Ninth Division

BigOmaha 2009 recap

Posted on 16. May, 2009 by andy in Events

Were you at BigOmaha?  You should have been.  It was fantastic in so many ways.  I’ve been to a lot of conferences/events/training/etc in my day and this tops them all.  But you don’t have to take my word for it…

• BigOmaha our thoughts
• Big Lights, Big Omaha – Micah Laaker speaker
• BigOmaha video blog
• Two lessons from Jeffery at BigOmaha – Jason Fried
• BigOmaha:  Jason Fried
• … you won’t have a hard time finding more links and bigger reviews out there.

Instead of reviewing it or discussing things that went on, I wanted to share what I learned from the speakers.  Admittedly I came to BigOmaha not expecting to learn anything and just feel (looking for a good word…) inspired.  Happily I found myself intrigued by every speaker.  To hone it down, I had three main topics that really struck some lightning on my for 9D.

Transparency.

This is something that Jeffery did an entire presentation about Transparency in your Business.   Transparency means to have a face to your company… at least that’s what I summed it up to be.  When things don’t go well, tell your customers.  When they go well, tell them about it.  How you make your killer products, tell you customers…. go as far as you feel comfortable.  The way Jeffery presented it brought strong clarity with backed up awesome examples.

What is the problem you are solving?

Jason Fried asked this question a few times throughout the days discussions: what is the problem you are solving. That statement I used to ask myself a lot too, but somehow lost track of it.  It is a simple statement that can help a business, product, feature, relationship, etc.

During design phases of product development at Ninth Division, this question is always up.  In fact I am making a sign for above the white board.

Create your own content.

Gary Vaynerchuk brought this up in talk or q/a… not sure which.  He brings up a way to get started or bring more worth to what you are doing – simple create content.  Look what he has done with Wine!  He mentions the fact there is anything in world worth talking about (via video, book, blogs, etc) because there is an audience.  With content brings an audience… how will that help you?

Gary also had a very profound quote: “If you hate your job, don’t sit around playing Madden for hours a day.”  Serious – get off your butt and do something.  If you don’t know what to do, go hang out with people that can inspire something for you.  Made me feel a little better about not getting to Fallout 3 lately.

Wrap it up…

It was great meeting so many people.  I was surprised by the amount of people who recognized me from the BigOmaha video or my picture on the site.  Thanks for stopping me and saying hi.  I really hope to meet more of you soon!

The BigOmaha iPhone App was a great example of what 9D can do.  With over 300 downloads, it lead to a huge increase in web traffic, rss subscriptions, twitter followers and most importantly new apps coming your way.

The things I took away from BigOmaha I am working already on incorporating here with 9D.  Great things to follow in the coming months…

Thanks everyone!  And thank you Dusty and Jeff and everyone else involved – BigOmaha was fantastic.

Tags: Apps, bigomaha, Events, iphone, omaha