interactive marketing & other things - amy cham

Drupalcon summary: Designing for Drupal

Now that we've finished our session (thanks to everyone for the great feedback!), I get to go to sessions.  I'm going to do my best to post summaries of the sessions I visit.

The first of these is "Designing for Drupal," presented by Chris Fassnacht and Stephanie Pakrul, themers for CivicActions.com.  As Drupal reaches wider adoption, it is becoming more important to effectively bring together the functionality and structure developers create with the creativity and “wow” factor designers specialize in.  This session focused on the themer’s need to balance these two different perspectives and sets of priorities, along with techniques designers can employ to more effectively work on Drupal projects.

Drupalcon: How to find Tree House

The train leaves tomorrow, and Drupalcon is sold out!  So how do you find the folks from Tree House?  Well...

The easiest way to know where to find us is to follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/treehouseagency. We'll be sending updates throughout the week on what sessions and events we are attending, plus some live tweeting on interesting tidbits from sessions and people we meet.

On Monday, Tree House will deliver its session on theming -- What's in a Theme: The power of enterprise-level theming.  We're slotted for 2:30 as part of the Design and User Experience track.

AND, immediately after, you can see us at our table in the business and job fair.

AND, if none of these work for you, ping us an email at drupalcon@treehouseagency.com.  We'll be checking it regularly throughout the conference.

Want to talk shop about Drupal?  Look for Josh and Tom.  Want to talk jobs or business?  Look for Mike and Amy.

We are very excited to have this opportunity to introduce ourselves and get to know others in the Drupal community...if you see one of us, walk on up and say hi!  Just look for the white shirts with the Tree House logo.

See you soon!

We're in! Theming session at Drupalcon, next week!

The votes are in, and so are we!  Tree House Interactive Agency and Lifetime Networks are joining forces to present "What's in a Theme": The power of enterprise-level theming at next week's Drupalcon in Boston.  Josh Katris, Marque Staneluis, Mack Hardy, and Tom Wysocki will provide a 360 view of theming approaches in an enterprise-level Drupal implementation.

The session will examine the challenges of implementing and managing enterprise-level sites, and describe a methodology that can be used to address them, focusing on theming approaches as the secret sauce.  Examples from the recent launch of myLifetime.com will be used to illustrate how this plays out in the real-life launch and ongoing management of a large, community-oriented, enterprise-level Drupal website.

We are very excited to have this opportunity to share the combined client and agency experiences with the rest of the Drupal community, and illustrate just how powerful a tool Drupal theming can be for enterprise-level sites. 

Hope to see you there!!

Vote for Tree House! Theming @ DrupalCon Boston!

We (Tree House Interactive Agency) have posted our session proposal, What's in a Theme: The power of enterprise-level theming, and now we need votes!  We'll be looking in-depth at the challenges faced in planning, launching, and maintaining enterprise-level sites on the Drupal platform, and bringing along one of our big-name media clients to help us demonstrate how they can be overcome with smart theming practices.

What are the challenges?  Who is the big client?  You're just gonna have to read the proposal. ;-)

Going to DrupalCon?  Post here and we'll look for you!

Every day is the Super Bowl! Check Adjack

I'm one of those wacky people who finds the actual Super Bowl game to be a distraction from the all-star commercial line-up that runs on that night.  The run-of-the-mill commercials that run the rest of the year can get tedious, but dang it, those Clydesdales can act!

If you're like me, you'll enjoy this site...Adjack.tv is the brainchild of David Boland, one of my friends from Cornell.  Recognizing the entertainment value of clever commercials, and the natural human attraction toward opportunities to win something for nothing, Dave created Adjack.  Adjack presents some of the most engaging commercials going, and gives you free chances to win big jackpots for watching them (where permitted by law).

Congrats to Dave on his beta release...  Check it out!!

So it's a day late...

Setting Goals for Content Sites

If you’ve been reading up on internet marketing, you’ve no doubt seen many articles talking about improving your site conversions. On a sales-oriented site, this is very intuitive…what portion of your visitors end up buying something? 

For a content site, though, it can be difficult to decide what a “conversion” might be, much less how to measure it and optimize for it. As this is something I have struggled with on some of my client sites, I thought it was worth a post and hopefully some discussion. 

This article is not intended to be a definitive, all-encompassing guide…rather, my hope is to get the wheels turning for how you might be able to more effectively use and measure your content-based site.

NYC Tech holiday party

I'm pretty big on Meetups.  I've only been to a few, and I've already met a number of intersting, enthusiastic, and talented people.  A great one is coming up next week, co-hosted by a bunch of NYC Meetup groups.

The core organizers say:

Everyone is invited - open source or closed - CTO or junior admin.  Our mission is to bring together the various technology sectors and companies in one professional networking event.

This is not strictly a geek-fest - just like our 2004 event, this is a professional networking social, where spouses, friends and even those not in technology will enjoy themselves.

Check out the posting on Orgcom for more details (and the impressive sponsors list), or head over to the Silicon Alley Meetup page to get the info and RSVP there!

Marketing Books for Charity

This is cool...Rohit Bhargava highlighted this on his blog a couple days ago.  He has just launched an affiliate bookstore, The Ultimate Marketing Bookstore, with a unique idea.  The Amazon affiliate site collects recommended reading lists from marketing illuminaries, making it easy for shoppers to choose the best of the best in current marketing wisdom. Proceeds from the site's sales go to DonorsChoose.org, a non-profit that provides grants to teachers for projects they might otherwise not be able to get funding for.

A great example of leveraging the power of social marketing, Rohit and his team used LinkedIn to get recommendations for what charity to focus on, are using blogs to get the word out and get feedback, and will be releasing badges and other Web 2.0-ish tools to build awareness.

Check it out!

I've joined Tree House Interactive Agency!

As you may or may not know, for the past several months I'd been working on a freelance basis doing web development and internet marketing for small organizations. Last month I decided to join up with Tree House Interactive Agency, a NYC-based agency with some big ideas and cool clients (and a great boss!!). :)

My official title is Marketing/Tech Convergence Manager.  I'll be wearing a slew of hats ranging from developer (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Drupal, Ajax) to strategist, to trendspotter, to ideator, to blogger, to conventional marketer, to...you get the idea, yeah?

I am very excited about this new role and where I can take it, and where the company is headed.

Stay tuned!