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Stay on Top of the Tech Scene

Stephanie — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:03:39 +0000

The temptation to hibernate through winter is strong, but don’t let that keep you inside! Bloomington and the surrounding areas are hosting a number of events that’ll keep you plugged in to the the latest tech news.

Verge Winter 2011 Meetup
5:30 p.m. Thursday, December 8 at DeveloperTown, Indianapolis, IN
Verge is for all people in the Indianapolis-area working at or investing in tech startups. The Winter Meetup will highlight three new startups:

Quipol, a cool social polling platform
Knomingo, a unique video community
uFlavor, a custom beverage startup, which will be launching to the world at this event!

So whether you’ve founded a startup, hack at a startup, or both, you’re likely to have a good time and make some great connections at their monthly meetup.

Click here for more information.

Drupal December Meetup
6:30 p.m. Tuesday, December 13 at the IUPUI Library, Indianapolis, IN

This month’s meeting is a hack session –there is no set topic or schedule. The topics are determined based on those who are attending. You can work with other Drupal people on your projects and get help if you’re struggling with something specific.

This meetup is great for beginners as well as experienced Drupal developers. There will be professional Drupalers present to help, so no topic is too simple or complex.

Click here for more information.

hYPe December Social Networking Event: Martinis and Merriment!
5:30-7:30 p.m. Wednesday, December 14 at Serendipity Martini Bar, Bloomington, IN

The Bloomington Chamber of Commerce started hYPe in 2010 as a means to foster young budding professionals in Bloomington. hYPe will host a social networking event at Serendipity Martini Bar featuring door prizes, hors d’oeuvres, and drink specials. Bring three canned goods for admission!

Register for the event here.

Indy Media Artists Meetup
6 p.m. Thursday, January 19, 2012 at the J. Everett Light Career Center, Indianapolis, IN

Indy Media Artists provides a source of information and sense of community for local graphic designers, web designers, motion media and video creators. This month’s meeting will feature breakout groups on Photoshop, Adobe Suite 5.5 Demo, and WordPress.

Click here for more information.

Will Bloomington ever be known as a great place for tech?

kacey@sproutbox.com — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:01:00 +0000

You always hear about the booming tech scenes in Boulder, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco, but you never really hear much about the blooming tech scene in the Midwest/Bloomington. Why is that? Is it because we really aren’t blooming? Or is it really because we haven’t had enough time for it to blossom to become the next big tech scene? There are probably many reasons why we have yet to be considered a big tech scene, but we are making strides to be recognized.

If any of you attended the TEN Conference in Columbus, Indiana, Brad Wisler, actually listed off six elements he believes are essential for a startup/tech community. The elements are creative culture, education, heroes and soldiers, sense of place, organized capital, and culture of risk. Bloomington and Indy have all of these elements. So we’re ready to take off but what’s the next step?

Getting more people involved is the next step. Many people in both Indy and Bloomington work very hard to put Indiana on the map as a tech hotspot. With groups like Verge, BloomTech, and events like The Combine, many of these heroes, soldiers, and risk takers, are brought together. These events and groups need to be well marketed because when movers and shakers are together great things happen. People collaborate on their ideas and boom, we have a new startup. Little by little these great ideas can help build the road to a big tech scene, you never know what could be the next Facebook or Groupon.

How can you help? Come to the events, spread the word, just get involved anyway possible. SproutBox, for the past few years, has been working hard to showcase the talent of the Midwest. We can only do so much, we need your help. So stay up-to-date on the events going on in Bloomington and Indy. The Bloomington Tech Partnership keeps the tech event up-to-date on their website. Also make sure to follow SproutBox on twitter and we’ll announce important events.

Upcoming Events:

11/9: hYPe: Internet Marketing 101: 5:30pm, Ivy Tech

11/10: Geek Dinner: 6:00pm, Greek’s Pizzeria

11/18-11/20: Startup Weekend Bloomington: 6:30pm, Ivy Tech

Every Friday: Tech Lunch: 12pm

Every other Tuesday: Tech Coffee: 9am, Pourhouse Cafe

Quipol

Your Target Demographic Should Be You

quirk — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:51:34 +0000

This is an excerpt from my friend Nate’s recent blog post “How to Get Millions of Users“, which is a great distillation of some big and heady thoughts tying product design, development, marketing, and onboarding all together in a nice little package. It’s a pretty long post, but read it all. I promise it’s worth it:

When we build products for groups of people we aim for a fictitious middle. While we’re trying to make something people LOVE we make assumption about what they love. It would be like saying to your girlfriend “I hear women LOVE Victoria’s Secret. Go try this on.” when in actuality some women might like that but she really loves sweat pants; taken as an individual, demographics mean jack.

When we build products for real people — starting with ourselves — however, we know exactly what to build.

Before he launched Foursquare, Dennis Crowley would go around saying “I just want a Leaderboard for my Saturday night and I want to be at the top of it.” Foursquare wasn’t just built for himself, it was built with a very specific set of friends in mind — those he spent his Saturday night’s with.