Archives for posts with tag: Vivid Sky

My First Digital Campaign

September 16, 2008 //
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I feel like I’m writing in a baby book.

So here we are, September 16th, 2008 and sure enough Vivid Sky’s SkyBOX::Baseball 2008 is alive and well in Apple’s iTunes App Store (yea, that’s like Apple, the Apple, you know Cupertino, California; Steve Jobs like lives there).

We finally made it into the ranks of infamy like Koi Pond and MLB’s At-Bat.

So, what now? Well, we need people to buy the app. Shocking, right? Build something. Sell that thing. Stay in business. Or at least that’s the theory I think they taught me in Buuuuussssiness School.

Instead of me calling all of you and annoying you on Facebook, we’ve decided to gain a little traction using that good ‘ol Interweb. Thank god for no longer having to whore myself out to my friends! (I never really did that, just enjoyed “informing” people who felt they were “close” to me).

Regardless, this is a cool little experiment for me as we try to get out the word for a relatively unknown company, selling an even more unknown product.

Here’s the start:

Paul Gilin’s Review on his blog

Dan Moren’s Take with MacWorld

So in 30 hours we’ve had two prominent tech/marketing minds pick up on our story.

The MacWorld article has been picked up by several blogs, and news sites (Digg etc..). With one blog being in Norway. Never knew that Norway websites ended in an “.no” suffix.

Now for the push:

We are a fatured app on the iTunes version of the App Store:


You can’t see it in this screen grab, but the upper right-hand ad we have displayed, for free, is sometimes aligned next to and ad for a Star Wars game and the ever-popular “Spore: Origins” game.

We’ve started getting a little news out there, but we have, in my humblest of estimations, about 5 days decent media exposure until we are left in the dust. So I will be hauling and trying to get people to, “LOOK AT ME!” and hope that enough people think the app were slinging is some pretty good stuff.

So take a look, you never know what $2.99 will get ya…

SkyBOX::Baseball 2008

(iTunes will open, and it may take a second, please don’t freak out. Apple’s idea, not ours)

or check it out and the official Press Release at:

Vivid Sky

Sorta working,
mjb

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Recent Vivid Sky Media

August 13, 2008 //
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Let’s face it, I have been absolutely whoring myself out at work the last week or so. So why stop the trend on the blog? Here’s a couple pieces that have run about us if you’ve been one of the lucky ones to have not been spammed by me in the last couple days.

Way to go Art. Here’s a piece by a group called Small Business TV.

Hopefully this sheds a little light on what we’re doing and where we’re heading. Who wants to start speculating on iTunes App Store release date?

“We get up at twelve and start to work at one,

Take an hour for lunch, and then at two we’re done…”

(That’s my secret little shout out for the day),

mjb

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Gameday: Take Two

March 16, 2008 //
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For the second installment, why we do what we do.

For me it’s all about awareness. We have a new, cool product that we think you’re going to love and now it’s my job to educate you on it, not only on how it works, but how it’s really going to enhance your overall game-time experience.

Right now we’re showcasing in the Joe’s “Legends Club.” It’s a cool little joint:

Basically once the game starts up we take to this area to schlep our SkyBOX iPods to get fans’ reactions, feedback and their overall opinion of a SkyBOX. We have set up two Wi-Fi access points in the club and SkyBOX users access those WAPs (wireless access points) to utilize our SkyBOX content. For hockey, we offer all sorts of statistical information, player bio info, instant replays from four camera angles (two of which are over each of the goals, one is an edited game feed and the last is a camera that follows all the action from center ice) and some info-graphics.

Our setup is simple, for the Joe we just use what they offer us. It’s a little “podium” in the middle of the club that we user as our central location to talk to people and run through a little 2-minute tutorial on how to use an iPod touch and the SkyBOX app that resides on it.

In the pictures you can see a few of the devices on display along with other parts of our setup. We ask users to fill out a short survey and offer up their driver’s license to be scanned. We’re still in “free-trial” mode in the Legend’s Club, so by scanning their ID we at least have some form of collateral in case one of our devices “walks-off.”

The response is always great; some people are amazed, some people just want to tell you what they would do differently, but all-in-all it’s a pretty reaffirming experience (at least in the sense of we have a tangible idea that people are interested in).

We start baseball at the end of the month. One stadium at Opening Day, three more at the All-Star Break. it will be our first season-long initiative. We have a lot of work to do to get ready for the marathon of a season, but we’ve proven a lot of things out so far. Our outlook remains optimistic, but the hurdles will always be there. We just keep our heads down and keep on scrapping.

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Gameday

March 14, 2008 //
1
Well I caved. I figured after all the “Matt Originals” maybe I should revert to what I do day in, day out. This will be a one-time occurrrence (probably a lie), but regardless, take it for what it’s worth because who knows the next time you’ll have the door opened to my days with Vivid Sky.

***

This morning I woke up, did a little busy work, pretended to go to the gym, took a shower and headed out for lunch.

Exciting right?

I headed over to the Joe (Joe Louis Arena, home of the Detroit Red Wings) at about 2:30. I like getting there early on game days, just gives me something else to do, and “legitimate” office space. You’ll see what I mean in just a second.

The Joe is about as decrepit of a building as the city is that surrounds it. It was built in 1977, and every time I step foot in the door I feel like I’m transported back in time. The arena reeks of plastic-covered furniture and occasionally cigarette smoke (that’s right, the union still lets their boys smoke inside the building when they’re moving whatever the need to move). But it’s alive, always buzzing with a ton of people. You never really realize how many people go into staging a professional sporting event, but there we all are, shoved in under one roof scurrying around with a wide array of purposes.

I stroll in, I find that I stroll when I’m going to work, never really in a rush, always minding my own business. I always get flagged by the same security woman when I enter the West Entrance, I pass through the metal detector (which apparently has been unplugged for 6 years and never removed) and same thing every day, “You there, bag, over here.” They’re always the most pleasant people in the world, I don’t know if its because it’s a midwest thing, or because they’re just that happy to be in the good ‘ol JLA.

I hit the elevator bank right off the entrance. The building is falling apart, but the freight elevator has diamond plating on it, go figure? I take it up to level five, past level seven and hit the highest point in the arena. The doors open and I’m greeted with storage space. Storage space that is gated with chain link fence and razor wire. Apparently when the circus is in town, the carnies tend to try and steal stuff from “upstairs,” and the property management decided the best way to protect their tons of SOLO cups and free posters was to gate them in, inside. True story.

I make my way through the cavern of crap and razor wire to the “Control Room.” The Control Room is where all of the on-site audio and video is dubbed. That means whatever you see on the JumboTron and hear from the rafters is generated upstairs in the Control Room. We have a little corner of space up in this area, you don’t think about it whenever you’re working up there, but you are literally hanging 80 feet off the ground over center ice when you are there.

This is our little corner, right outside the main control room. We do all our video editing and data generation from this one work station. Pretty cool right?

In these pictures you see our “cube,” the view from the Control Room and the SkyBOX video editor and shot tracker in action. You’ll see the box in the bottom left hand corner of our cube, those are some of SkyBOX iPods, or SkyPODs as I’ve started calling them. You’ll also notice that the devices running our video editor our Sony Vaio UX-es. For those of you Vivid Sky faithful, you’ll know those as the second generation SkyBOX. They’ve been recycled into the arsenal and now server as hardware for the video editor and the print server at the office. Oh start-ups and how we find a use for everything.

In the Control Room you can find the heartbeat of Vivid Sky, The SkyBOX Video Server:

From the front of the server and the back (the green light means its working haha, and you can see the four video feed we pull in from the back). But that’s it, a simple 1U rack server that handles both web hosting and video encoding and editing. Yep, we’re just that good. Let me tell you about .FLV and H.264 haha…

Remember the hanging 80 feet off the ice thing. Yeah I wasn’t kidding:

That’s the progression of view right outside the control room offices. In the last picture you can see the edge of the main scoreboard. We’re literally working right above it, hovering in the rafters. The 5th floor hangs from the roof, and is not a full “floor” in the general sense.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you why we do what we do up here in the air. The front end of the Vivid Sky stadium operation, where all those days as a Rockwell Automation Racing intern come out in full effect, and where I want to punt every pretentious regional sales manager in the face for thinking he runs the place…

Until then, good night and feel free to ask questions…

mjb

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