Here are a couple of pics from West Virginia University’s Student welcome yesterday. 4,500 students attended with over 1,200 text messages and 150 Twitter messages sent to the giant Jumbotrons and two displays mounted on either side of the stage, all powered by LocaModa. The whole event was being moderated in real time on an iPad using the LocaModa TJ tool.
LocaModa's Wiffiti at WVU
LocaModa's Text Jocky moderation tool being used at WVU
Photo by xJasonRogersx
On the 13th February, 2006, “Critical Fluff” a local, irreverent blog raved about LocaModa and awarded us “Unlimited Pineapples”. Clearly, “Unlimited Pineapples” was a measure that by the blog’s standards was about as great as anyone or anything could achieve. I commented on that blog, thanking the writer.
And that’s how we met Jayne Karolow, the blogger and voice behind “Critical Fluff”.
It is with sadness but also some pride that I announce that after four years with us, Jayne is leaving LocaModa to manage the marketing for a group of uber trendy local restaurants. (We’re confident that those restaurants will soon be sporting LocaModa enabled place based social media screens, so every cloud has a silver lining, but I digress.)
Jayne built and managed and was the principal voice of The Web Outside. Today, The Web Outside is one of the most respected and informative blogs in our industry. For her work on The Web Outside, I award Jayne unlimited pineapples. (Jayne will continue posting from time to time but will now have the unique view from the venue’s side of the experience.)
Jayne also project managed (or project wrangled) some of the most chaotic, innovative, award winning, cross channel, place based social media for the biggest clients in our industry including Calvin Klein, Captain Morgan, Stride, Sprint, VH1, AT&T, GM, Vans and Verizon. For her project management skills, I also award Jayne unlimited pineapples.
As a serial entrepreneur, I recognize that as a startup evolves, it attracts different people at different stages of their careers. A colleague once described startups as “leggy” meaning that they are like Bambie when he tried to stand for the first time. Jayne regularly and diplomatically dealt with our legginess. She calmed chaotic Mad Man and was a bridge between what sales people promise and what engineers have to deliver. All part of a typical day dealing with media agencies, digital out of home networks, creative directors (and their egos), lawyers and tech teams.
As startups grow up, they (hopefully) get less leggy, but they unfortunately can lose great people – especially those accustomed to legginess.
We wish Jayne the very best of luck and, if ANYONE wants a reference for Jayne from me – I can honestly and unequivocally give her unlimited pineapples.
Good luck Jayne, we’ll miss you.
So apparently LocaModa CEO Stephen Randall took some time away from karaoke and Beatles cover bands during his recent trip to Japan to stand up as a thought leader in place based social media…
LocaModa CEO Stephen Randall and Senior Systems Engineer Jacob Elder are headed home this weekend after quite the week in Japan. Let’s put any business details aside for a moment and focus on the fact that they met the Japanese Beatles! Stephen is lucky enough to have met the real Paul twice… but now he can really add some substance to his celeb track record!
