(Fortunately) we don’t have to travel a great deal here at crowdSPRING; we do the bulk of our communication with partners, funders, and customers over the phone, via email, or on Skype. However, when we do travel we are ever constrained by our limited travel budget, over-extended scheduling, and our pesky insistence on convenience, creature comfort, and cut-rate pricing.
We have found lots of great resources both on and off the web to help us find and book flights and hotel rooms, and lots of great apps and websites to make our trips easier and more fun. Hopefully some of these resources and tips can help you with your own travel plans and maybe give you some ideas on how to get the most from the three C’s for travel success:
Convenience is where it starts and ends – it should be as easy to do the booking as it is to execute the actual trip. This means that you will need everything from a great online tool to find airline tickets to an app that aggregates your trip information to the right memberships which allow for easy booking and seamless transitions. Here are a few ideas and resources which can make the entire process as pain-free as can be expected:
First, it should be easy to research your travel options, book your flights and reserve your cars and hotel rooms. Lots of great sites are available for this, but my two favorites are Hipmunk and Kayak. These sites allow for multiple searches and easy comparison through their simple interfaces. Kayak is the more fully-featured of the two, with the ability to save searches, compare flights and prices with other sites, set up and receive pricing and scheduling alerts, and quickly sort and filter results. But even in the absence of lots of feature, Hipmunk shines for it’s intuitive interface and ease of use. With an innovative “timeline” display it is super-simple to compare flight schedule, price and duration, And Hipmunk’s proprietary algorithm allows you to view the results sorted by the relative “agony” of all those factors combined.
A great travel app can really help to speed your trip and make it easy to share your itineraries and travel details. Tripcase allows you to search for and input your flight, car, and hotel details online and automatically sync those to your smartphone. Once created, you can share those details via Facebook or Twitter, view maps and seat charts, receive alerts on gate and schedule changes, and edit the details on the fly.
When traveling by air the biggest obstacle to your convenience and efficiency is the airport itself. There is an art to making your way from curb to gate, and there is plenty of help available; from planning ahead to choosing the right luggage and clothing and even to selecting the “best” line at security, making good choices can reduce stress and save time. So, my advice comes in three easy steps: 1) wear slip-on shoes and avoid belts and other clothing that contains metal, 2) travel light: a backpack or other “checkpoint-friendly” laptop bag along with a small roll-on should be enough for most travel occasions, and 3) give yourself plenty of time – wouldn’t you rather have an extra 15 minutes at the gate reading your magazine or checking your email than to be stuck in a line stressing about whether you will have the door slammed in your face when you arrive late to the gate? The Transportation Security Agency has actually created a great web resource with tons of great advice and ideas on what you can do to smooth your journey through the airport.
Be sure to choose your car and hotel wisely for convenience as well as comfort. A hotel nearby your meetings will save you time and hassle and a good rental company can also help make the goings smooth. I particularly like National Car Rental’s Emerald Club which allows me to book the car ahead of time, get my contract taken care of and choose a car quickly and easily so I can get out of the lot and onto the road.
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image above is from an outstanding collection of black and white photographs taken by Vivian Maier, a street photographer whose work was discovered at an auction in Chicago. Her fascinating story is in the Other section below.
We are bombarded by advertising from television, radio, online, mail, email, billboards, magazines, buses, and newspapers. Increasingly, we’re also seeing product placements in television shows, video games, and in movies.
Product placement is a form of marketing where branded goods or services are placed into a story line of a television show, movie, or other program. Product placement became very common in the 1980′s but has a history dating back to some of the earliest movies, as you’ll see in the following video looking at a brief history of product placement.
What’s your favorite product placement in a movie or television show?
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to buy your flowers directly from the wholesaler and cut out the B2B costs? Well if you live in New Zealand or the South Pacific you will be able to do just that!
D.I.Y Wholesale Flowers has just launched and is able to bring the best flowers to consumers at a low wholesale price. Anyone in New Zealand wanting to create their own arrangements for weddings, parties or even just crafts can now purchase the flowers that have come straight from the nurseries.
DIY recently posted a project on the site for a new logo for D.I.Y. Wholesale Flowers and received over 80 entries! The winning entry was awarded to Melody.
I had a chance to speak with DIY about what it takes to run a small business and here is what they had to say…
1. How did you get things designed before crowdSPRING?
A friend recently used crowdSPRING to update their logo and were really pleased with the result and steered DIY Wholesale Flowers in the same direction. We found the selection we have had to choose from excellent and great value for our money. You can interact with the artist to get modifications and there is no restriction to the number of times. I had a very specific look in the logo I wanted and ran it by two local graphic artists but their quotes were very expensive.
2. Why in the world did you decide to use crowdSPRING?!
crowdSPRING was recommended to my friend by a gentleman that ran a marketing course that she attended.
Later this month President Obama will deliver the annual State of the Union address. In the address the President will discuss the relative strength of our economy, our institutions, and our relationships with other nations and our current standing in the world.
I thought it appropriate , at the beginning of this new year, to do the same. But instead of a discussion of our nation’s current situation, I wanted to have a look at the state of crowdsourcing – as an industry, as profession, and a force for change in the world of business, creativity, technology, and politics.
To delve into this analysis, I have created a list of nine crowdsourcing platforms, and summarized their efforts. Each of these players is impacting our world in important ways both economically and socially. Here is my list of influencers in the world of crowdsourcing and how they are bringing significant change to this still young domain.
Amazon Mechanical Turk. In many ways the granddaddy of crowdsourcing platforms, Turk enables users to tap into it’s network of workers to perform tasks which computers are unable to do, but which humans can perform quickly and inexpensively. Examples of the tasks performed by the Turk community include translation, transcription, image tagging and even searches for missing persons. Turk was among the first platforms to truly leverage the power of a distributed workforce and to demonstrate that providers around the world would happily participate in such a model.
Trada. is the first company to devise s system to effectively crowdsource SEO (search engine optimization) services. Paid search typically involves the use of thousands of keywords and dozens or even hundreds of specifically targeted ads which are delivered when a user types a query into a search engine. Most online (and many many offline) companies are leveraging paid search and pay many thousands of dollars to experts to manage their campaigns. A company looking to place ads on search networks posts their campaign through Trada and their community of SEO experts contributes keywords and terms to the campaign. These PPC (pay-per-click) experts are only paid if the terms they contribute lead to clicks and conversions for the advertiser’s site or service. JJ’s List. This site is a wonderful resource for Chicago-area with disabilities; essentially a version of Yelp targeted to folks who need special accommodation in their everyday life. JJ’s List let’s users post reviews of services and businesses such as restaurants, stores, banks, movie theaters, and doctor’s offices. The users can search the database and read the reviews about how well businesses accommodate disabled people. Although a young site, with relatively few listings and users, JJ’s List is a great example of a targeted crowd-driven site with a purpose.Crowdsortium. The first industry group, Crowdsortium began its young life as a Google group for companies in the crowdsourcing space who wanted to share information and advice with one another. This self-organized group works to advance the industry and share best-practices, research results, and company data to advance the cause of its member companies and to educate others on the positive role that crowdsourcing can play in business.
Jeff Howe. The godfather of the crowdsourcing movement, Jeff coined the term in a 2006 article for Wired magazine and remains one of the leading experts in the field, having literally written the book (Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business) on the subject. He defined crowdsourcing as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?crowdrise. Philanthropy by the crowd and for the crowd. Om this site anyone can start a fundraising project, and share it with the world raising money for any cause they choose. Recent projects include scholarships for cancer survivors, efforts to fight malaria, and raising funds to buy a truck for a village in Africa. Plus the actor Edward Norton is the force behind this social-crowd venture. Cool.
Victors & Spoils. Billed as the world’s first creative (advertising) agency built on the principals of crowdsourcing, V&S does work for brands such as Dish Network, Levis, and Harley Davidson. Their member designers, copy-writers, and creative directors battle it out for their ideas in the company’s Squirrel Fight. Awesome work – have a look here at the result of one of their first campaigns>
TopCoder. 275,000 software engineers work together on this platform to deliver results to client companies world-wide. Every project started on the site is assigned a project manager who coordinates teams of engineers to deliver software created to the buyers requirements. A buyer works with the team to plan. prototype, build, and test their software.
The United States Government. The federal government has embraced the crowd in a meaningful way, with the White House having issued a directive to all departments to issue challenges and prizes in order to find innovative solutions to the nation’s problems. This marks an important sea change in the way business will be done going forward and brings transparency and collaboration to the governing process. Good for them.
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image above shows some fun illustrations on coffee cups. You’ll find the article which includes this illustration and much more in the Industrial Design section below.
The About page of Carson Mag, a new bi-monthly magazine, says the following about David Carson:
Creative Director David Carson has won over 170 awards for his work in graphic design, had numerous one man exhibitions of his work worldwide, and has been called the “Art Director of the Era” by Creative Review London. USA Today called his work “visually stunning,” and claimed “it may actually get young people reading again.”
Some of you will recall that David Carson has, on many occasions, publicly voiced his view that speculative work is wrong. Here is Carson’s sanctimonious opinion from a panel debate on the subject of spec work, from the 2009 South by Southwest Interactive Festival (listen from 1:22 to 1:36; we’ll start you at 1:22 automatically):
Here’s a transcription of what Carson said:
“[Spec] work absolutely devalues the value of the profession…of individual designers…in a shocking and horrible way…cheapens the whole industry.”
We, of course, disagree. You can imagine our surprise when we saw the following on the About page of the Carson magazine (highlighting added):
We’re happy to see David Carson evolved his views and now agrees with us.
Only several years ago, many startups and small businesses could not effectively compete against larger and better financed competitors. Today, inexpensive and free small business marketing tools, outstanding small business programs from Google, and crowdsourcing have made it possible for startups and small businesses to level the playing field.
In this post, we’ll discuss five designs that startups and small businesses should crowdsource to further level the playing field with their better financed and larger competitors.
There are literally dozens of different types of designs that can be crowdsourced. To get a few ideas about how other businesses have leveraged crowdsourcing for design, you can read 99 designs you can crowdsource on crowdSPRING.
Why should startups and small businesses trust crowdsourcing to meet their design needs?
Small businesses and startups have minimal brand recognition, are often located in geographic or demographic areas that limit their marketing options, and most have small (or non-existent) marketing budgets.
Crowdsourcing empowers startups and small businesses to avoid the time consuming process of finding a graphic designer, negotiating a contract and a fee for the work, and the wait to review one or several design choices. Simply put: crowdsourcing is quicker, less expensive, easier, and offers you far more choice than working with a single freelancer or agency.
What types of designs should startups and small businesses crowdsource?
1. Logo Design – Startups and small businesses often make the mistake of using a poorly designed logo or an off the shelf generic logo from a $99 logo store. This is a costly mistake.
In an earlier post examining Branding Secrets of the World’s Best Brands, I discussed a few reasons why startups and small businesses should have strong branding (including a strong logo):
The logo is one of the most important elements of a brand. As you think about your logo, keep your audience and products/services in mind because you want your logo to reflect your company. A good logo builds trust and a strong logo will help to pull your brand together.Think about the logos of some of the world’s most admired brands (Apple, Google, Amazon). How do you feel (emotionally) when you see one of those logos?
By making your logo the main theme of your marketing and advertising activities (online and offline), the logo will become associated with your business and will help you to better communicate with prospects and customers.
Logo design projects on crowdSPRING start at $200. When you crowdsource your logo on crowdSPRING, you’ll set your own price (we’ll give you suggestions based on our experience with thousands of logo design projects), see work from dozens of talented designers ( more than 80,000 designers from nearly 200 countries work on crowdSPRING), use simple but effective tools to manage your project, and choose from an average of 110+ original custom designs. And you are at all times protected by crowdSPRING’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.
logo crowdsourcing tip: If you are looking for a color logo, consider the messaging that color sends to your customers. Do the colors reinforce and strengthen the intended core message/personality/mood you’re trying to communicate through the logo, or do they distract or neutralize? For example, blue often communicates trust, loyalty and freshness. The color blue is common in banking or finance. Green represents life, nature and cleanliness. Also consider colors that work well with dark and white backgrounds. Because logos are often printed in black and white, chose a logo design that is viable and as strong or stronger in black and white.
2011 is going to be a great year for entrepreneurs – even better than 2010. The past year saw startups on the rise, an increase in venture capital funding (both in real dollars and numbers of companies funded), a resurgence of IPOs, and the rise of David against Goliath, as best represented by Groupon’s spurning of a $6 billion offer from Google.
Three trends which started in 2010 should continue into 2011 and should accelerate as the year goes on: VC funding will continue to accelerate fueled by the global growth in entrepreneurship; job creation will see gains, fueled by startups and small business; initial public offerings will see a comeback.
Investors will be bullish on startups. Last month the National Venture Capital Association released a survey which reflected investor’s optimism on high-risk startups, and gave every indication that VCs would continue to invest, particularly in IT, mobile, and cloud-based technologies. In addition, R&D budgets continued to increase throughout the recession and show no signs of letting up. Social media will continue to attract investment, as well as clean energy, nano technologies, and bio-pharma. But this investment will happen globally and the US may see a decline in VC-funded startups in 2011. The survey indicated that the VCs surveyed felt the best prospects were for entrepreneurs in emerging markets like China, Brazil, and India.
VCs also indicated their optimism about the overall quality of the deal flow with high percentages from all countries surveyed indicating that quality would “remain the same” or improve in their countries in 2011.
Startups will sustain domestic employment. It has become a cliche that startups are the engines of job growth in the US, and this is for a very good reason: they are. The Labor department reported that in 2010 the total number of businesses in the US actually declined, while new businesses are opening at a frantic pace. Although, the new businesses opening their doors are adding fewer jobs than were lost, tech continues to be a bright spot and companies in their first five years are expected to account for most of the projected job growth. The problem is not with the startups and their net contribution to overall employment, but rather with large companies in established industries and their continuing destruction of jobs as they continue downsizing and outsourcing to overseas markets.
crowdSPRING is the world's #1 marketplace for entrepreneurs, small businesses, nonprofits and agencies who need custom logo design, web design, a new company name or other writing and design services. Over 110,000 designers and writers work on crowdSPRING. We are trusted by more than 27,000 happy clients around the world.
(Fortunately) we don’t have to travel a great deal here at crowdSPRING; we do the bulk of our communication with partners, funders, and customers over the phone, via email, or on Skype. However, when we do travel we are ever constrained by our limited travel budget, over-extended scheduling, and our pesky insistence on convenience, creature comfort, and cut-rate pricing.
2011 is going to be a great year for entrepreneurs – even better than 2010. The past year saw startups on the rise, an increase in venture capital funding (both in real dollars and numbers of companies funded), a resurgence of IPOs, and the rise of David against Goliath, as best represented by Groupon’s spurning of a $6 billion offer from Google.
