I first met Geoff Hamrick and George Junginger at SXSW 2010 at one of the panels. They had an idea to make photo books social and had launched a beta version of Group Story, which allows friends to make photo books using all of their photos.
For example, when I went to the World Cup last June, all three members of our group took photos. I used Group Story to upload all of our photos and choose the best pictures, whether I had taken them or not (mostly I hadn’t). I’m also starting a Group Story for Startup Chile and inviting all of the 25 participants to upload their photos so we can all create our own photo albums using what we believe are the best pictures. Group Story is ideal for any large group that takes photos of the same event.
I think Group Story has found a cool niche. You could create a photo book for all of your family from past Thanksgiving or holiday celebrations and it would make a great gift. I have photos from my family celebrations, but it would be cool to have all of my Aunts and Uncles’ photos available to share as well. Check em out and let me know what you think.
One of the biggest keys to success in life is being able to communicate clearly. If you’re the smartest person in the world, but can’t explain your ideas to anyone else, it doesn’t matter. Many people struggle translating their ideas into actionable chunks. Others struggle with getting up in front of a crowd. They talk too fast, use jargon, business buzz words and end up losing their audience. The best public speakers I’ve seen talk slowly, clearly and have broken their ideas into small pieces that people can understand. I left the startup panel at SXSW 2010 thinking that Naval Ravikant knew what he was talking about. He talked slowly, clearly and delivered insight. If you watch the best TED Talks, they all do the same thing.
I’ve always been interested in trying to improve public speaking, but never had a good idea until I came to Chile. We were at an entrepreneurship panel held completely in Spanish with four speakers. Most of the speakers talked slowly and clearly, but one was clearly nervous, making her speak even faster than normal. I had trouble understanding her for awhile until she worked out her nerves.
So pretend your audience is made up of people who know your language as their second language. If you do this, you’ll speak more slowly, use smaller words and break your ideas into chunks. I’m not suggesting you dumb down your presentations. Speaking simply and clearly is not dumb. In fact, many times it’s even harder. That’s why you often see websites with a full paragraph of text without having any idea what they actually do. But that’s for another blog post.
Public Speaking Keys
Slow down. Then slow down again. You’re probably still talking too fast.
Avoid jargon and business buzzwords. Communicate simply and clearly
Relax. You know more about your subject than your audience.
I get asked to connect people all the time. I also ask others to connect me to people every single day. Getting introductions is an incredibly powerful way to get to know people who can help you with your business or in your personal life. It’s also great to be able to give an introduction to two people who will mutually benefit from knowing each other. Email introductions are the most common intros these days, so it’s important to know how to both introduce two people and respond to introductions.
Introducing Two People
I like to keep it really simple. Here’s a mock introduction between my business partner Jesse Davis and our friend/Madison entrepreneur Steve Faulkner of Real Time Txts.
To: Jesse Davis, Steve Faulkner
From: Nathan Lustig
Subject: Introducing You
Jesse, meet Steve Faulkner. Steve is, among other entrepreneurial endeavors, the founder of Real Time Txts, a service that texts subscribers free drink offers at local bars in real time. He also wrote an awesome article about Madison entrepreneurship that was featured in Techcrunch.
Steve, meet Jesse Davis. Jesse is the cofounder of Entrustet, a website that allows you to decide if you’d like your digital assets transferred to heirs or deleted when you die. He is also active in the Madison startup scene and Capital Entrepreneurs and writes a great entrepreneurship blog. Jesse is interested in connecting with you to see if there is a potential partnership for Real Time Txts and Entrustet.
I wanted to connect you guys so you could figure out how to make it happen. I’ll let you take it from here.
Thanks,
Nathan
Key Points to Remember
Use the format above to introduce both people to each other
Include links to each person’s business, unless the person is well known
Include a sentence at the end to say why you’re connecting both people to each other
Include a sentence that tells the two people you’ve just introduced that it’s up to them to take it farther
Responding to an Introduction
It’s fairly straight forward. Click reply all and thank the introducer for making the intro. Introduce yourself to the other person and go from there. It’s important to include the introducer in the first reply so that they know that you’ve actually responded. If I’ve taken the time to introduce two people, I want to know that they’ve actually taken the next step to connect. After the first email, feel free to leave the introducer off further conversations. Here’s a sample reply:
To: Jesse Davis, Nathan Lustig
From: Steve Faulkner
Nathan, Thanks for intro.
Jesse, many people have told me that we should meet as well. As Nate said, I’m the founder of Real Time Txts, a service that sends people texts about free drinks at Madison area bars. Do you have some time this week to chat via phone or meet up for coffee so we can discuss a potential partnership?
Thanks,
Steve
I hope this helps! What do you think? Do you use this format or do you have a different format that works well for you?
On Saturday, #18 ranked Wisconsin defeated #1 Ohio State at Camp Randall. I’ve been to a ton of games at Camp Randall over the years, including a last second win against #14 Michigan and wins over other highly ranked opponents, but Saturday night was by far the loudest I’ve ever heard Camp Randall. But I don’t want to talk about what happened on the field, but rather what happened in the student section.
Whenever James White, Wisconsin’s freshman phenom running back, touched the ball, a huge percentage of the student section held up a blank 8.5×11 sheet of white paper. It looked like the university had gotten cheap because of the recession and handed out paper, instead of white towels, like they had when Ron Dayne broke the career rushing record against Iowa in 1999. In reality, the University had nothing to do with it.
Ron Dayne Breaking NCAA Record
How did 10,000+ students all get the idea to bring small pieces of computer paper into the stadium for the biggest game of the season? How did everyone know to do it? I was lucky enough to learn the whole story and will share it with you.
James White burst onto the scene in Wisconsin’s first three non conference games against UNLV, San Jose State and Arizona State. Although he did not have huge stats, you could see he had the makeup to be a special player. My friends Alex Connelly, Dylan Mathieu and Max Rosen wanted to create some sort of cheer for whenever James White did something good and came up with the idea to bring in blank pieces of white paper into the game. So for the Austin Peay game on September 25th, Alex and his friends snuck about 50 sheets of paper into the stadium and gave the paper out to the people sitting around them. Most of the people threw paper airplanes, mostly because the Badgers killed Austin Peay 70-3. White had 146 yards and 4 TDs and suddenly the entire student section knew who he was.
Two weeks later, the Badgers came home to battle rivals Minnesota. This time, they snuck an entire ream of paper into the game and passed the paper out to their friends. I remember looking for them from my seat in Section P and saw about 3 rows of people waving white paper in the bottom of Section N in the student section. It looked pretty cool, but it was not viral yet.
Wisconsin played Ohio State one week later and the events of that week are a great case study about how an idea goes viral. On Sunday, a student who had sat behind Al and his friends at the Minnesota game created a Facebook Event called James WHITE OUT. During the week, more students and alums joined the event and the buzz grew on Twitter, too. UW student Caleb Sherman was the earliest Twitter adopter I can find, tweeting to the UW Athletic Department, Chancellor and others UW organizations.
By Tuesday, the Facebook event had over 6000 people attending had reached another 8,000 more and the Badger Herald wrote about the James White Out. On Wednesday and Thursday, ESPN’s nightly college football program mentioned the James White Out on the air and Sports Illustrated.com mentioned the White out.
On Friday, I called my brother, who excitedly said “did you hear, bring a piece of white paper to the game on Saturday?” I hadn’t heard anything else since I talked with Alex and his friends after the Minnesota game assumed they had been promoting somehow. I was wrong.
On Saturday morning, I biked over to my brother’s for a tailgate and he told me about the white out again. I told him my friends had started it, but he told me about the ESPN and Sports Illustrated mentions and the Facebook event, which now had over 7,500 attendees. Over 18,000 people had been invited and most of the UW student population knew about the White Out. I was concerned that the UW or Camp Randall would step in and not allow the White Out to happen, but I noticed that even the official UW twitter account was talking about the White Out and encouraging it.
I went over to my friends’ tailgate where I talked with Alex. He had a full ream of paper ready to go. I told him that my brother had seen the white paper idea on a Facebook event with 7500 confirmed attendees, mentions on Sports Illustrated and ESPN and that most of the student section would have white paper. He didn’t believe me. He thought I was messing with him. I kept telling him the story, but I don’t think he believed me fully until we got into the stadium. On James White’s first carry, a 70% of the student section held up white pieces of paper. It looked amazing.
Photo credit: BadgerNation
The White out continued for the entire game, culminating in a huge celebration when James White ran for the game clinching touchdown midway through the 4th quarter. The party was on. When Blake Sorenson intercepted Tyrelle Pryor’s desperation pass to end the game, everyone ripped up their paper and created a confetti shower. It was an amazing site to see and showed how a small idea can grow exponentially with the help of the internet.
James White Winning Score, White Paper in Background (photo credit http://www.pbase.com/mylesl/2010fbosu)
The James White Out is a perfect case study to demonstrate how a new idea, video or meme goes viral. You can use these ideas to help your ideas spread more quickly and you can also tweak your ideas to make them more sticky and therefore more viral. If you’re interested in how this works, check out Derek Sivers’ awesome blog post about how to start a movement. Many of the same principals apply here, too. Here’s a quick summary of how The James White Out went viral at the University of Wisconsin:
1. Come up with sticky, innovative idea
Alex, Dylan and Max come up with idea to bring blank white sheets of paper to show support for James White.
2. Early adopters become evangelizers and spread the new idea
Student sitting behind Alex, Dylan and Max at Minnesota game started Facebook event and invited all of his friends. Other students tweet to UW, Athletic Department, Chancellor and others to support the idea. Guys with original idea have no control over this spread, and in fact, did not know it was happening. You need to have such a sticky idea, that others want to share it. It should be funny, easy to do, innovative or just downright interesting.
3. Niche Community Adopt idea
As Facebook event grows, niche Badger sports communities like Buckyville and Scout.com spread the message. After the original idea, you don’t know where your ideas will go, but if they are not hitting the niche communities who you are trying to attract, you can always try to seed these communities.
4. National Influencers adopt idea
ESPN, Sports Illustrated and other national influencers share the message, reaching millions of people. If you haven’t had any success with steps 1-3, you really can’t go right to step 4, unless you are a really big company. Even then it will likely backfire.
5. Adoption
10,000+ students bring white paper to student section and hold it up when James White gets a carry. The guys with the original idea still have no idea that their idea has gone viral. They think it is a joke when I tell them on Saturday, about 2 hours before kickoff. It shows that when you have a great idea, it will spread if you make it easy enough for others to jump in.
6. Mainstream adoption
News articles, tweets, and other mentions from people who were watching on TV or heard about the White Out, but did not attend the game.
