Startup Weekend

Greg Bussmann, aka @execbp, is encouraging us to vote for St. Louis to have a Startup Weekend. Click on the image and follow through to vote for St. Louis.

Received this from my Ed Lukens in response to my Micro Center review:

Todd, Micro Center would like to invite you to our Grand Opening ribbon-cutting from 9:30-10am this Thursday (11/19). Thank you for covering us in your Broad Brush blog.

Ed, glad to have covered this.  I’m looking forward to writing more about the hot new geek store in town. I really enjoyed my first visit.

I’m looking forward to making use of that free wi-fi on an upcoming visit. The variety of computer choices will make Micro Center a must visit prior to any purchases in the near future.

I’m not sure I can make the Grand Opening myself but I’d like to share it with you.

Go.Buy.WriteAboutIt.

Yours,

Todd ‘tojosan’ Jordan

Micro Center, the well known electronics and computer store, has opened a store in the St. Louis metro area. It’s Brentwood location is the 22nd store in the chain. Micro Center will be filling the role now left empty by the closing of Circuit City and CompUSA stores.

I had to check this store out as I’m a gadget and computer geek. Twitter and local papers were a buzz about it opening. Apparently it has a great reputation in other locations.

Entering the store, the rows of gear is immediately visible. Off to the right is their service center. Off to the left the check out lanes. Walking in though, you’ll notice that there is no ‘center’ aisle. There are aisles but they don’t line up center and that’s not a problem.  They do serve to divide up sections.

Computers of every make and model take up most of the right front quarter of the store.  There are laptops, desktops, netbooks, and some of those not quite one or the other sizes. Brands included Dell, HP, Acer, and believe it or not, Apple.

Interesting is the inclusion of refurbished, remanufactured, and discontinued computers.  These were also available in various types from desktop to laptop.  The prices were lower on these models, and they actually had more than one of each in stock, literally on the floor.

Wending my way past those, I was greeted by really friendly clerk. He asked if I needed help finding something or just wanted to take it all in. I laughed. There was a lot to take in. We talked about the store opening. It had only been open five days.

He told me about this being store 22, and how they were excited to be in St. Louis. Of course I mentioned CompUSA and Circuit City failures. The clerk said their management was well aware of those closings and planned to learn from the mistakes made by those companies.

Computers aren’t the only thing you’ll find along that side. Walking past them I found the camera center. Warning, it is not as large floor space wise as some stores. On the plus side, there is quite the selection of pocket size cameras. Variety again was shown by including many different models and styles, as well as refurb cameras. There were some specials running but unfortunately not anyone I could make use of that visit.

I’ll save you the suspense of me walking you through all the rest of the aisles. How about some quick notes.

• Video games section – lots of titles – retail prices – more hardware than most places
• Sound – they have a large selection of speakers, earphones, microphones and more – well worth a visit just for this
• roll your own PC – this store has it all. Cases, boards, wires, adapters. Several discounts were running in this section which covered nearly a fourth of the floor space of the store.
• accessories galore – mice from high end to $5. Keyboards the same. Cables of every type and style.
• networking – more than just a few routers. modems, routers, access points – several brands and sizes
• books – lots of variety here

All around, if you’re into electronics and miss this place, you’ve missed out.  Best Buy, in my opinion, is going to get a serious run for their money by Micro Center.

Best points:

• Easy to get to – right off Eager and 170.
• Lots of brands.
• Friendly staff.
• Mac gear.
• Latest gaming titles – including just release Dragon Age and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Discounted items and special buys
• Free wifi – yes, free wifi

Oh, it doesn’t have music. It doesn’t have DVDs or BluRay videos. There were no refrigerators, stoves, or microwaves. No carpet. No fancy displays. No wall size television.

In other words, it’s not your typical consumer electronics store as found in St. Louis. So go out, check out the new store in Brentwood. Heck, buy me a gift card while you’re there.

Cheers,

Todd

Hot off the presses:

Don’t miss out on this great–and free–opportunity to increase your computer skills! Today, Governor Jay Nixon announced that thousands of Missourians will receive free access to innovative e-learning and certification programs through a public-private partnership with Microsoft’s Elevate America. These cutting-edge modules will build the technology skills that will help job seekers like you compete in today’s economy.

The process is easy: Log on to www.mo.gov and click on the “Elevate America” link to fill out the simple form. Missouri has a total of 24,750 e-learning vouchers to go around–and they must be activated by January 31, 2010. Be one of the first to claim a voucher and start building your technology skills right away!

Received this via Mo/Il IT Guys Group on Facebook.

Kopper(left), Bill Streeter(right)

Bill Streeter and I have known each other about two years and change. We started running into each other before we were formally introduced. It turned out we were both bloggers. Bill had worked up Lo-Fi St. Louis to a full fledged multi-media blog and go to sight for the local music scene.

Bill has moved beyond creating and chronicling social media in St. Louis on his own to writing for the Riverfront Times. He’s now a regular columnist for the online version, covering the who, what, when and why of folks like myself, and events, such as tweetups, interactive festivals and more.

Imagine my excitement when St. Louis Social Media Report chose him as the first interview in a series. The Report will be interviewing social media types in the greater St. Louis area, but I think Bill was perfect to go first.

The interview with Bill Streeter gives us a bit of his history, what he’s doing now, and where he thinks St. Louis is headed. Some interesting insights he has. You may not agree with everything, but I wager you’ll find it a good read.

My only complaint? Not enough questions! Maybe you have more questions for Bill? Share them here and I’ll pass them on. Or if you have a story to tell, I’d love to hear it.

Cheers,

Todd

Links:

St. Louis Social Media Report

Bill Streeter at the Riverfront Times

Lo-Fi St. Louis

The Beacon, a local St. Louis paper, spotlights the Social Media Club St. Louis. The club, hot on the heals of its relaunch, gets some good press here by Elia Powers.

Elia shares some insights into the new crew of the club. You can read about their first starts in social media, what they do online and find links to their own haunts.

The Social Media Club is all about spreading knowledge, increasing connections, and getting folks involved in social media. Monthly events are already being scheduled. Looking forward, there will be speakers, and the events will be held at a variety of St. Louis venues.

St. Louis is town full of clubs, restaurants and other businesses that are locally owned and operated, and the Social Media Club will spread the wealth around to many of these throughout the year. From sourcing name tags and banners out to finding great places to host events.

If you’ve got something you’d like to share or spotlight and you’re a local St. Louis business, let the team know.

One of the quirkiest and fun blogs around, MuthaMae.com, is tossing it up.  It’s becoming a parenting video destination.  Knowing Mae it’s going to flip your lid.  I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Here’s what her site warns us with:

Word to your mutha! I’m the Mutha. Word to me.

THIS WEEK!!!!!!!  (Look at all those exclamation points. Damn this better be good..) this site becomes a destination for moms and dads seeking funny parenting videos.  Oh yeah.  It’s that good.

I’m a Missouri stay at home mom who produces videos about parenting and posts them on this website.  I do this with the help of my husband. We have no professional video experience and do all of this on no budget while the kids nap or are in bed for the night.  My dream is to do this professionally one day.  Here’s what I’ve got coming up in the next few weeks:

Want to hear parenting stories told by the funniest comedians in America?  Stay tuned for Mutha Mae’s Bringin’ The Funny. (Coming THIS WEEK!!)

We’ll take a look at the lives of four unique American families in Coast to Coast Parenting. (coming early June, 2009)

Watch clips of the silliest moments in parenting on Mutha Mae’s Don’t Try This At Home Videos. (coming in June, 2009)

And of course you can always check out the web series that started it all, Word To Your Mutha, The Show. (Now showing!)

I will also blog about my experiences in Mutha-Hood and what it’s like to experience Hollywood from Missouri.

Stay tuned! Big changes to this site roll out very soon!

The third annual St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival is coming up. Across from the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park, the festival will run on June 5th and 6th with three sessions.

St. Louis is Beer Capital USA and this event will show case that history and heritage. Over 60 styles of beer will be available to sample along with foods from several of the areas most unique restaurants.

Beyond raising awareness of St. Louis’s brewing culture, the event doubles as a fundraiser for Lift For Life.

To tie this in with the theme of my blog, I’d like to talk about the Heritage Festival site regarding how it works. The site is well designed with no broken features or tricky behaviors. On the flip side, there is no real interactive side to the site.

Information is presented in straightforward text and images with no level of interaction other than navigating between the screens of information. In a few cases there are links that are not underlined, bolded or otherwise noted.

Unfortunately a good bit of the text is not presented as text but as part of an image. This prevents copying or deep linking, thus minimizing the easy of blogging about it or passing tidbits on.

As a follow up comment to that, there is no plain text version of the site for those that would prefer not to deal with the fancy graphics.

My conclusion is that the site is beautiful and works for what it is. However, a wee bit of interaction would greatly increase the draw to return visitors and increase the time users spend on the site.

All that aside, this is my type of event. See you there.

Todd
@tojosan on Twitter

So it just goes to show that if you can’t go to St. Louis, the people will still come out.  That’s right, our second Tweetup in St. Charles county area was a success.  Before you read my take on it though, I’d like you to read Jeff’’s Tweetup post.

Back? Great.

As Tweetups go, this was a great crowd.  We had both techies and non-techies, men and women, and the mix worked well.  The conversation wasn’t just stuck on the latest Twitter tool or tech tip.

Lisa, @StL4Closeures, talked to us about real estate and politics.  Karen, @KarenStL, talked about her recent networking experience at BarCampStL.  Sharon, my wife, jump in and talked about being a parent and bus driver.  It was one busy table.

The location turned out to be busy but well liked.  Trailhead Brewery is located on the St. Charles waterfront area, in the historic area of town.  Trailhead provides a fun and warm atmosphere for getting together, as well as a great selection of microbrew beers.

All these elements made this an above average experience.  How do I judge that? I judge it by the relationship impact.  Huh? Yes, it’s about relationships.

Out of this Tweetup, Jeff, @jpickell, met, Chris, @idonotes, and others that he’d only known via Twitter.  They really hit it off, and I see collaboration coming for those two.  That’s just one example of how real face to face time can be a plus.

What did I learn? On a practical level, I learned to plan the location better, but knowing what circumstance might affect it.  It turned out they were packed due to activities on Main Street.

On a social networking level, I learned that word of Twitter, though fast, isn’t always efficient. I used simple broadcasting to my followers to alert folks of the Tweetup.  This proved less than fully effective.  Where I saw the response was in people that follow me and few others right now.  The more active involved folks on my stream missed the message altogether.

Feedback I received indicates that a more direct and targeted approach would work better.  This would include as much advance notification as possible with an effort to reach as many relevant individuals as possible. Aiding this would be the fact that I keep a group column in Tweetdeck just for tweets by locals.

Another lesson was that not everyone is equally interested.  Some will respond online and honestly be fully committed. Others will reply and not really plan on turning up.  The rest will ignore the offer like it was never heard.   The key is to not worry about the head count but about encouraging folks to come with the intent to add value.

On that last point, and my final one, adding value isn’t about being the most knowledgeable about Twitter, social networks, or Web 2.0.  Bringing value to the table is about your willingness to join the conversation, form relationships, and get over your fears.

Luckily the best way to get practice at these things is to show up to more and more similar functions.  Cheers to those that do.

I look forward to seeing you at an event near you in the future.

It doesn’t look like much. It’s a small white board with some slap dash writing on it. Heck, it’s almost like chicken scratch in places, and the lines aren’t straight.

The board contains the presentations held during BarCampStL, BarCamp St. Louis. Notice the list isn’t formal, neat, and LUNCH is the biggest entry, but that’s how things work at a BarCamp.

BarCamps are about an unconference style versus the traditional way folks get together for conferences.  Instead of elaborate planning and plotting up front, it’s about the dynamics of real people interacting spontaneously.

St. Louis’s first BarCamp went extremely well in part because of this informal style.  It was cooked up by Ryan Keeter, Michael Austin, and yours truly had a hand.  The planning consisted of finding a spot, getting a sponsor (thank you Network Solutions), and posting the date, time and place.  Okay, someone had to work the deal with the City Museum, but that’s part of finding the place.

Real magic happened between the people who showed up and the venue.  There were over a dozen of us that attended, not including the drop ins from the City Museum IT guy and our bartender, Tatyana.  Each person brought their unique point of view and their backgrounds, but they also brought their hopes and visions about the future.

These individuals showed up and presented, listened, took notes.  They learned, instructed, and discussed their plans.  Bonding occurred not just over that, but over the food as well. (pizza, wings, salad, sodas, waters and a round of beers)

Enough about all of that though.  I’d like to just mention one person I bonded with, Karen Goodman, aka @karenstl.  Karen had some great questions about social networking in general, and specifically on Twitter.  Luckily I was able to share some insight in those areas.  In exchange, Karen gave me the grand tour of the City Museum.  Here’s her collection of City Museum photos.

Everyone that attended was a rock star in their own right. I’ll be covering more of my experiences with those folks in upcoming posts, as well as some pictures of them and the City Museum. Look for more link love as well.

If you posted about BarCampStL, please link here and I’ll link back to you as well.

Please show our sponsor some love, Network Solutions.