The Biznik Blog - where collaboration beats competition

OK, we screwed up. Big time. We spent an entire morning filming entrepreneurs for SHINE a couple weeks ago at big aircraft hangar at Sandpoint, and forgot to get their names. Duh. I know. So here’s your chance to SHINE! Do you recognize anyone of them? If so, please post a comment below or better yet, click this link which will take you to Biznik’s Facebook fan page where you can drill down to each and tell us who they are in the comments. We can’t use them unless we know who they are…

Share it with the rest of us, of course! Here’s how:

Download your SHINE video clip from your Biznik profile. If you participated in SHINE, you’ll find your clip waiting for you to download on your profile page. You must be logged in to your profile to see the link to download. NOTE: Make sure you download it before July 31, as we’ll be removing the download link at that time. To download: Mac users can CTRL-Click on the link, and you’ll be prompted to save the file to your system. Windows users can right-click on the file to do same.

Be patient - it’s a big file, which can take a long time to download. Once you’ve got the file, it’s time to publish it to one of the video sharing sites that Biznik supports. If you don’t have a preference, I’d suggest using YouTube - it’s the most popular service. Here’s specific instructions for each:

How to publish your video on YouTube.

How to publish your video on Viddler.

How to publish your video on Vimeo.

How to publish your video on Facebook.

How to publish your video on Blip.tv.

Once your file is successfully uploaded to one of the above services, it’s time to spread the word. Here’s how:

1. Post a comment on Biznik’s Facebook fan page that your video is available, with a link to your video. That’ll alert me, and I’ll post it so that all the other fans (which number about 1,800 now) will have a chance to see your video.

2. Post it to your Biznik page (if you are an Active or Supporting member). To do that, click the “share” link on your video’s page, and copy the resulting embed code. Then, open your profile on Biznik, and select the service you’re using from the popup menu. Paste the code into the field, and save. Your video will appear on your Biznik profile.

Common problems:

I’ve had a few people complain that the file is corrupted after downloading (an error message appears when you try to play it, or the sound is missing). If that happens, delete the file, and try downloading again. It’s likely that it was someone corrupted in the download, so re-downloading will fix that. Repeat until you get a good copy of the file.

File takes forever to download - this means you have a slow internet connection. Because the file is huge, you’ll need to either start the download when you go to bed, OR go to a coffee shop that has a high-speed connection to retrieve the file.

If you’re still having problems, drop me a note and I’ll be happy to help.

Finally, if you’d like to take your video to the next level, have a chat with one of the awesomely talented and truly helpful videographers who volunteered their time to create the clip for you in the first place. Here’s a list:

• Anthony Tackett - Absolute Tech.
• Basil Shadid - Being Media.
• Cary Ray - BrainStorm Video Production
• David Barbosa - 3rd Eye Films.
• Goldie Jones - Subversionz Media.
• Grace Stahre - Versant Media.
• Greg Sommers - Flying Gecko.
• Len Davis - Pangeality Productions.
• Staci Bernstein
• Steven Bradford - VidTeams.com.
• Travis Becker - Victory Studios.
• Valerie Vozza - Double V Productions.

I’m a big fan of clarity in communication. Every time I send a special message like the one I sent out Friday, asking for help to claim our identity on Facebook, I cringe because I fear someone will take it the wrong way. I sweat over every word, careful to create messages that will be well received and that offer something of value to all recipients.

When you send a message to 30,000 people, you gotta figure at least one of them is having a bad day. Still, this reply is so over the top that I just gotta crack open my inbox and share part of it with you:

I despise facebook, twitter! This is for FOOLS who Stalin and Hitler would have had sent to termination camps. I can’t stand sheeple or groupies and don’t want to make you rich unless I too get there. Don’t send me this condescending crap………take me off your list.

Wow. Really, all you had to do was click the unsubscribe link.

On the positive side, I also got this message from member David Iwano, who hails from Brisbane, Australia:

Dan,

Mate you had 999 fans now you have 1,000…. keep up the good work.

Thank You
David Iwanow

Update: Biznik now has in excess of 1,700 fans on the Biznik Facebook Fan page, which we’ll be using to post special offers, member Shine videos, special announcements and much more. Thanks for your support.

Lara and I are heading to the Seattle Wine Awards tasting this afternoon, where we’re looking forward to meeting some of Washington’s best independent winemakers and - more importantly - tasting some of their yummy wine! We’ll be posting updates here and on Twitter and Facebook throughout the day - in fact, starting around 4pm, you can watch a livestream from the event right here:

As an aside, the Seattle Wine Awards appear to be doing a heroic job of incorporating social media into the event, in a way that I haven’t seen many local organizations do effectively. For starters, they invited us! Biznik is a great fit because every winemaker is an independent business - Biznik’s core community. But they didn’t just invite us - The Wine Awards gave us 4 free tickets, so that not only could we attend, but we had a pair of tickets to give to a lucky Biznik community member (which we gave away last Friday to Margaret Friedman, the winner of our invite contest.)

Nice work guys - thanks for including us and I look forward to posting more here throughout the afternoon. First up: I plan to interview some winemakers about what’s near and dear to us: entrepreneurship.

5:44 PM: Lara and I wandered the floor at #seawineawards for several hours, met some great winemakers, tasted a lot of amazing wine, and made this 2-minute video to share the passion that wine entrepreneurs have for their product. Enjoy!

As of 11:25 this morning, almost everyone who participated in SHINE can download their personal video clip from the front page of their profile. All but 27 of the clips are ready to go - the remainder we are still working on. We plan to post the remainder on Monday.

The link on your profile will direct your browser to download the video file in QuickTime format. This format is suitable for upload directly to any of the video services supported by Biznik, which include YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo and Facebook. You can further edit the video in any respectable video editing package should you like to make changes to your clip.

After you’ve viewed your clip, if you decide you want to take your video to the next level, remember that you can contact the person who operated the camera at your event. All are outstanding videographers who are available for hire. Here’s the list of videographers who volunteered at SHINE - I recommend all of them highly:

• Anthony Tackett - Absolute Tech.
• Basil Shadid - Being Media.
• Cary Ray - BrainStorm Video Production
• David Barbosa - 3rd Eye Films.
• Goldie Jones - Subversionz Media.
• Grace Stahre - Versant Media.
• Greg Sommers - Flying Gecko.
• Len Davis - Pangeality Productions.
• Staci Bernstein
• Steven Bradford - VidTeams.com.
• Travis Becker - Victory Studios.
• Valerie Vozza - Double V Productions.

Three other key players who were deeply involved in SHINE, by supplying video cameras from their production companies (Daniel and Jeremy also were interviewers at SHINE):

• Daniel Cardenas - Sierra Media
• Jeremy Dodd - RedGrey Concepts
• Sunshine Whitton - Absolute Tech

On the editing side, we have:

• Caution Zero Networks, with two talented team members: Stephen McCandless and Ben Laurance.
• Chris Julian - Christohpher Julian Designworks.

Shine’s production team featured these talented members:

• David Guilbault, documentary filmmaker
• John Patzer, Snacky! Brand Media
• Lorraine Montez, marketing, writing, film production

Lara and I will be attending the Seattle Wine Awards tasting on Sunday afternoon, and we’ve got a pair of tickets to give away valued at $170. The tickets include a sumptuous Rainier Club dinner buffet, a souvenir Riedel Magnum tasting glass, and a chance to sample the best wines produced in Washington. If you’re a wine lover like we are, this event will be a real treat. So how do you enter?

Here’s the deal: To decide the winner, we’re having a 24-hour contest to see who can invite the most new members to Biznik in 24 hours. The person who sends the most email invitations using Biznik’s invite tool will win a pair of tickets to the wine tasting, valued at $170. How’s that for a deal?

NOTE: Invitations sent to existing members will not be counted!

The contest will run from 4:30 pm today through 4:30 pm tomorrow (Friday). In addition to sending the invites, drop me a message on Biznik that you’ve entered, so I know to count you. We’ll be announcing the winner immediately after the contest ends tomorrow afternoon, so you’ll have time to plan your weekend wine consumption accordingly.

Here’s more info about the event:

The Grand Awards Tasting will be held Sunday, June 14, 2009 at Seattle’s historic Ranier Club. Taste for yourself Washington’s award-winning wines for 2009, meet the winemakers and tasting panel, and enjoy a splendid afternoon with other wine connoisseurs. Your ticket includes a sumptuous Rainier Club dinner buffet, a souvenir Riedel Magnum tasting glass, and a chance to sample the best wines produced in Washington. Tickets are available online now!

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be participating in Embrace Social Media, a “telesummit” hosted by Biznik’s Vancouver, BC Ambassador, Christa Wagner. What’s a telesummit? Here’s how Christa describes it:

What Is A TeleSummit?
A TeleSummit is similar to attending a multi-day conference, all from the comforts of your own home telephone. Our TeleSummit, Embrace Social Media, will include 8 social media experts who will be speaking over a two-day period for 75 minutes each.

What Will You Take Away?
We are going to kick off each call with a case study from each expert about their social media topic. We have a Facebook expert, a Twitter expert, a LinkedIn expert and an expert to talk about time management and social media. We want the goods; if you are a social media beginner or Tweeting several times of day, you will learn how to maximize your social media results through questions, examples, case studies and tools, you can start using immediately. No one needs one more thing to do; but everyone wants and needs new clients. By attending the Embrace Social Media, a TeleSummit, you will finally understand how this new marketing phenomenon can expand your clientele to a place you have not imagined.

I’ll be involved in an hourlong question and answer session about social media, in which I’ll answer the following questions:

1. Tell us a little about how you came to use social media and start a social networking website?
2. I have heard you talk many times before about the power of the weak connection; can you talk a little about that as I know many people don’t understand the benefit of marketing to people they may not know and knew once upon a time.
3. What is social media and what characterizes something as social media?
4. How is social media changing the face of marketing?
5. When did you realize SM wasn’t a fad?
6. What opportunities are available to business owners using SM?
7. What makes a success SM campaign?
8. How long does it take to see results?
9. What is the first step to getting starting with SM?
10. What suggestions do you have for someone who has been dabbling in SM and not getting much out of it?
11. Can you share 1 -2 companies that are using SM successfully. Perhaps who are using Biznik.com.
12. Can you use SM too much? Go overboard to speak?
13. Are there any risks associated with SM?
14. What common mistakes do you see on Biznik?
15. Where do you see SM in 1 year, 5 years and 10 years?
16. What is your best advice for a small business owner using SM?

You can learn more about the telesummit on Christa’s website.

Most of the SHINE video clips are ready to go, but a few are taking longer than expected to edit, so we’ve had to delay delivery until end of day Tuesday. On Tuesday evening, you’ll be able to log into your Biznik account, and find your SHINE clip ready for you to download on your profile.

FYI, the clips are looking fantastic! We can’t wait to get them to you.

Attention Seattle entrepreneurs: we’re offering you an extraordinary last-minute opportunity to be included in SHINE, a big film about small business, that is wrapping up shooting this week in Seattle.

Today SHINE director Ben Medina and I were shooting some scenes for SHINE in the giant airplane hangar at Magnuson Park. The incredible space at the hangar inspired us to make the following offer: If you are an entrepreneur, show up between 8am and 2pm tomorrow, and we’ll shoot some very brief footage of you. No talking will be required. You’ll simply need to look into the camera for less than a minute, and that’s it. In and out. A few minutes of your busy day will virtually guarantee a split-second appearance in the film, which will debut later this summer.

Here’s how to get there (see map below). Head to building 27 on the map, and you’ll enter from the NW corner. There’s tons of parking everywhere along the west and north end of the building. See you tomorrow, entrepreneurs!

The Olympia community is really taking off lately - over the past week, Olympia is #4 on the list of cities with the most new members, behind Seattle, Austin, and Portland, in that order. And when Olympia resident Jerry Suhrstedt joined this morning, he pushed Biznik past another membership milestone: 29,000 members. Check out his marketing firm, Heavy Guerrilla.

From his website: Heavy Guerrilla is “an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing tactics are unexpected and unconventional; consumers are targeted in unexpected places, which can make the idea that’s being marketed memorable, generate buzz, and even spread virally.”

I want to thank you, Jerry, for not only joining Biznik, but also because you signed up as a Supporting Member. We’re committed to your success, and we deeply appreciate your commitment to ours. Biznik is an entirely member-powered community, so every paying member means we’re able to put more resources into connecting you with the relationships you need to succeed.

This is a truly inspired use of web animation/video. The world would truly be a better place if more companies marketed their products like this, don’t you think?

Check out the latest photos from SHINE posted to flickr by folks like Bill Hagstotz, DL Byron, John Patzer, Cynthia DuVal, and Dina Lydia Johnson.

Denise Barnes posted a nice 3:40 video of her experience at shine that is a fantastic example of web video storytelling. She combines lots of still images with her narrating her experience of the event. There’s some great clips of magician Jeff Evans who entertained the long waiting line at the event, and much more.

Nice job Denise - thanks for sharing the night with us.

Thank you, Darrell Kirk, of Seattle Coffee News, who recorded the entirety of my 7-minute “it’s time for you to shine” speech. Even though we had like 15 cameras rolling that night, none of them caught my speech, except for Darrell, for which I am very grateful, because I need the feedback to make the next one better! But I gotta say, I practiced the hell out of this one, and think it’s pretty good. Worth watching if you believe, like I do, that small business is the heart of the economy.

Lots of you know amazing Seattle chef Tiberio Simone, who has catered the food at virtually all of the large Biznik events such as BizJam and all of our annual holiday parties. Or you’ve met him at other events as that guy handing out chocolates. More recently he’s teamed up with photographer Matt Freedman to create the La Figa Project, in which Tiberio’s passion for food and beauty have found their ultimate expression. Check this out. If you don’t think passion and art and business mix, you haven’t met Tiberio and Matt! Nice work, you guys (and girls).

The SHINE Interview Team put in a lot of work to keep people talking, not only during the big event Wednesday, but most of them attended a training session prior to SHINE. In fact, David Kuhns, Amy Woidtke, Laila Attallah and Stefani Quane teamed up to conduct a handful of pre-event workshops of their own, which greatly helped camera-shy members prepare for their moment to shine. You guys are (as David says) AWESOME!

We broke the interview teams into three shifts, so that no team had to work more than two hours throughout the evening. It seemed to work very well, and the only complaints I heard was that some team members wanted MORE time to work! Love it.

Here’s the breakdown:

Shift I :

• Carolyn May
• Christian Jacobsen
• David Kuhns
• David Merwin
• Janet Ott
• Jeff Leisawitz
• Jenna Rizzo
• Joan Hitchens
• Judy Tallant
• Karrie Kohlhaas
• Kathleen Minetti
• Laila Atallah
• Sandra Jones

Shift II:

• Christopher Novak
• Cynthia Duval
• Daniel Cardenas
• Debra Synovec
• Elisebeth VanderWeil
• Iskra Johnson
• Kate Phillips
• Katie Beck
• Lori Zue Stevens
• Paul Sweum
• Rebecca West
• Stefani Quane
• Suzanne Griscom
• Tshombe Brown

Shift III:

• Amy Barker
• Brendan Thorson
• Carrie Lanza
• Charlie Czech
• Debbie Sutherland
• Jay Sutherland
• Jeremy Dodd
• Leif Hansen
• Lisabet de Vos
• Piper Salogga
• Ruth Hartman
• Samantha Lamb
• Sandi Olson
• Wendy Keen

I’d like to give a huge THANK YOU to all of the members of the SHINE Welcome Team. They were the people who made you feel at home while you were waiting in line, and who welcomed you at the door:

• Alix Estrada
• Allen Cooper
• Amy Woidke
• Andy James
• Annie Jacobsen
• Barbara Crummins
• Beth Schermer
• Charlie Czhech
• Connie Carlson
• Debbie Rosemont
• Jacquelyn Wendland
• Jana Rekosh
• Katharine Burks
• Kathleen Whalen
• Lori Richardson
• Natasha Packer
• Penny Wight
• Pete Di Santis
• PJ Harris
• Rita Gruzman
• Sara Eizen
• Tammy James
• Tom Baker

Renee Metty and Banu Sekendur worked closely with this team to ensure everything ran smoothly throughout the night.

Make-up artist Tiffany Nash of Uniquely You worked the long waiting line throughout the evening, providing makeup - totally at her own expense. And there was one other makeup artist, named Brandy, whose last name I don’t know and whom I can’t find on Biznik. Anyone know her?

Oh, and Amy’s Limousine Service parked a couple of swank rides out front (thank you Amy Barker for that invitation to kill a bottle of champagne in the back, that was quite a treat). And Dante Rivera! The inferno hot dog guy. Thanks for showing up with your stand to feed us. You’re a true entrepreneur.

If your business needs video production services, you can’t go wrong with this hard-working lot. These are the talented video camera operators and producers who made SHINE happen. If you’re exploring how Web video can help your business grow (and if you’re not, you seriously SHOULD be - it’s the fastest growing part of the Web), start with this list:

• Anthony Tackett - Absolute Tech.
• Basil Shadid - Being Media.
• Cary Ray - BrainStorm Video Production
• David Barbosa - 3rd Eye Films.
• Goldie Jones - Subversionz Media.
• Grace Stahre - Versant Media.
• Greg Sommers - Flying Gecko.
• Len Davis - Pangeality Productions.
• Staci Bernstein
• Steven Bradford - VidTeams.com.
• Travis Becker - Victory Studios.
• Valerie Vozza - Double V Productions.

Three other key players who were deeply involved in SHINE, by supplying video cameras from their production companies (Daniel and Jeremy also were interviewers at SHINE):

• Daniel Cardenas - Sierra Media
• Jeremy Dodd - RedGrey Concepts
• Sunshine Whitton - Absolute Tech

On the editing side, we have:

• Caution Zero Networks, with two talented team members: Stephen McCandless and Ben Laurance.
• Chris Julian - Christohpher Julian Designworks.

Shine’s production team featured these talented members:

• David Guilbault, documentary filmmaker
• John Patzer, Snacky! Brand Media
• Lorraine Montez, marketing, writing, film production

Biznik members David Kuhns, Amy Woidtke, Laila Atallah and Stefani Quane are hosting a total of three workshops on Monday, May 4, all for the purpose of helping you brush up on your storytelling techniques so you can shine when you sit down in front of the cameras Wednesday night. Here’s the scoop:

9:00 AM with David Kuhns and Amy Woidtke

10:30 AM with David Kuhns and Amy Woidtke

6:30 PM with Laila Atallah, Stefani Quane & David Kuhns

When you head to SHINE on Wednesday, leave your elevator speech at home. We want to hear your REAL story. (Seriously, is the world hungry for more rehearsed elevator pitches?) Here’s a list of questions that you might hear when you sit down behind the camera at SHINE. They’re designed to help you tell your story in a way that communicates deeply who you really are and why you do what you do, because if there’s one thing that’s true about small business it’s this: people want to do business with people, not pitches.

When did the idea for starting your business come to you?

What have you learned from failure?