Microsoft had plastered us with messages like this one for months: “Join us on the PhizzPop Tour to watch the top agency talent as they show us their Expression Studio and Silverlight skills.”  Get the picture?  Uh-huh, yessiree, they’re trying to sell you software.  But at least they’re out to make it entertaining. And no industry in the world likes a competition more than the ad industry. These folks live for this stuff.  

(Side note on the Minnesota connection: You may find it interesting that the promotional talent Microsoft chose to plan and hype these events is none other than Minneapolis-based Gage Marketing.  But, wait, there’s more.  Did you know Microsoft maintains a development office here that’s focused in its Expression Suite product?  The company recently announced it will lease new digs near downtown for this operation, headed by software industry veteran Doug Olson.)

As the Phizzpop about page explains, this Microsoft promotion includes both live events and an online competition.  This year, the PhizzPop Tour is visiting seven U.S. cities — which, naturally, includes Minneapolis, as we’re one of the top advertising centers in the country.  Microsoft touts the event as “a prestigious design competition combined with a social gathering for top web professionals, brands, designers, and developers. Watch the hottest agencies compete in an interactive design challenge in front of a panel of judges and YOU, the live audience.”

The latest tour began in November 2008 and continues through March 2009.  In each location, agencies compete to design the solution that best solves a unique design challenge using Microsoft technologies. Before each event, the agency teams are trained in the newest Microsoft technologies. They’re then given a “design challenge” to solve. Each city’s local ad and creative community is invited to their respective event, where the competing agencies present their solutions to a panel of judges and the event attendees. The winning team from each regional event is flown to the SXSW festival in Austin, TX, to compete against each other for what the event promoters call “best in U.S. bragging rights.”

And the Winner in Minneapolis was … ?

So, five teams of three web pros were given the same business challenge and a few days to come up their own online solution using Microsoft technology. The winner, announced at the close of the January 15 evening event, was Zeus Jones, which had teamed with local development shop Sierra Bravo.

Design team members were Christian Erickson, Chad Hancock, and Sierra Bravo’s Greg Wurm.  As reported on the Phizzpop site, they “created a winning next-generation proof of concept that clearly demonstrated enhanced online browsing and cross-sell scenarios, as well as enhanced physical shopping experiences.”  For more on what that was exactly, I guess you had to be there (and I wish I could have been).  But, the winning entry will be available for viewing soon at this Phizzpop Tour Event Detail page, they say. Also, links to a video and photos of the Minneapolis event are coming soon, to be posted on that same page.

Other Minneapolis agencies competing in this year’s Phizzpop event in Minneapolis, besides winner Zeus Jones, were Colle+McVoy, Hanson, MOOV WorldWide, and space150.

Sierra Bravo is a Bloomington-based web development shop that, by its own words, “executes creative ideas online, including social media and Web 2.0 applications.”  It was recently named to the Inc. 5000 and Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal’s Fast 50.

It claims to have made Phizzpop history by accepting invitations to join competing teams — the firm also partnered with the MOOV agency’s team.  Tom O’Neill, Sierra Bravo’s VP of software development, explains: “Phizzpop lets Sierra Bravo publicly showcase our most essential capability: partnering with ad, marketing, and design agencies to make their creative vision live and breathe online. With our programmers on two different teams, we liked our chances.”

Sierra Bravo’s Jeff Klawiter worked with MOOV – even crashing on the agency’s office couch for two nights before Phizzpop, O’Neill added.  Winner Zeus Jones had previously engaged Sierra Bravo for multiple web projects for its clients, according to the latter’s news announcement.

The Zeus Jones/Sierra Bravo team will be winging their way to the Phizzpop finals in March at the interactive portion of SXSW in Austin, TX, taking on regional champs from Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Francisco.

‘Phizzpop Tour’ Pops Into Town, Gets Coldest Day of the Year is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The agenda is still coming together based upon attendee input but the theme of “Hacking the Recession” sounds timely and a good way to frame social media marketing in these challenging economic times.

If you are unfamiliar with UnSummit, you can check out our coverage here and on our podcast or visit the UnSummit blog. A sign-up list for attendees is on the UnSummit wiki. Without the overlap with the MIMA Summit, it looks to be a much larger event this time. Hope to see you there…

UnSummit Set To Return March 7 is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

For those of you not yet on Twitter — and aren’t you feeling so smug you’re not wasting as much time as the rest of us? — you’re likely not aware there’s a site called Twitterholic, which ranks the popularity of Twitter users by number of followers.  Actually, despite what non-Twitter users may think, this social-media “microblogging” tool is proving to be quite useful for many in business, media, and even government, if the list of Minneapolis’ Top 100 Twitterers is any indication.

To better understand who’s doing these rankings, here’s how Twitterholic cutely explains itself:

“A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database. In other words, WE”R IN UR TWTTR PAGES, READN UR STATZ.  This list is updated daily so you can find out who the most popular twitter users are. To participate, do what you normally do — twitter constantly — if you deserve to be on the list, we’ll find you.”

Twitterholic ranks users across the world, with Barak Obama still leading the pack, CNN now in #3, and Twitter itself down the list further at #9.  But, beyond that global ranking, the two developers who built the site (based in Orlando, FL) devised a way to rank Twitter users by city — I assume, in our case, by finding the word “Minneapolis” or “Mpls” in individuals’ profiles.  Note some people choose to leave that part of their profile blank, while others insert something clever like “here” or “Earth” or “at my desk,” and thus they would not make it into their city ranking. (Note also the Minneapolis ranking of course does not include our friends across the river in St. Paul.)

But what are some things we can learn from the list of the Mill City’s top Twitterers?  First, that there are more than a handful on the list that have been twittering almost from when Twitter first became available, back in early 2007.  The man in first place, Lee Odden, fits that bill, and now has more than 5000 followers.  Lee is a consultant in search engine optimization (SEO), and speaks frequently at conferences all over the country. He obviously knows how to spread the word about his Twitter page, online and off.

Some locally based media outlets made the list, too, with Finance & Commerce ranked a surprising #26, our friends at MinnPost at #36, and the venerable StarTribune at #74.  Media organizations naturally tend to use Twitter to send out links to stories as they publish them. The Strib’s number of updates listed in the rankings, however, boggles the mind: 37,947!  Could our local daily possibly be putting out *that many* links in only 1.5 years?  Note the highest ranked media person on the list is James Lileks, a columnist at the StarTribune; his personal Twitter page is at #6.  Jim is a famous early-adopter of tech toys and tools. 

Others types of folks represented on the list include at least a couple of execs at local big companies: Barry Judge, Best Buy’s CMO (a recent convert), at #7, and Pete Steege, an exec at Seagate’s offices in Shakopee, at #20. Several PR and advertising types are on the list, too — including #11 (@PerfectPorridge), #16 (@tbrunelle), #22 (@MrChristopherL), #27 (@AxiomPR), #85 (@aeklund), #93 (@donmball), among others.  (I’d put myself in that category, too, and was very happy to see myself moving up the rankings at #31 after only a year on Twitter.)  A recruiter I know (@MNheadhunter) is at #29.  And several folks qualifying as Web 2.0 consultants or geeks obviously dot the list as well.  No question that many of these people tweet at least some of the time about their personal lives (I try not to!) — but you may be surprised that most on this list write or post links about business matters quite often, on such topics as how they use technology in their work lives, interesting articles they’ve read (I have a real weakness for this myself), and of course chatting back and forth with their work colleagues or business friends, about all manner of things. 

And how can I not call out that Minnov8′s own Phil Wilson came in at #89 (@Philson).  What’s more, a fun creation of his ranked even ahead of his own page, at #86.  I certainly recommend you follow that one: @comicTwit.  It provides me with many laughs as I scroll through a lot of crap (I mean tweets) from my own followers on Twitter.  Hey, there’s a lot to be said about not taking ourselves too seriously! 

But the most surprising thing of all on this Minneapolis Twitterers list?  Our city’s tech-savvy mayor, R.T. Rybak, comes in at #38!  So, local government has at least one representative.  And our city’s convention bureau, which dubbed itself “Meet Minneapolis” some years ago, is ranked at a very respectable #57.

So, whom do you know on the list, or whose tweets do you like?  By the way, be sure to follow us at www.twitter.com/minnov8!  Hey, we may not be on the Top 100 list yet, but we’re good…  :-)  

UPDATE 12/16/08: So, what about a Top 100 list for St. Paul?  Well, the Twitterholic developers must need to tweak something, because there are only two people on the list I could find.  I will leave the retarded jokes for others… Seriously, @albertmaruggi, our Social Media Breakfast buddy, kinda looks like he owns that town on this list, huh? And the Top 100 for “Twin Cities”?  That list needs serious help, too — only one person shows up there. One change on the Minneapolis list, if you’re reading the comments: Minnov8′s own @timelliott changed his profile to say “Minneapolis” (from “Twin Cities”), and he’s now at #20, pushing everyone below down a notch.  Note he’s been on Twitter for 1.8 years, tied for longevity with Lee Odden, as well as with @swirlspice, @edkohler, and @garrickvanburen.  But @Lileks beats that, at 1.9 years. Longest of all, though?  That would be @alexisthegirl — who’s been on for 2.0 years! Yikes, she must have been an early beta user.

What Can We Learn from the Minneapolis Top 100 Twitterers List? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.