State0 Blog

Matt Genovese is a great community builder here in Austin. He runs Door64, a social networking site for engineers. Matt connects unemployed engineers with the recruiters that need their talents through the site and through the happy hours that Door64 hosts from time to time. In fact, there is one Thursday 5:30pm - 9pm at 360 Condominiums. Matt is a cool guy that really cares about our community. You should try to meet him if you have not already.

(OK, I promise Brad does not actually look like this in normal life. YouTube somehow chose that frame to display and I cannot fix it.)

Brad Powell was nice enough to have lunch with me this week. He is the CEO and a founder of DadLabs. DadLabs produces a great show on the web that includes “Advice for the modern dad by dads and daddys on parenting, parenthood, fatherhood, children, and wives.” It is great to see such avid social entrepreneurship here in Austin. I am not a dad myself but I work with youth and I often see the affects of both good and bad parenting. I love that these guys are putting the time in to back dads up. If you are a dad, you should check them out.

DadLabs is sponsored by BabyBjorn. It is a great match up. I almost enjoy the product placement. There are a number of services that could take from that lead. Seamless product placement is a much better strategy for online video than display ads or abrupt transitions to sponsored content.

Brad and his team have built up experience producing the show and have been in the internet video business as long as almost anyone else here in Austin. I have seen the DadLabs team on a few panels and they are involved in the local social media scene. If you are fighting through some of the branding or sponsorship issues associated with online video, you should consider getting in contact with these guys.

Tom Sheahan just moved to Austin from Australia. He is the founder of Red Oxygen which is an enterprise text messaging company. He is looking to slowly move his headquarters here to Austin. Red Oxygen delivers messages for many major brands already and is hoping to expand its US customer base by setting up shop here. This is a step above the email TXT that many websites take advantage of currently. If you are interested in doing some TXTing to your customers, they have an API that makes things easy.

I have decided one of the best things I can do to connect to and promote Austin is to interview people doing cool things here. I figure I should start with what I do and so I interviewed my bosses. I have been working with Lee and Carrie Little here in Austin for 3 years. They founded and run BarZ Adventures, a GPS tour guide and gaming solution company. They are great to work with and for. I forced them to let me put them on camera yesterday and I have put it up for your viewing pleasure. I may at some point attempt to transcribe these interviews, but for now I will let you just enjoy the raw footage. Please forgive my lack of interview/camera skills. (Doing this threw me off a bit. It is kind of like hearing yourself on someone’s answering machine.) Hopefully, I will improve with time. If you are starting something cool in Austin, I would love to interview you. Hit me up. I am hoping to post a few more of these types of interviews while I am here at SXSW.