Be sure to look at all of Rudy Malmquist’s photos and our other albums. And if you would like to recommend your favorite photo with a GM car or truck in it, put it up on Flickr and tag it with “gmfyi.”

It looks like Jeff has been too busy to blog about his travels. But you can follow his tweets and even ride along in real time via Ustream.

We’ll check in with Jeff again tomorrow as his roadtrip continues.

Special thanks to Buick, Kodak, Doubletree Hotels, Sprint, Glaseau and Waav for their support and sponsorship of this journey through the Midwest.

I started out on a mission to connect with members of the #140conf community across the Midwest and at each stop I am reminded how much the advent of the real-time Internet is affecting business. The changes and opportunities brought upon the real-time touch cattle ranching, dairy farming, education, social services, car dealerships as much as advertising, real estate, fashion, design, politics and so many other industries.

So far I have met with some amazing Characters from: Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City and Omaha. I appreciate the chance to drive across the Midwest and connect with people who are also interested in social media / social communications and the ongoing effects of these changes on the future of business.

During the road trip, we have been broadcasting live on UStream from our Buick Enclave as often as the time and wireless mobile broadband connectivity has permitted. Friends are invited to Skype us with during the rest of our trip. You can find us on Skype with the SkypeID: roadtrip140conf.

After breakfast in Omaha, we are heading to Souix Falls, SD, and then to Fargo, ND, tonight. Tomorrow, we will be visiting the Mall of America and having dinner near where the “Field of Dreams” took place in a corn field in Iowa. From there we will be traveling to Madison, Wi with a stop in Milwaukee ending up in Chicago. From Chicago we will be heading to Detroit to attend the Chevy Volt SXSW party on Aug 28th. If you will be in any of these cities, please RSVP for the reminder of the #140conf Road Trip gatherings here.

The Ties That Bind

Amidst the backdrop of what built this region of the U.S., you see warehouses that have been converted into work spaces and residential lofts.  You see railroads tracks and 18 wheelers that are exporting America’s summer bounty.  And you see that the Midwest’s location, lower cost of living, and quality of life is what is bringing people — to bebuild ties to childhood friends and family.

We’re connecting with people who do work locally, regionally, nationally and around the world.  Their marketplace is just an Ethernet connection, a wireless hotspot, or wireless network away.

Even in this world of digital media and content creation, I was personally struck with a sense of pride when we visited the GM Fairfax Manufacturing facility near Kansas City.

It was not about building cars.  It was about this new sense of pride that was so clear to me, especially when we had production workers sharing their stories with our embedded journalist, Mo Krochmal.

Going forward, there’s a reason we’re going to the Field of Dreams, the Mall of America, and a university town like Madison, Wisconsin.  They all represent iconic symbols of this region of our great country.

You can get a feel for the journey through content that we are producing and that is being curated by the community.

• #140Conf Paper.li
• Mo Krochmal’s Facebook Page
• Mo Krochmal’s Twitter Stream-
• Alan Weinkrantz’s Blog
• The #140Conf Flickr Stream
• #140Conf Blog

Hope you are enjoying your week.

Best regards,

Jeff

p.s. I woke up with #140conf LA on my mind.

#140conf Los Angeles will be taking place on October 4-5 2010 at the Music Box theater. Register by Friday, September 3rd to take advantage of the $140 “early bird” pricing for this two day event.

With our 2010 #140conf ticket prices set at an affordable $140 a day,  the #140conf events are 100% “word of mouth” events. I would greatly appreciate your direct help in contributing to the awareness of #140conf Los Angeles in the communities which you are active in.

On Sunday, Pulver and his Buick Enclave (Buick is the lead sponsor of the Detroit #140conf) rolled into Cincinnati, visiting startups like Share this Voice and venture accelerators The Brandery, while still finding time to tweetup with folks from Cincinnati’s social media community.

The tweetup, fittingly, was held at a place called the Cadillac Ranch. Gotta love it.

Monday found Jeff rolling through Indiana to Indianapolis for a lunchtime tweetup, then all the way to St. Louis for another tweetup. Then today, more tweetups in Kansas City MO, and Omaha.

Getting tired just thinking about it! Of course, the culmination of all this traveling is a visit to Detroit on Aug. 28, setting the stage for October’s #140conf.

You can keep up with Jeff’s travels on his blog. - Will Stewart, blog editor

Jeff Pulver

We all have heard the hype and all the talk about the social web (or real-time web, or web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it), and the opportunities it presents to connect people with each other, people with brands, etc. But at GM, we’ve always found that the real-time web gets most exciting when you use online relationships to connect us to people offline – to meet real people, get to know them, give them a chance to see our vehicles, get their honest feedback after driving, and so on.

There’s a great example going on this week of the power of the real-time web to draw people together. In October, the famed #140 conference – which examines the impact of the tools of the real-time web on business, communities, the media, politics and more – is coming to Detroit at the Fillmore Theater; we’re proud to have Buick as the lead sponsor of this event. This week, Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver on Twitter), the conference’s founder and visionary, is embarking on a week-long road trip through the Midwest to raise awareness about the conference, bring people together, get them excited about coming to Detroit in October, and show off the Buick Enclave he’s driving for the trip. (He’ll also be touring our plant in Fairfax, KS when he gets there later this week.)

Starting in Cleveland and winding through thirteen states in seven days, Jeff is holding tweetups or meetups in virtually every town he’s passing through. Sunday he hit Cleveland, Dayton and Cincinnati; today he’s going to be in Indianapolis, Bloomington IN, and St. Louis. Later this week, he’s stopping in Kansas City, Omaha, Sioux Falls, Fargo, Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago and Detroit. In each city, he’s meeting with members of the social web community, and Buick is along for the ride. You can be too – he’s got WiFi in the car and wants people to call along the way via uStream.

To follow Jeff’s progress, to learn more about #140conf Detroit, to see the Buick Enclave or or talk more about why Buick’s involved in #140, you can give Jeff a call in the car to become a virtual passenger, by clicking the call-in button here. To follow along on Twitter, do a search for the hashtag #140conf, follow Jeff @jeffpulver, or follow along with @Buick. We’ll also post some of the videos Jeff shoots on facebook.com/buick. And if you live in any of the cities along Jeff’s route, please stop by the tweetup happening in your city; Jeff would love to meet you, and we’d love to see you both at the tweetups and at #140conf Detroit on October 20!

The video uses audio test  footage that was captured in a soundproof anechoic chamber during development of the Cruze. The video takes a very stylized approach to showing off the fit and finish that is one of the Cruze’s calling cards. As you can see, the development engineers and the Cruze make beautiful music together.

Solid! - Will Stewart, blog editor

As I watched the events affecting our nation’s coastline, my resolve is stronger than ever – we must focus our efforts on alternative fuels.  We need change and choices for energy independence and that’s the focus of the team that I’m proud to work with at GM.

While we know that there is no one solution to meeting our nation’s alternative fuel needs, GM supports E85 ethanol as our best near-term solution. In fact, last month, we announced that we’re increasing annual production of Flex Fuel Vehicles (FFV) to more than 850,000 – that’s a 55 percent increase from the 2006 volumes. Our 2010 lineup represents the most FFV models on the market, providing drivers with multiple options to fuel their vehicles – E85 ethanol, petroleum, or a combination of the two. And with many new stations opening up, especially in the south and south central regions, it’s becoming easier find a place to fill up.

In its first weekly alternative fuels report, the Energy Information Administration recently announced that 839,000 barrels of ethanol were produced daily during the prior week. Surprisingly, that’s up from the daily average of 694,000 barrels per day around the same time last year.

However, with domestically-produced renewable biofuels and renewable energy, we have options for offsetting our dependence on petroleum.  You might not realize it, but there are so many options for producing renewable energy right in our own backyards. Consider this: we can tap locally available feedstocks to use at nearby cellulosic ethanol production plants with each region offering a diversity of biomass, including urban wastes, agricultural residues, and forestry residues. The fuel can then be produced locally and shipped to distributors in the area, which further reduces the amount of energy needed and lowers our carbon footprint all at the same time.

While my team is focused on supporting E85 ethanol, we’re also exploring other forms of alternative energy. We’re working on cellulosic ethanol with our partners at Coskata and Mascoma. And last month, we announced that CNG/LPG versions of our Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana vans will be available for our fleet and commercial customers beginning later this year. We’ve also recently launched a fuel cell program in Hawaii.  This project focuses on renewable hydrogen as an affordable fuel option that can be dispensed using the existing infrastructure on the islands. We’re continuing to invest time and money into hybrids – both mild and strong. And of course, there’s the Chevrolet Volt, our electric vehicle with extended-range capability.

President Obama has urged Congress to pass clean-energy legislation so that we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil. As a country, we’ve made great strides in identifying and developing alternative energy sources to accomplish this very goal and we’re continuing to uncover new options and opportunities. That’s why I’ll continue, as part of the GM team that’s working hard to find solutions, to provide choices and help facilitate this change.

We’ve been called a lot of things – on-line customer service agents, social media sleuths, cyber detectives… and now, we’ve been called good at what we do.  Valeria Maltoni, a top social media influencer and speaker with 20,000 followers, says GM is one of the top customer service accounts on Twitter.

That’s a nice compliment to our entire team as we spend days and nights pro-actively scouring social media Web sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, looking for customers that we can assist.

Although this is one influencer’s opinion, it adds up with everything we’re doing to be more pro-active and leverage social media to assist our customers where they are and want to spend time. We started with a small team of social media representatives last year and added some tools to make it easier to find our customer’s posts. The response to our efforts has been tremendous and we plan on expanding our capabilities in this space moving forward.

Valeria noted in her analysis that, “Companies are starting to see the wisdom of putting the human back into customer service.  Along with the additional promotional opportunity opened up with social media, many are walking the walk and actually listening to customers.”

Her evaluation criteria included:

• Answering customer questions in real time
• Thinking about customers first
• Orienting customers on what the account s about

GM’s focus on customer care is making a difference and we are chipping away at old outdated perceptions by trying new mediums and reaching out in ways that weren’t possible just a few short years ago.  The social media customer service team works hard, so this recognition makes us proud to be representing GM.

To see Valeria’s full tweet and the list of companies recognized click here.

You can follow GM Customer Service on Twitter or by signing up here.

Be sure to look at all of sjb4photos’ photos and our other albums. And if you would like to recommend your favorite photo with a GM car or truck in it, put it up on Flickr and tag it with “gmfyi.”

Join us for a live web chat Thursday, July 29 at 12 p.m. (EDT) to ask your questions on the Corvette Engine Build Experience (CEBE) or the PBC. We look forward to our dialogue with you on the program and on the engine building process at the PBC!

You can also check out this video to watch a complete engine build here.