavour
We hear from our fist Like Minded Endeavour.

3:45 (7:45am) – Break
A short break to refreshen drinks.

4:00 (8:00am) – Keynote: Augmented Reality in Real Time and Real Life
Our second keynote, , with Andy Gstoll from Wikitude.

4:30 (8:30am) – Panel: What are the keys to a social, mobile and augmented experience?
Our second panel, with Julien Fourgeaud, Dan Goodall and Teemu Arina.

4:50 (8:50am) – Crowd Discussion
Our second crowd discussion.

5:00 (9:00am) – Break
Another short break to refresh drinks.

5:10 (9:10am) – Keynote: The Future of Experience Making
Our third keynote, with Myles Peyton from Total Immersion.

5:40 (9:40am) – Panel: How must new media innovate in the real time future?
Our final panel, with Mel Exon and Bill Gash.

6:00 (10:00am) – Crowd Discussion
Our final crowd discussion section.

6:10 (10:10am) – Like Minded Endeavour
Our second and final Like Minded Endeavour.

6:20 (10:20am) – Break and Canapes
A longer break with drinks and canapes – giving you time to mingle and re-explore the experiences in the foyer.

7:00 (11:00am) – Best of the Discussions
We hear from some of the best discussions that have taken place in the crowd conversations during the day.

7:20 (11:20am) – Closing Remarks
Our final remarks before our last keynote.

7:30 (11:30am) – Closing Keynote: Virtuality is the new Reality
The final and closing keynote.

8:00 (12:00pm) – Close

9:00 (1:00pm) – After Party

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN (May 5, 2010) – Organizers and sponsors for the 2010 UnGeeked Elite: A Social Media, Marketing & Branding Forum, taking place in Milwaukee, WI from March 13-15, have partnered with Fresh ID, LLC of Kansas City, MO to offer a “virtual attendance” option for this year’s conference through the online application, Twitterface.

“We are excited to partner with SohoBiztube.com for the UnGeeked Elite event,” explains Fresh ID CEO, Lisa Qualls. “This conference is going to provide a lot of people with vital information to help their business grow and prosper. We want to help the organizers and sponsors of the event who have worked so hard to put together such a strong panel of experts in the field to reach as many people with this information as possible. We can think of no better way to do this than to offer a virtual attendance ticket for those unable to attend the event physically. This will allow the virtual attendees to view a live stream of all presentations at the conference and interact with other attendees and the experts themselves via Twitter.”

The UnGeeked Elite conference is a three-day event in which participants will learn about positioning internal and external brands; managing inbound and outbound marketing efforts; facilitating online customer relationships; building strategic public relations campaigns; and monitoring social trends among clients and customers.

UnGeeked Elite keynote speakers are nationally and internationally known social media, communications and marketing authors, product developers and content management practitioners and experts, including:

- Olivier Blanchard- Marketing and branding strategist, BrandBuilder Marketing and Red Chair Group

- Jason Falls- Marketing and PR strategist, social media explorer

- Dan Schawbel- Personal branding guru, author, “Business Week” columnist

- Sally Hogshead- Best-selling author of “Fascinate”, marketing consultant and CBS and NYT opt-in

- Visible Technologies- Social media monitoring and CRM

- Chris Brogan- Social media guru and best-selling author of “Trust Agents”

- Hubspot- National leader in inbound and outbound marketing software applications

- Scott Stratten- Viral marketing guru and author of soon to be released “Stop Marketing and Start Engaging”

Virtual attendance tickets start at $75 for a single day ticket or $125 for all 3 days of the conference. Tickets can be purchased at the conference’s Eventbrite page, and the virtual attendance interface can be viewed at the event’s Twitterface page.

About:

UnGeeked Elite: A Social Media, Marketing & Branding Forum is presented with additional support from Buzz Monkeys, Inc, a strategic public relations firm based in Wauwatosa, and AJBombers, Swig, Water Buffalo, Midwest Airlines, and the University Club.

SohoBiztube.com is the site where companies come to position and promote their brands and enhance their visibility in online social communities. We offer tools to start posting your marketing, PR or promotional materials to brand and position your company’s products and services. Founder Cd Vann is a marketing and new media maven developing products, services and alliances that allow businesses to manage their position and their products and services, while engaging with consumers and other businesses using social media strategies and tools. For more information, please visit www.SohoBiztube.com.

Fresh ID helps businesses around the world expand their business and reach their goals. By understanding companies from the inside out, Fresh ID designs intelligent solutions and products that help clients do business and engage with prospects and customers. Brand identity and monitoring, social media consultation and campaigns, web design, site socialization, interactive design, application development and user experience strategy are a few of the services offered by Fresh ID. More information about the company and the Twitterface application is available at http://freshid.com and at http://twitterface.com.

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI (March 3, 2010) – For the past 3 months, legendary automotive designer Chip Foose has been working with John Deere to produce a customized 1972 John Deere 4020 tractor. Thousands of people have been following the design and build process online through video “webisodes” made available at the http://deere.com/bigbuck website and on You Tube. Interest in the unveiling has reached a fever pitch, leading John Deere to produce the event live online in partnership with social media agency, Fresh ID. Anyone with an internet connection can watch the big reveal online at http://foose4020liveshow.com this Thursday, March 4th at 1:00 p.m. PST/4:00 p.m. EST.

The tractor is part of the unique Big Buck Customized 4020 Tractor Giveaway that customers can enter to win at their local John Deere dealer through June 30, 2010. John Deere chose Chip Foose to completely customize the tractor in a way that has never been done before to highlight sales incentives that run through April 30th 2010. The tractor will be on display at the John Deere booth throughout the 2010 Commodity Classic in Anaheim, California March 4-6 with online replays of the unveiling available at the http://foose4020liveshow.com website.

Following the unveiling, the tractor will tour the country as part of the John Deere Drive Green Tractor Experience where rural property owners, agricultural producers and other interested consumers can take advantage of the opportunity to operate and ask questions about the latest models of utility tractors and other equipment available from John Deere. The tractor, along with three gator utility vehicles, will be given away as part of the promotion. Rules for the giveaway as well as a complete schedule of Drive Green events can be found at http://deere.com/drivegreen.

About:
John Deere (Deere & Company — NYSE: DE) is a world leader in providing advanced products and services for agriculture, forestry, construction, lawn and turf care, landscaping and irrigation. John Deere also provides financial services worldwide and manufactures and markets engines used in heavy equipment. Since it was founded in 1837, the company has extended its heritage of integrity, quality, commitment and innovation around the globe.

Chip Foose is an internationally recognized automotive designer and fabricator best known for his work on custom hot rods. He starred in five seasons of Overhaulin’ on TLC. Foose’s unique style has earned him numerous industry awards, including the Ridler Award and Best of Show at SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association), as well as recognition in the Hot Rod Hall of Fame. Foose owns and operates a custom shop in Huntington Beach, California.

Fresh ID, LLC helps businesses around the world expand their business and reach their goals. By understanding companies from the inside out, Fresh ID designs intelligent solutions and products that help clients do business and engage with prospects and customers. Brand identity and monitoring, social media consultation and campaigns, web design, site socialization, interactive design, application development and user experience strategy are a few of the services offered by Fresh ID. More information about the company and the Twitterface application is available at http://freshid.com and at http://twitterface.com.

Those unable to physically attend the popular Like Minds 2010 conference in Exeter, England, are in for a treat. Accessible, inspiring, and empowering, the Like Minds Conference 2010 is a rare opportunity to meet world class experts, local leaders, and like-minded individuals sharing and debating new trends and opportunities in the social media industry. The event will be available live online for those unable make the trip to England but who wish to participate and engage with others. The conference begins at 10am GMT on Friday, February 26, 2010.

Those wishing to view the event online can go to www.twitterface.com/likeminds2010 to watch live video of the conference, read live blog posts and interact with other viewers via Twitter.  This custom site was developed by a Kansas City based design firm, Fresh ID, LLC.

“Those unable to get a seat at the event can take advantage of this custom-branded, aggregated page. Twitterface really shines as a branded community hub that centers on conversations and sharing content. This is a genius little platform for brand-centric companies, event management firms, and digital agencies  looking for a simple way to get their clients involved in Social Media,” states Olivier Blanchard, an internationally known brand strategist from Greenville, SC who is speaking at the event.

The event includes six keynote speakers, 18 panelists and 6 moderators who will focus on taking our eyes off the social media tools and putting them on what matters, The People. Keynote speakers include Mr. Blanchard, New York Times best-selling author Chris Brogan, and John Bell, Managing Director of Ogilvy. There will also be lunch-time breakout sessions at various restaurants around the city in which those attending the event can interact and learn from the experts on a more personal level.

About Fresh ID
Fresh ID helps businesses around the world expand their business and reach their goals. By understanding companies from the inside out, Fresh ID designs intelligent solutions and products that help clients do business and engage with prospects and customers. Brand identity and monitoring, social media consultation and campaigns, web design, site socialization, interactive design, application development and user experience strategy are a few of the services offered by Fresh ID. More information about the company and the Twitterface application is available at http://freshid.com and at http://twitterface.com.

About Like Minds
Like Minds is about inspiring people through its innovative conferences, all with the aim of ‘challenging thinking’. It is positioned alongside high-level conferences, while retaining an extremely affordable price tag, making it accessible to anyone. Started in August of 2009, Like Minds is a living case study of social media and the acceleration of business through new technologies and the ability to connect with people easier than ever before. More information about Like Minds is available at http://wearelikeminds.com.

Contact: Matt Bartlett
Phone: 877.785.3737
E-mail: matt@freshid.com

He had a different take and now I have to wonder if this could be something the creators were thinking about. To the electronic, phone-happy, can’t live a minute without some internet access population (the bulk of my friends on Twitter), this gadget seems like a terrible idea. It’s much more limited than a smartphone, doesn’t offer full functions like a Kindle does for a book (meaning, since you can’t see links and pics you are dead in the water except for seeing and responding to tweets) and it looks like an over-sized calculator. Here’s what we came up with as possible uses for this limited device though… I see this gadget from a new perspective after our talk:

Connectivity to your children: For $99 + $8 a month or $199 LIFETIME access, you could get one of these things for your kids far cheaper than a mobile phone, set up a private network of family and known friends only and have some feeling of security if you are on Twitter a lot (which I am) that your kids could reach you with a tweet when needed, and that you could see when they tweet and who they’re talking to. Twitter has a minimum age requirement I think, so you’d need to look into that, but this could come in very handy if you have kids that you don’t quite want to phone-enable yet.

Replacement for phones in dispatch situations: If you’re paying for phones with any kind of access beyond voice calls, you’re going to be paying a lot more per month than you would with this device. Twitter cabbies, delivery services, police departments, medical institutions… there could be a large list of possible buyers if you look at the systems and processes you could put in place with this device rather than using mobile phones. Tremendous cost savings depending on what you’re doing.

Team communicators: Nextel used to be the big thing to have for construction crews and folks that work with each other, but some distance apart from each other (such as when doing road construction or a large building or even in the oil field.) It is VERY costly though… these devices would be cheaper by a significant amount if you are outfitting crews with ways to reach each other. (Yes, the learning curve would be they have to learn to tweet instead of talk, but that is a process change you might want to make to save money.)

I still don’t know that the TwitterPeek will take off. It all depends on the marketing and branding they do – right now most people who see it are techies or at least Twitter-oriented already and the limitations seem so obviously unappealing that they view it negatively. I see it a little differently if used as I described it here now… it remains to be seen if that is how the company will actually promote it or not.

I have to add, right now I am phoneless. My dumbphone (an Alltel LG Scoop) is broken and I am waiting to buy a smartphone this Friday (Motorola Droid or HTC Droid Eris mostly likely.) Now… if I were NOT in this situation, and this Twitter gadget came out that let me get online and talk to my friends any dang time I wanted to, from any city, any place, anywhere, for $200 one-time fee… well, I might be tempted. LOL!! It’s hard to be on the road and be able to read things from my dumbphone and not be able to respond. But probably, that’s just me.

For $20 you can order a full report, which will contain all mentions of your search term over the past 7 days or maximum 1500 results (limits imposed by Twitter.) I find the cost of the report a bit high – using TweetReach for something like a marketing campaign is a very appealing way to see the effectiveness and what people are saying about it, but $20 on just that every week (or however long the campaign runs) might be more than people want to pay. 

Still… this is a GREAT concept and I love the way the information is presented. I did a search on a recent article I know many of us passed around, which had a somewhat unique title “Becoming P2P”. Here are the results of that search.  Another dear friend named Scott Gould wrote about this too, so his article results are combined in this search, which is great (for my purposes) because the topic is the same.

You can see the “Total Exposure” which shows that over 31,000 people saw something about this article 4-7 times! That’s awesome… I am not sure of the social media conversion rates on something like this, but in advertising (say, for a print ad or television spot) the numbers are something like 7x exposure needed before one takes action. Psychologically, seeing repeated exposures builds familiarity and confidence, which is why many companies don’t realize to place on print ad in a trade magazine is not the most effective way to spend marketing dollars – it’s not enough exposure. I just read yesterday, that consumers who are exposed to a brand’s social media efforts and paid search programs are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand’s products. For example, if you do paid Google searches, using social media in addition is almost 3x more effective. So you can begin to see where this sort of Total Exposure information can come in handy.

A lot of traditional marketing pro’s want to see who the “influencers” are. TweetReach shows the impressions broken down by Twitterer. I don’t know how accurate that is – I guess it seems unreal to me that my mentions of this particular article would be so high – nearly 124,000 impressions! That just seems crazy. But this list shows who is talking about you, who believes in what you’re doing, and who is helping to spread your particular message.

So, if you like this tool, there are some things you can do in advance to help you later search for it effectively. All of these can be changed by users when they retweet or share it somewhere, so you probably want to search using all these methods to discover the real results.

1. Use a unique URL. Bit.ly and many other URL shorteners let you add a “custom” addition to the url and you should do that – make it short as possible and as UNIQUE as possible (in case others have used those same words. In this search example, the URL could have been something like http://bit.ly/bep2p  Of course, the boring old numbers and letters url’s will work just fine also.
2. Use a unique hashtag. The author of this article is @thebrandbuilder on Twitter (he happens to be a Twitterface advisor also) and we often refer to him as #TBB. Unfortunately others use that hashtag also for 2 or 3 other things. He could promote his articles distinctly and then search on them later by altering the hashtag to something like #TBB-P2P. That way, if people consistently retweeted that hashtag it would easily distinguish all of these searches in TweetReach.
3. Use a unique title or phrase in your tweet. I happened to think of the words “Becoming P2P” because it was short and we’ve all been talking about it the past two days. Those words are fairly unique, but if you want to use TweetReach a lot you probably need to think about how you are going to find these results in advance.

Go play with TweetReach! We will be looking into integrating or pointing over to it from Twitterface in the future – it’s that good a tool.

And read Becoming P2P: Principle Characteristics of the New Social Business if you want to see how business is already shifting and shaping – this is such an exciting time to be part of this movement.

ADDENDUM
Last night on Twitter Olivier Blanchard and Don Bart, my social media ROI experts, reminded me that Impressions only mean “opportunities to see”. A tweet sent, is not a guaranteed tweet read. The same could be said about direct mail – some of it gets thrown in the trash, but the difference is the reader has to mentally process it before deciding to do that. An advertisement may or may not be noticed in a magazine (with lots of other content around it.) But a tweet may never have been seen at all… that’s why TweetReach’s graph of the number of times a tweet was sent to a number of people (what they call impressions) is so helpful. Having exposure to the information more than once, if it’s important to you, can make a difference in the reality of how many people clickthru to read more information, visit your site, interact with you on Twitter, or do a search for your products or services.

ADDENDUM 2
It’s important to search for your entry several ways to see all the results. For example, if I search for this article at TweetReach using the shortened bit.ly link I originally posted, I get much smaller results than I did using the title of the post. People’s links get changed or re-shortened, or they deliberately do it to track via some other program, so url’s are highly inconsistent (which is why bit.ly aggregates results based on the long url.) Contrast those results with the search on the full post title and you’ll see many more people retweeted this than I knew about, because my name was not in the retweets. Sweet!

Portuguese Review: Será que o Twitterface consegue superar a concorrência?
English Translation: It will be that the Twitterface obtains to surpass the competition?

I found it especially funny that he said “…it promises to be a migraine for the TweetDeck, the Seesmic Desktop and the TwitterGadget.”

James Bowman, @g33kguy on Twitter, describes his first impressions in Twitterface Beta, Initial Impressions. One of the most common complaints about the product right now is that the Settings navigation is a little too sparse and people aren’t sure how to get back to their main page after making design or Twitter account changes. I have made modifications to that design, but we have to get them in, so that will be coming soon. 

James designed a stunning Twitterface page for his brand at http://www.twitterface.com/g33kguy and is also doing some pages on Hummer for brand enthusiasts (he drives one) and he has offered to share the Hummer design theme with all our users.

One of the biggest missing pieces right now also, as both James and Pedro point out, is the lack of ability to follow, unfollow or block people. We will be adding all profile functionality very soon. I just need to get that design to my developers. I have also noticed a lot of folks don’t get that they can change the panes at any time (all three of them) to their account, search or a user’s profile. I need to add some page aids to help people get started and I am working on a Help area. 

If you have any questions about the product, you can always @tweetmeup!

Visit the new Twitter Tracker site - it only looks like a spam site. Very fun marketing idea and clever use of Twitter mania without taking it seriously. Kudo’s to the marketing team or whoever parented this brainchild!