Oh my goodness! What an amazing time I had in Austin! I want to thank Aaron, Brooks, Parts, Derick, Domino, Erica and all the rest of the Red Bull staff who made this event amazing and the weekend just a blast!

Austin is definately living up to it’s city slogan “Keep Austin Wierd.” While I was there I saw all walks of life, in this great mixture of amazing harmony, culture and character. The town is eclectic and an amazing sence of charm and character every where you look. Unforunately it was VERY hot, humid and muggy while we were there.

We were staying at the Hilton in the heart of down town Austin, so if I looked out my hotel window I could see the Frost Bank Tower as well as the Texas State Capitol building. Our hotel was only two blocks from 6th St. An area of Austin that is heavily populated by bars and clubs, so much so that almost every building houses one. In fact, on weekend evenings the street is barricaded off so that pedestrians can walk into the streets to get around.  So needless to say I had a lot of fun while we were there. My favorite 6th St hangout was Red Fez. Austin, TX is also the home of the South by Southwest conference, which, after this experience, I’ll be attending, no DOUBT!

I had a few firsts while I was there, since I’m from Kansas, there are some things that I really haven’t had the experience of well.. experiencing. For instance, I went on my first pedicab ride. My second, third, forth, and fifth trip through a revolving door. I also have had my fair share of cab rides now as well.

But all of this is trivial in comparison to how much fun and craziness the actual Red Bull Flugtag Texas event was! We spent the first two days visiting the site and getting all the interactive materials ready for the big night on Saturday, and what a night it was! Gates opened at 5 pm and the crowds started pouring in. The Interactive Landing Zone was a big hit (especially in the early hours since it had AC) and Red Bull took over 600 photos of the event, participants, and spectators to post to the website. Red Bull believes this is the largest national event crowd they have had, with the headcount reaching 80,000 or so. The event park area had to be closed down at one point since it had reached capacity, and there was additional crowds located on the bridge, across the river and on the water. In the main area, people were standing shoulder to shoulder and moving through the crowd became a bit of an effort. The crafts that flew during the event were amazing and it was neat to see how much creativity and effort had been put in by all the teams participating. The winning craft, Skate and Destroy was amazing as it went off, the pilot actually stayed on the craft event after it’s landing!

So I needless to say I had a GREAT time in Austin, and I love all the charater and charm the city had to offer. Yea it was a little hot, and definately a little moist, but it was an amazing time filled with lots of great memories that I’ll keep with me for years to come. Becareful Austin, I’m coming back in March, and I’m going to rock it!

Here I come Red Bull Flugtag Texas! I’m so excited!

Terralever is flying me out to Austin, Texas to do on-site web updates from the event! While I’m sure I’ll be busy with all the work that is involved with broadcasting event highlights and winner information online, I’m garenteed to have a great time as well.

This will be my FIRST Flugtag event, I’m excited to see the energy and excitement that vibes from the real event. Some of the people that build and compete to fly at these events are DIE HARD fans of Red Bull and the Flugtag event and have been either at or in several events already. I can’t wait to be emersed in this event and really get a feel for everything that goes on there.

While I’ve spent a good year or so doing updates, I’ve never personally met our Red Bull client contacts. It will be great to finally meet some of the great people that make Red Bull such a sucess, and the masterminds behind some of thier largest events.

Not to mention, I hear Austin is a rockin town with lots of great people, live music, and awesome nightlife. I’m orginally from the Mid-West but I haven’t been to Texas too many times. It will be nice to be back in that part of the country.

I’m also looking forward to my fourth round trip flight! Flying makes me so nervous, I keep thinking that my luggage is going to get lost and I’m going to be without clothes for my trip. hehe At least I won’t be taking a dive off the Flugtag platform!

 Anyhow, I’ll be sure to blog about my trip and all the fun I’m having!

Found this really nifty cartoon illustrator (Doug Savage) that I thought I would share… he creates cartoons on postit notes.

This first one, worries me, because, well… it’s what I do.

Life in Eight Easy Steps

We have recently hired on a GENIUS of a woman named Kay at work. She does all our SEO implimentation and organic keyword creation, etc. Basically, if you want to be in the top 10 on Google, she can make it happen.

While Terralever has always been a results driven company, Kay is amazing in the amount of information she provides clients regarding SEO and organic keyword trafficing. So, being inspired by her wisdom, I’ve sat down this evening and added the All in One SEO Pack for Wordpress allowing me to customize my post meta keywords and description. To track my success, I’ve also bought into Mint and installed it on my server so I can see EVERY little move you make my dear visitor… scary eh?

I’ll let you know my progress as I track my way into being a WORLD FAMOUS web guru. hehe Alright, maybe not, but at least I can send Christmas e-mails out to all of my seven visitors!

I walked into Target yesterday to buy a flip top water bottle for my trips to the gym. I was READY to buy this product. I NEEDED one.

I walk down the isle to the selection of water bottles in the sports area. To my amazement the only water bottle on sale was branded by Eddie Bauer. Now I dunno what Eddie Bauer’s marketing staff tries to portray in their marketing, but my brand sence about Eddie Bauer strongly categorizes it with blonde bimbettes who drive the BMWs their rich husbands buy for them. I personally do not want to be associated in any way shape or form to that type of person. Thus, I have an aversion to the Eddie Bauer brand.

I frantically search the isle for ANY water bottle that doesn’t have the branding… the few that don’t are the wrong style of bottle. So instead of breaking down and just buying an Eddie Bauer water bottle… I left the store without one.

I found it very interesting that I could have brand aversion to such an extent that I would choose NOT to buy a product that I had FULL intentions of buying when I entered the store. Then I started to think about all the other brands out there that if they were the only product available, people would actually choose NOT to buy the product even if they NEEDED it because of brand aversion.

Take for instance, Ford. If you ask many Americans, Ford is probally not one of their top brands when it comes to cars. In fact, I bet there are quite a few people that would choose not to buy from them, even if they were the only car company.

So what creates brand aversion? I’m sure many factors come into play, such as quality, branding, marketing, selected market, etc. In addition, even though a brand might be strong in one area, such as marketing, if their quality isn’t up to par word of mouth is going to overcome all attempts to positively market the brand.

Brand aversion also plays a huge part in fair market and the consumers right to choose, if you feel so strongly about not buying a particular brand, you’ll try any other brand over them. This leads the way for new upcoming brands to take hold in markets even when large competitors exist.

Next time you’re in the market for a particular product, make note, because your choices on brand selection might have everything to do with what you don’t like about the other guy rather than what the selected brand can do for you.