Our Master, Jay Baer

Posted on October 19, 2011 by trotzke

The Combine 2011 is fortunate enough to have an absolute pro, Jay Baer, as our Master of Ceremonies. Jay speaks more than 75 times a year, often to crowds of thousands. He’s started 5 companies and worked with over 700 brands (29 of the Fortune 500). His blog (http://convinceandconvert.com) is ranked the #1 content media blog and the #3 social media blog in the world. He’s co-author of The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts To Make Businesses Faster, Smarter & More Social. He’s also a go-to guy regarding social media for press outlets like USA Today, MSNBC, Inc. and Fast Company. So he’s busy and in demand. Typically, it would be difficult to get a full day of someone like Jay’s time.

But we’re lucky.

Last year, Jay decided to move. He was hoping find someplace more centrally located with a great college town vibe. He evaluated several cities and, lucky for us, chose to make Bloomington home. Jay has made a great addition to the local tech scene, and we’re pumped to leverage our home court advantage to get Jay all day. He’ll be kicking things off at 9:45am on Friday. Don’t miss it! Get your ticket today. Jay is just one of more than 2 dozen awesome speakers at The Combine 2011.

In the meantime, if you want to get more Jay, check out his blog, book and personal site and follow him on twitter. You’ll be glad you did. He is pure awesome.

Tech Cocktail to Feature 14 Local Companies

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Betsy Trotzke

We’re excited to announce that 14 local companies have been selected to be featured at Thursday’s Tech Cocktail Bloomington! Tech Cocktail—happening 8-10 p.m. at the Indiana Memorial Union’s Alumni Hall—serves as the opening mixer for this year’s Combine. In addition to networking with fellow Combine attendees and speakers, it’s a great opportunity to get the inside track on some great startups emerging from Bloomington, Indianapolis and beyond.

We’d like to thank Tech Cocktail for sponsoring this great event and fostering the growth of startups and talent in our community. Founded in 2006, Tech Cocktail is a leading media company focused emerging technologies, products, startups, entrepreneurs and innovations.

Here’s just taste of the 14 companies that will be featured this Thursday: Continue reading →

And Now Annoucing… Workshops!

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Betsy Trotzke

Waiting until the last minute to get your ticket to the Combine? Wait no longer! In addition to fabulous events and speakers, we’re stoked to announce our full schedule of Saturday workshops! With these expanded and highly interactive workshops, you’ve got no reason not to GET YOUR TICKET TODAY!

We’ve got four tracks (Business, Marketing, Coding and Cornucopia) of workshops to delve deeper on specific topics. Choose from 14 sessions on topics like social media marketing, business basics, community building, fundraising and much more. Return home with even more ammunition to innovate and become a change agent for your own company!

Rapid Collaborative Strategy Workshop
Track: Business
Presented by: Kevin Makice & Christian Briggs of SociaLens

In this high-energy workshop, you practice building a simple, memorable, measurable business strategy. Already have a business idea? Align your concept with clear goals, and use that strategy to craft your elevator pitch with help from other participants. Don’t have a business idea yet? Learn a rapid strategy process that can be used at the organizational, departmental, and even individual level with your organization.

Continue reading →

Hotel Rooms Available

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Jenn

Coming to town for The Combine and still need a hotel room? Most of the hotels around town are pretty full, but we have a few extra rooms reserved right downtown, at The Hilton.

Attack of the Corn

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Chris

Well we thought Cornzilla was just a lot of blather, but it turns out we were wrong. With only a week to go to The Combine, Cornzilla the mutant corn escaped this morning. Cornzilla sprung up during a local 4H event and now has gotten out to spread its corny terror. It has been seen eating cows saying things like “yeah how’s that feel cow, not so good huh?” it’s all pretty horrific.

Turns out it was not merely tweeting but had been building alliances with some sympathetic types to escape from it’s confines. In an effort to shut it down and put it back where it belongs we are offering a discount to get as many of you earlier believers here as we can to defend Bloomington and The Combine.

We’re not talking Tinkerbell here, we aren’t clapping to keep its evil corn butt around. While applause will be much appreciated for Speakers and Workshop facilitators, this corn only deserves a good shucking and popping.

To make you feel more at ease we have made updates to our app so we can track its mutant butt. This will help us alert everyone and get us all in the right place at the right time to defeat Cornzilla and enjoy doing it. So make sure you get the update when it comes out.

More importantly, if you haven’t downloaded the app yet you can get it at one of these fine places. Trust us you’ll need it.

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-combine/id469811642?mt=8

Android: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.whimmill.thecombine&feature=search_result

Who is Merlin Mann?

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Jenn

Merlin Mann is speaking at The Combine. I know you have seen his picture and a sort of random, vague bio on our site, but I am not sure how many of you know what he is all about. Some of us think it is a really exciting thing to have him here, in Bloomington, at our event. I want to tell you a little bit about why I agree.

Merlin has been around for a while. If you have ever referred to (or maybe even tried to achieve) the Inbox Zero thing – that’s Merlin. If you ever decided to go analog and try out the Hipster PDA – yup, Merlin.

He has spoken at Google about how to do email better. He pitched a room full of people at SxSW and sold them on The Worst Website Ever. He has spoken at Apple, Pixar, MacWorld, Adobe, Yahoo! and many other companies and conferences all around the globe. (Remember, this guy is coming here, to Bloomington.)

Read this blog post - it’s one of his best. Watch this video from Webstock 2011 – it feels a little random at first, but stick it out. Right around 11 minutes it starts to get really honest.

Listen to any of his podcasts, because they are all great and you will laugh and cry. Two of my favorites are Back to Work and You Look Nice Today.

Lots of people think he is a little random. Some people think he is a little crazy. I think he is both a little random and a little crazy, but in ways that I relate to. He is so honest and so straightforward. Regardless of the particular topic, he says things that we think about and touches on things that are in all of us.

Seeing him live is a special experience that you do not want to miss.

Check out his work at www.merlinmann.com and then buy that ticket because he is just one of a couple dozen amazing people who we have assembled to teach and inspire you at The Combine.

Convince Your Boss

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Betsy Trotzke

Why You Should Attend the Combine, October 20-22!

The Combine launched in 2010 to a sell-out crowd in the collegiate, Midwestern town of Bloomington, IN. The 2011 event, planned for October 20-22, promises to be an even better event with nationally-known speakers, expanded workshops and unique networking opportunities.

Want to attend, but not sure how to convince your boss? How about these talking points to inspire your “pitch”:

Networking Opportunities
With hundreds of attendees and a full schedule of events, there’s no shortage of people with which to engage and interact. Combine attendees are diverse — from large corporations, small businesses, non-profits and even students. You will make valuable connections with influential tech experts and open doors to others who are similarly inspired by innovation and technology.

Inspiring Speakers
Hear examples of success, failure, innovation and how to use technology to find new solutions and better ways to interact, inspire, and do business. Topics include entrepreneurship, product development, design, marketing, social media, blogging, coding, personal branding, business development and community.

We are pleased to welcome Merlin Mann to The Combine. The founder of 43Folders and the creator of Inbox Zero, Merlin is well known for his energizing and inspiring talks at companies like Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Adobe, and Xerox.

Pioneers including Ade Olonoh of Formspring and Micah Baldwin of Graphicly.

Angel investors, social media experts, and marketing professionals including Paige Craig of BetterWorks, and Mimi Henderlong of Threadless.

Local Talent that includes Johan Bollen of IU School of Informatics and Computing and Christian Briggs of SociaLens.

Expanded Workshops
You asked for it; you got it! This year’s Combine will feature four tracks of expanded and highly interactive workshops that delve deeper on specific topics. Return home with even more ammunition to innovate and become a change agent for your own company.

Knowledge to Inspire
With over 15 main event speakers and 15 workshops during the three-day conference, you will walk away with real-examples, new ideas, and skills to use technology to motivate your own creativity and inspire the rest of your team.

Learn New Skills
Have a need to code? Join us for API Hackday – developers of all experience levels are invited to join us to share ideas and build apps together, collaborate on projects, start new ventures, and discover great tools and new APIs to play with.

Sponsored by SendGrid,Twilio, Mashery, Full Contact, and CheddarGetter, representatives from each company will be at the event to present their API and answer questions about using it in your app.

Showcase Your Own Ideas
Let’s face it. It’s not always about listening to the other guys. Sometimes, it’s about selling your own ideas. That’s why we have plenty of opportunities for you to pitch your ideas.
Got an early-stage idea, but don’t know where to take it. Participate in the Open Pitch Session and get feedback from actual early startup investors and fund managers.
Bootstrapping a company of your own and looking for ways to promote your work? Showcase your startup technology at TechCocktail and interface with other new ventures.

Economically Priced
The Combine offers a lot of value to you and those with whom you work and interact, for a small price. Take a look at similar conferences and we think you’ll find that The Combine is very reasonably priced. The Combine is a volunteer run, non-profit endeavor that seeks to spur growth and creativity through technology. We believe that the Midwest is a great place for tech and creative work and this is one of the things we do to build an active and engaged community. We are not in it to make money and that makes it easy to keep ticket prices affordable.

Need more material to convince? Make sure to check out the list of speakers and complete conference schedule. We look forward to seeing you October 20-22!

Volunteer for The Combine

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Jenn

The Combine is coming! This entire event is volunteer powered and we need help from some of you to make everything run smoothly.

October 20th-22nd is just around the corner and there are still opportunities for you to volunteer and attend the conference for a reduced rate!

Work 3-4 hours and attend the entire conference for $40, or work 3-4 hours and get a one day pass for $20, and all volunteers receive a free conference t-shirt!

Signing up is easy.

Step #1 – Fill out the volunteer sign up form.

Step #2 – Register for the conference with the volunteer code you receive from us.

Step #3 – Attend the orientation meeting on October 12th from 6:30-7:30pm at City Hall or watch a volunteer video online before the event.

We still have opportunities available before the event, as well as on Friday and Saturday, that include everything from set-up to being one of our live bloggers.

Contact volunteers@thecombine.org with questions.

Our Speakers: A Sneak Peek

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Jenn

The Combine 2011 brings a diverse group of talented speakers to our stage and we are excited about the line-up. There are 10 amazing talks planned for you on Friday, October 21. Here’s what a few of them will be about.

Ade Olonoh
Startup myths perpetuated by Formspring

Formspring launched at the end of 2009 to become one of the fastest growing websites in history. It’s a fascinating story, but perpetuates many of the myths that entrepreneurs tend
to believe. The founder and CEO debunks several of these myths with statistics and stories from the early days of
the company.

Mimi Henderlong
Community Driver: Using Technology and Creativity to Stay Human

Threadless has a vibrant community of over 1.7 million artists, bloggers, designers and tee lovers. In this talk, I’ll show you how we use technology and creativity to connect with our users online and IRL, challenge and empower them to ‘make’ and ‘do’, and most importantly have fun. By continuously working on keeping our ‘human-ness’ and staying true to our very unique Threadless culture, we are steadily gaining new community members and invigorating our veteran members to participate.

Johan Bollen
Measuring the Zeitgeist From Social Media Data

It may be possible to gauge the public’s sentiment in near real-time by applying automated sentiment analysis techniques to social media data, such as the tens of millions of Tweets submitted on a daily basis. In our own research we have found that measurements of public sentiment from large-scale collections of Tweets correlate with significant socio-economic phenomena, including future changes in the values of major market indices. The latter result suggests the tantalizing prospect of using social media mood analysis to inform investment decisions. We have also studied how the properties of the Twitter social network relate to the happiness of its users. I discuss these results in detail, and conclude with an overview of future developments in the emerging domain of computational social science.

Christian Briggs
Digital Fluency: On Becoming Jackie Chan

Our world is faster and more complex. The effects on digital communication have forced us all—our co-workers, kids, customers, investors, and elected officials—on a journey to become fluent. SociaLens co-founder Christian Briggs provides an overview on how to move from being digitally illiterate to digital fluency.

Open Pitch 2011

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Jenn

We are, once again, kicking off The Combine with an Open Pitch Session. We know there are lots of people, right here in our community, who have great ideas they want to share with others and turn into reality. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for an investor, a co-founder, or just want to share your great ideas, Open Pitch might be just the thing for you.

What Do I Pitch?
Most people pitch business ideas. Do you have an idea for a web-app – there will be people there who want to hear it. Have you come up with a non-profit that will change the world or maybe you have detailed plans for the world’s first invisibility belt – we want to hear that too.

Who Will Be There?
Designers, programmers, creatives, lawyers, biz-devs, entrepreneurs, and investors are the folks we expect to see in the audience. We might even have some educators, doctors, and scientists – you just can’t tell.

When and Where?
The event is taking place on Thursday, October 22, at Alumni Hall. Doors will open at 6:30 and pitches will start around 7pm.

What Do You Need To Bring?
You will have 5 minutes to make your point. Props etc. are fine (as long as they are safe and legal) so bring them if they get your message across. You can bring your laptop and a powerpoint – we will have a computer set up and ready for you with a screen and projector attached.

Who Do I Contact About Pitching?
We are asking you to contact us if you want to pitch so we can save you a spot. If we have time, walk-ins will get a shot at it too, but no guarantees.

Fill out this quick form if you want to pitch.