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The Lean Startup debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. This talk draws on stories and insights from the book, explaining the new science of entrepreneurship. Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counterintuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
The goal of this session is to demystify the “viral video” and demonstrate that there is in fact a science to creating viral hits. In this presentation, I will discuss my experiences producing viral videos that have received over 100 million views. I will share what I have learned about crafting a product message in the form of a viral video and maximizing video views. We'll analyze successful videos ranging from small hits (250k-500k views), medium hits (1M-5M views) and monster hits (10M+ views), breaking them down into the key “viral characteristics” that contributed to each video’s success. I will also discuss strategies for integrating product demos with these viral characteristics, and the trade-offs between including substantial product demos versus simple product placements. Finally, I will demonstrate how entrepreneurs on shoe-string budgets can employ these viral video strategies to gain widespread distribution for their products, by examining the adoption of my own product LaDiDa, which became a Top 10 Music iPhone App and has been used to create more than 20 million songs as a direct result of these viral video marketing techniques.
The Austin Chronicle recommends this event in "The End of the Double Rainbow: Does it take a pot of gold now to go viral?" Read the full feature here.
Get a copy of David Kadavy's best-selling book, Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty. RSVP here on sched.org before March 9th, and come to the talk to see if you've been selected. David will announce winners at the end of his talk. The more people who RSVP, the more books he'll give away, so don't be afraid to tell your friends.
There is little compliment for a design greater than saying that it "looks clean." But clean design is much more than just a look. To make a clean design, you have to know how to communicate clearly by using white space wisely. In this solo presentation, David Kadavy, author of the #18 Amazon best-seller "Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty," breaks down the invisible forces that shape white space and make a design look "clean." Using fascinating examples that have explained mysteries such as "Why You Hate Comic Sans," Mr. Kadavy illuminates how geometry, typography, and the grid all work together to shape white space, communicate clearly, and create clean design.
PostSecret, BLUEBRAIN and Fireman Creative team-up for an exciting new live multimedia performance. Always innovative, BLUEBRAIN will live score the latest PostSecret video composed of artful, funny, sexual and heart-breaking secrets. Bring your own secrets and be ready for some surprises. Free and open to the general public.
The Austin Chronicle recommends this event in "The Sound of Secrets: Blubrain live-scores your true confessions". Read more and see their nifty photo gallery here.
On Thursday, June 2, 2011, LulzSecurity.com registered for CloudFlare — a service designed to make any website faster and more secure. One hour after they registered, they published 3.5 million usernames and passwords allegedly stolen from Sony Pictures' website.
The Austin Chronicle recommends this event in "Attack of the Cybermen: Activism Powered by the Internet." Read the full feature here.