Daptiv Holds YouCon, Setting The Stage for a Collaborative 2008
San Diego was a bit more monsoon than sun in late January this year, but Daptiv‘s YouCon08 made my first trip to the city worthwhile. It was Daptiv’s first time holding the annual event outside of their home city of Seattle, and collaboration was the theme throughout – from users sharing best practices to keynote speaker and Wikinomics co-author Anthony D. Williams addressing the impact of mass collaboration on business.
CEO Jeff Pancottine shared Daptiv’s 2007 successes, including the company’s huge growth rate – 116% increase in users! – and big plans for continued momentum in 2008. There was a lot of change and growth in 2007 (new Daptiv brand and launch of Fall 2007 Edition of Daptiv PPM), but all with the customer in mind. Daptiv’s 2008 mission: taking project and portfolio management and transforming it into “Work Intelligence” and “Work Management.” They are already well on their way, also announcing enterprise integration service Daptiv Connect from the conference with technology partner Pervasive Software.
In addition to the product roadmap, upcoming features and investments in performance upgrades, the Daptiv team also revealed its vision for customer collaboration on product development. They have a new technology currently in beta with conference attendees that will make BIG waves in the Daptiv community and beyond when it is released on a wide scale. Daptiv customers at YouCon were extremely impressed and enthusiastic and it will be exciting to see how this new Daptiv tool will impact business innovation.
TurnHere Keeps Turning
TurnHere is officially rounding the corner and made some big news last week, including a financing round of $7.5M from Venrock and Hearst Interactive Media.
We started working with TurnHere in early 2006, when the company first launched as a consumer destination site focused on travel, and it’s been quite a ride so far! Since then, TurnHere has expanded their filmmaker network to over 3,200 professionals from around the world and is now helping companies like CondeNet, Simon & Schuster, InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Citysearch and Personality Hotels navigate some uncharted territory in online video.
There’s been a lot of excitement about online video recently and how it’s the new trend in online advertising (check out MediaPost or Mashable for some interesting stats and analysis), and TurnHere is right there in the thick of things. They’ve been working with companies in a wide range of verticals to create entire online channels devoted to online video, such as Bookvideos.tv, where people can watch trailers for books and get the story behind the story, and then comment on the book, author or whatever sparks them. Being a perpetual wanderlust, I particularly enjoy going to InterContinental’s new video site and watching videos of destinations around the world while I plot out how to make the most of my remaining vacation days.
Around here, we like to think of 2008 as the year where online video matures into a real business. From Obama Girl to local videos on Citysearch to Funnyordie.com, there’s a lot out there and even more to come, so keep on watching!
Obama Girl Gets Ready for Super Tuesday
Obama Girl is back! Across America, people are gearing up for Super Tuesday, so our client BarelyPolitical.com created a “super” Obama Girl who would swoop in for her favorite candidate. This time around, she’s donning a cape in order to help her personal superhero – Barack, himself. We worked with our client to generate coverage of the viral video in Newsweek, TechCrunch, AOL’s much talked about News Blog, among others.
Enjoy the video for yourself!