There is a lot going on in Kansas City, these days. Google has launched it’s “Google Fiber” product and the entrepreneur community is buzzing with activity. It’s a hot bed for startups, and it’s being coined as “Silicon Prairie”. In 2008, Silicon Prairie News was founded to discuss the developments in the startup scene in the flyover states of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. SPN, launched Big Omaha a couple years ago, and today was the inaugural Big Kansas City conference kickoff, where top innovators, startup founders and digital disrupters share their wisdom in an old school airplane hanger, that is now the Airline History Museum.
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Innovation and Inspiration at Big Kansas City
My Experience Working With Yahoo! And Why Marissa Mayer is Right about Not Letting Employees Work from Home.
Everyone has been busting Marissa Mayer’s proverbial balls over the past week over her decision to make Yahoo employees work at a corporate office and stop working from home. My work commute is approximately 66 steps from bed to work chair. It works for me. I work for a silicon valley company from my basement office in my Kansas City home. Living and working in Silicon Valley is too damn expensive so living there isn’t really an option. Having said that, I understand why Yahoo! totally needs to do it.
In the past summer, the company that I consult with was working on a partnership with a well known movie producer on a joint venture with Yahoo and my company. Meaning, we had to work together closely to make it happen. They had a distribution partnership with Yahoo! Screen and we had to work with it.
11 of the Best TED Talks Every Human Should Watch
TED stands for Technology, Education and Design and if you’re not familiar with them, by now… LOL, you sux0rs at the interwebs. This is only the greatest repository of speeches and presentations by the most brilliant minds, most fascinating people, education radicals, tech geniuses, medical mavericks, business gurus, and music legends of our time.
Awhile back, I made a goal to watch every TED Talk. So, I watch at least one daily. The more good shit that goes into your mind, the more good shit comes out. Feel free to bookmark this so you can come back and watch each one of these.
15 Photos of Upside-Down Snowmen on Instagram
Snowmen are great. It’s a true story that not one snow man has EVER been convicted of a crime. Who hates snowmen? Evil people, that’s who. Evil shitty people who hate life, hate snowmen. Especially upside down snowmen.
Because upside-down snowmen are rare… and are created by people in a very playful mood. A regular snowman just won’t do. I must have an upside-down snowman, because it is much more jovial.
Instead of making my own snowman with this shitload of snow that we got in Kansas City… I searched Instagram and have found a bunch of cute, hilarous upside down works of art created by joyous people. Who can hate on that?
Best Android Apps to Install on your New Android Phone
So Travis, why should we listen to you about which apps are the best Android apps to install on our new Android devices?
Well, good question. I got my first Android device when the original Motorola Droid came out. And since then, I’ve had a Samsung Charge, Samsung Galaxy SIII and now, I’m rocking the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Since this is my 4th Android device, let’s just say that I’ve had plenty of time to figure out which apps are a must to install when your get your phone and which apps you should probably pass on.
As a general rule of thumb, only download apps that have good reviews and comments. If an app has only 1,000 downloads… pass. There are many, many apps out there that have viruses, malware and madware on them. So, be smart and diligent when installing any Android apps. It’s a jungle out there. I’d definitely recommend checking into some mobile security for your Android device.
There are tons of sites that recommend Android games, but I won’t be doing that here. I try not to waste much time playing games on video consoles or my phone. So here goes, 35 of the Best Android Apps! Enjoy and please share! READ MORE »
The Kansas City Chiefs Twitter Case Study
Back in September, the Kansas City Chiefs had lost their opening game to the Atlanta Falcons by a wide margin. That evening, I was texting a buddy of mine that I’ve have known since 5th grade about how poor that the 
Chiefs had been with the salary cap, and how cheap I was perceiving them to be. After the conversation, I tweeted out what I thought was a meaningless tweet rant about my perception of the situation.
“I’m not much of a @kcchiefs fan anymore. [Chiefs owner] Clark Hunt’s yearly 30m under the cap bullshit is unethical. Greedy bastard owners can F.O. cc @nfl”
Let’s just say… that tweet caused a bit of a social hoopla. 3 minutes after I sent that tweet… a Chiefs employee tweeted me a response via a private direct message. I then took a screencap of this message and shared it with the world. This triggered a chain reaction, in which the Chiefs blocked me on twitter, a top post on Reddit, many local and national interviews and a social media case study was created.
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Social Media Stormgasms During Bad Weather, Big Events and Disasters
Yesterday, Burger King’s Twitter account password was hacked. I was able to monitor it in near real time. WDAF Fox 4 in Kansas City was thinking of having me on as a social media strategist and interview me for my opinion of the Burger King… the producer nixed that story and wanted a story about social media and how it impacts people and the frenzy during bad storms and disasters. This is the video of my interview on the local Kansas City news station WDAF Fox 4.
The Hidden Benefits of the @BurgerKing Twitter Hack for Burger King
If you were watching the interwebs this morning, you may have heard that Anonymous hacked the official Burger King Twitter handle @BurgerKing and changed all of it’s branding to McDonald’s logos and imagery. This could be catastrophic for the agency or the BK Social Media team who manages these accounts.
While I watched this play out in real time, I was astounded at the sheer velocity of growth that the @burgerking Twitter account was experiencing. From my estimation, @BurgerKing was at about 77,000 followers to start the day.
Once “Anonymous” hacked the profile due to an alleged “whopper123” password, the buzz started spreading, the amount of @burgerking twitter followers begin to grow.
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Travis ‘Rides Bitch’ on a Big Wheel in Video Edited in Each of the Past 5 Decades.
I’m turning 40 in May and I have had no video footage of me as a little kid. My mom just gave me a Super 8mm tape a couple of weeks ago, of some footage that my grandparents had of my biological father holding me when I was 2 weeks old. Haven’t figured out where to go to get this footage converted yet. Yesterday, my Uncle Jeff sent me a Facebook message informing me of some some additional footage that he had of me as a little kid. Awesome news! And what’s really interesting to me about this footage is this footage has been edited every decade since the 70s… and transferred to many platforms.
The original was a Super 8MM movie shot in the 1970s. copied to VHS in the 1980s, copied to DVD in the 1990s, copied to Windows Media by DV camera, then converted to MPG in the 2000s. and my uncle sent it to me via a Facebook message attachment today. Here in the 2010s, I edited the .MPG in iMovie and did the voiceover with my Macbook Mic. And now it’s exported it to YouTube… This movie has been edited and stored on products and tools of Kodak, Microsoft, Sony, Apple and Google.
Verizon Early Upgrade for Samsung Note 2 is a Win for Amazon.
Let’s face it, gadgets make the world go around now. After all of my extensive research, it was time to upgrade my phone to the Samsung Galaxy Note II. I looked online at my Verizon Wireless account and noticed that on Feb 17th, my main line became eligible for the upgrade. I figured that I could use my charm and good looks to get the hook up and get my phone a week early. The following chain of events showcases how poorly different divisions of corporations speak with one another.
First of all, I admit that I’m a geek. My line of work entails that I interact with technology, online, mobile, social, search… you name it. I need a phone that allows for effective multi-tasking.
