As a reader of this BLOG you can use the discount code “blogvongraf” for 30% off tickets.

Ticket link - The special early bird tickets and discount are only good until October 31st! Get yours today.

My son has to do a project each month for school.   Sometimes this involves creating statues, paintings, dioramas, but it always includes some form of report and often requires a presentation. This month he’s doing a report on nuclear power along with a display and a presentation. He got this topic before the disaster hit Japan, so it just turned out that the media would be covering his topic at length, which helped make his research easier.

Now I’ve learned quite a bit about power generation in general and nuclear power generation specifically along this journey. I ran across an interesting blog post by Seth Godin talking about Marketing Coal, and how one disaster will easily skew our perception of how safe a technology is. The fact is that 4000 people die from coal energy production for every 1 in nuclear power when producing the same amount of energy, yet the general (ignorant) population thinks that nuclear power is not safe.  What do you think?

Plus I learned about a technology called traveling wave reactors at SXSW, which I shared with Markus for his report.  The neat part about traveling wave reactors is that they are fueled by depleted uranium (the waste product from normal nuclear reactors) and they can power a city of 2.5 million homes for a year on 8 tons of fuel.  There is currently 770,000 tons of fuel available in the US, so we could power the entire world for some time using these reactors.  The best part is that they allow us to power our cities with the harmful waste and are able to run for decades.  Now if I could just have my Mr. Fussion for my DeLorean…

I’m going to SXSW for the first time this year and with good reason, Hexxa is about to alpha release and LaunchSpot will be opening in Tempe in 2011.  Now I’ve been to plenty of conferences in my day but preparing for SXSW is more like preparing for a first time trip to Burningman than any other conference I’ve ever known.  Now I’ve had friends that have been going for something like 17 years and others that have a few under their belt, all of them have advice and all of them know how to do SXSW right.  Yeah it’s Burningman all over again…

Now the first year I went to Burningman I was a manager at Intel and went with another friend from Intel.  Needless to say we treated it like a normal work project and if you know anything about Intel, it’s a very data driven company.  We researched everything we could, interviewed stake holders (OK we talked to some friends), pulled together a project plan, had spreadsheets and charts.  We were camping with a very well established camp right off the esplanade with veteran burners.  Needless to say we were ridiculed for our organized, detailed planning and well stocked supplies, but by the end of the event the veterans had come by to ‘borrow’ this or that and our super cool shade structures, massage tent, extra glow sticks, extra water, etc. were all used.  Now we didn’t make it to 1/4 of the planned events on playa but we went with the flow, had the supplies to do so and have a great time.

Oh and the longer and more interesting story is how I met my wife that year as well and how I got to work for the man on the Pyro Team and blow up the man…

So now I find myself in a similar way planning out my SXSW adventure and realizing that I just need to make sure I have the right supplies, a basic plan that is very flexible, coordination with onsite friends, and the right attitude.  Got my SXSocial profile setup, got a downtown hotel setup, got transportation setup, got lots of invite only meetings scheduled, and am still working the public schedule some.  Very much looking forward to meeting new

Oh and in my research I’ve found some of the best advise in videos like this:

If you’re going to SXSW connect with me on SXSocial.

I just came back from talking on the Video Genius Panel at PodCampAZ with the realization I have not done any videos for this BLOG in a while.  Now most of my recent video work has been in the digital marketing realm for Web3Mavens clients, so that’s what I talked about.  I do have a few jewels I’ll pull out of the editing station and share on this blog very soon but until then how about a recap of some of some of the most popular videos.

Like the time I had the tables turned on me and this time I ended up in front of the camera in an interview, where Arnie Kuenn from Vertical Measures. He was interviewing Internet Experts on their predictions for 2010.

So how did I do for my 2010 predictions?

Or when I sat down for a chat with Jay Baer (@JayBaer) about a year ago.  Jay will actually be in town on February 11th at SMAZ along with Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra)to kick off the release of their new book, The Now Revolution. Attendees of SMAZ will get a free copy of the book…

Scott & Chris from Terralever

Chat with Sidra over at SpyFu

My talk with Margie Albert from Focus on Customer Success

Social Media in the Enterprise with Michelle Gorel from Avnet

So there you have a few of the more popular interviews I did with the knowledge that some new ones are on the way.  Let me know if there are specific companies or people you’d like for me to cover.

So this is a word cloud of this site thanks to Wordly

You will find that my current interests and therefore my blogging is most likely focused on the current ventures I have going.  These include a mobile game called Hexxa, a new tech incubator called LaunchSpot which includes a co-working space, more mobile and social development for clients at Web3Mavens, starting to pull together the next SMAZ together and the most important project I’m working on with my wife, Baby von Graf.

So as some of you may have read in my previous post about Hexxa, this game hits all the key elements that makes us as humans enjoy playing it. Well after watching this talk by Tom Chatfield on the 7 ways games reward the brain, it’s great to find that Hexxa addresses all of them:

1. Experience bars measuring progress
2. Multiple long and short term aims
3. Rewards for effort
4. Rapid, frequent, clear feedback
5. An element of uncertainty
6. Other people
7. Windows of enhanced attention

Watch this TED Talk and see what you think.

I developed a mobile game a few years ago (2006-7) and have been waiting on the technology and mobile adoption to finally catch up.  With estimates by market research firm Parks Associates that the smartphone adoption rates worldwide will quadrupedal by 2014 reaching 1 billion users and recently Nielson reported that Android adoption outpaced  iOS (iPhone, Touch, iPad, etc).  A study from the Luxury Institute shows that the prominent smartphone audience, the younger affluent don’t like paying for apps any more than the less affluent.  They also primary download, news, weather and game applications (I like the latter).  Add to that my personal experience with 95% of my friends, colleagues and associates all have smartphones.  So what does all that mean?  The stars have aligned and the world is ready for my game.

So how does a mobile game developer reach the majority of the smartphone market?  Well you have to reach the Android, iPhone and Blackberry audience.  The question that so many developers struggle with when starting a project is, do we go native, hybrid or web based.  With HTML5 becoming more consistent as a standard (think right around the corner) and more mobile platforms and tools being developed like PhoneGap, JQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, Nitobi Products, jQTouch, Adobe AIR and others, we are at a point where true cross (mobile) platform development is right around the corner.  Code once in HTML, CSS & Javascript, encode to multiple platforms…  We went through that same struggle and determined that for now we are going to develop native applications (maintaining 3 sets of code), until the HTML5 standards mature some.

I reached out to some innovative business partners and got minimal pre-seed funding, enough to get the game developed and kicked off in time for some events early next year.  Eventually we’ll look at getting some Seed or Series A funding.

So you may be asking what the game is, well let me give you a 30,000 foot view: it’s a partially location based game that ties in to peoples desires to achieve goals, compete and cooperate.  It can also get people to meet like minded folks and form teams.  We  have a monetization model built in from the beginning (not a Twitter scenario here), and every company and organization that’s heard about it want’s to be involved (already have some signed up for our launch).  We have a Ph.D. specializing in the psychology of learning that’s reviewed the game and can give you all the details as to why it kicks butt.  We have done the market research and truly have a niche product that is amazingly simple.  Sorry I’m being so vague but until a couple of our patents are filed this is all I can really share.

Needless to say I’m very excited to finally be developing the game, working with a small but great team and very much look forward to getting the private beta launched so we can get feedback and have some fun with our friends!

Would you help us decide which logo to use?  #1 or#2?

This is the #1 sample shown as an icon on an iPhone

This is the #2 sample shown as an icon on an iPhone

Mobile 2010 photo by James Young

For the fourth of July this year I found myself “volunteering” to help my wife sell drinks at a vendor booth for her event class. In between carrying pallets of RC Cola and convincing people to spend $2 a bottle I noticed something really interesting. Dozens of people had long sticks with a spiral cut potato wrapped around it.

I immediately wanted one.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t hungry and I’m trying to eat better I still wanted that seasoned, fried carb-heavy goodness. Just to try it. They’re also a brilliant marketing tactic since everyone else at the fair can easily see a long pointy stick of fried potatoes. According to Wikipedia, French Fries were first invented in the 1600′s in Belgium (but that’s another story) so they’ve been around for a LONG time. And yet it was still possible to make something new and exciting about them.

What does this mean for your business?

Don’t just create a product, create an entire experience for your customers. Help them find and express the joys of buying and using it. Even if your product isn’t inherently awesome like the Tornado Fry, you can still create that experience. Maybe it’s using Twitter or Facebook to talk about your customers. Use YouTube to post videos your customers have made or interview them yourself.

Social Media offers us the chance to really connect with our customers in a way that was never possible. This doesn’t mean you can slap a Facebook page on a crappy product and call it a day. But I’m pretty sure that’s not what you want to do either. Just remember, it’s about your customers not your product. Make it really easy for your customer to get engaged and then start having a conversation. And listen.

Image by L.Richarz

I’m going to Phoenix Design week and I think you should too, so we can meet up and talk design. This will be my first time attending PHXDW and I’m excited to meet the people that attend and learn from the presenters.  Now design is outside of my normal expertise, but it affects me on a daily basis.  Almost every client I work with and every project somehow has some design elements incorporated.  Whether that’s a simple graphic for a landing page, Facebook app integration, to the integral user engagement design.  I love the social psychology behind UI design, and general human technology interactions, including or perhaps especially marketing interactions.  Sure I own a wireless Wacom tablet and full Adobe Master Suite, and have been using Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, Dreamweaver and Illustrator for years.  What does that mean?  It means I liked the new Adobe CS5 suite with it’s 64bit support and use of the Nvidia cards (GPU) for offloading tasks from the CPU), enough to buy the biggest package they offer and that I dabble with the tools of the trade enough to truly appreciate people that are experts in this area.  At the end of the day I know what great design is from it’s interaction with it’s audience, visual appeal and utilitarian aspects, but when it comes to executing I’m a wannabe, and that’s why I hire talented designers and artists for my clients.

Being able to meet new people with diverse skills in the design realm excites me, I’m very much looking forward to the event and hope to see you out there as well.

Now if you’re asking yourself what is Phoenix Design Week anyway?  Well the organizers describe it as:

Phoenix Design Week is a weeklong conference and series of events scheduled from Sept. 29 to Oct. 3. Since this is an event all about the Phoenix design community, various galleries will be up throughout the week featuring the work of local designers – everything from graphic to interactive to logo, and even sculpture to name a few.

The weekend conference is being held at the Phoenix Convention Center in the heart of downtown Phoenix. National speakers include Hillman Curtis, Von Glitschka, James Victore, Paul Sahre, Mike Joosse and Brian Singer. To learn more about these amazing speakers, visithttp://phxdw.com/speakers.

The panels, presentations, workshops and roundtable discussions held during the weekend conference are meant to bring together the design community in an unprecedented way.

Are you a faux designer like me?  Will you make it out to PHXDW?