Back in January, our fearless leader Dan Shipton provided some "Straight Talk About Mobile" at a business insights luncheon organized by the Business Innovation Zone (the BIZ) here in Des Moines. The BIZ is a community sponsored business accelerator for entrepreneurs led by Mike Colwell. We want to thank the BIZ again for organizing this event and for also recording it for all our viewers at home. Check them out at http://bizci.org.

Dan's presentation focused on what businesses need to consider before making the leap into mobile. He also provided some simple tips on how to improve your mobile presence right away, like tomorrow.

Check out Dan's presentation and you can download his slides here.

January 18: Dan Shipton - Straight Talk about Mobile from Business Innovation Zone on Vimeo.

About the author: BitMethod builds mobile and web apps brick by brick and bit by bit. We're a happy little technology startup doing Valley stuff in Flyover country. We do consulting and training, too.

Reach out to BitMethod at hello@bitmethod.com

Oh boy, Design+Tech is going to be a good one this month. We’re following in the footsteps of San Francisco, Chicago and Milwaukee by putting on our own mini version of SketchCamp, an un-conference focused on sketching techniques.

Two awesome speakers will show us how there is so much more to sketching than just doodling. If you can hold a marker or a pen, you can sketch. This event is for everyone.

Our first speaker is Jocelyn Wallace, founder and owner of Red Eleven Group, LLC. She works with business owners, visionaries and team leaders to help them solve problems using visual strategies. Jocelyn will introduce us to a technique called visual translation which focuses on taking what you hear and creating it in a visual form.

Our second speaker is Ron Wagner, a comic book artist and illustrator. Ron has drawn G.I. Joe, The Punisher, Nth Man, and don’t forget, BATMAN. He will walk us through his process and show us how he uses sketching and illustrations to tell a story.

So bring your favorite writing utensils and join us for Mini SketchCamp DSM!

THE DETAILS

When: Wednesday, January 4 at 7 p.m.

Where: BitMethod HQ - 418 6th Ave, Suite 1210, Des Moines IA 50309

This event is free and no RSVP is required, but if you want, you can let everyone know you are attending on the Meetup page or Facebook.

Questions? Send me an email to me at amanda@bitmethod.com.

About the author: Amanda is a fully-equipped design machine with a background in marketing. Her weapons of choice are a MacBook Pro, felt-tip markers and tons of fonts. She enjoys whipping brands into shape to make them bigger, badder and better.

Reach out to Amanda Morrow at amanda@bitmethod.com

We had our second DeMo event this past Monday. It was a smaller group than last time, but they were no less enthusiastic. If you wanted to attend but were unable to or were confused about when it was, can you drop me a note?

The DeMos

Our own Neil Roberts presented about Lite Weight, an app he built that gives you guidance on your weight loss journey by calculating a more accurate “trend weight” based on the weigh-ins you give it daily. He was mostly looking for input on a new daily email feature he’s been experimenting with, but also got some suggestions on potential marketing opportunities for the app. If you want to test the app and give feedback on the email notifications, drop Neil a note.

Our Buy the Beer sponsor for the evening, Brian Hemesath of Catchwind, gave a quick overview of their SMS platform before diving into the API documentation and seeking feedback on how to make it both more understandable and more useful for developers.

Two entrepreneurs that also happen to be students drove down from UNI and were coaxed into talking a bit about their company Glass Cannon Games. They asked for input on working remotely and resources for finding game designers. They’re currently in need of someone with 3-d modeling experience that would be interested in working with them on a project.

Finally, I stepped up and got some feedback on the BitMethod podcast The Flyover Effect. I still had editing left to do on this week’s episode, and after the feedback from DeMo I felt encouraged to “let it breathe” a bit and let more of our personality show through with a longer intro and a goofy outro, too. I also walked away with some great ideas on how to better arrange content on the podcast website to better draw in new listeners.

Future Events

DeMo continues on the third Monday of each month. That makes for November 21 and December 19 for the next two events. Same Bit time, same Bit channel, 6:30 at our headquarters in downtown Des Moines. Follow DeMo on Facebook to connect with fellow presenters and stay on top of future events.

About the author: Scott is BitMethod’s “Chief Nerd Translator”, filling project management and copywriting roles on most projects. He is passionate about media and has worked in radio, film and event planning. When he grows up he wants to be a Ghostbuster.

Reach out to Scott Kubie at scott@bitmethod.com

BitMethod is building a new product. It’s called Change. Change will be a new restaurant and retail management system with an iPad-based point of sale. Data captured at the point of sale will integrate with a website customized for the business owner that lets them see what’s happening with the business, configure their menu and options, and integrate with software like QuickBooks.

We gathered some of our friends and family last night at BitMethod HQ to announce our new endeavor. The whole BitMethod team is working on this project: Dan, Neil, Igor, Amanda, and Scott. We have a big vision for Change, and as such, will be giving it its own space and promoting it independently of the BitMethod brand. The Change website is located at www.changeapp.com. Change also has a Twitter presence at www.twitter.com/usechange. There’s also a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/changeapp.

Don’t worry, BitMethod isn’t going anywhere. We’re still developing apps for our clients and for ourselves, publishing The Flyover Effect, updating Brick by Brick, and presenting and educating in our communities.

That said, we’re putting a lot of eggs in the Change basket. Through every project we’ve done, we’ve held on to the vision of becoming an independent, bootstrapped, product-based company. We can see the starting line now. BitMethod is very excited to be working on this project and we hope you’ll follow and lend your support as we bring Change to the checkout experience.

About the author: BitMethod builds mobile and web apps brick by brick and bit by bit. We're a happy little technology startup doing Valley stuff in Flyover country. We do consulting and training, too.

Reach out to BitMethod at hello@bitmethod.com

Had a session on brainstorming at Wednesday’s Design+Tech meeting. Dan was joined by designer Brian Sauer of Saturday Mfg. in leading the presentation. These are my Cliff’s Notes on their tips for handling the brainstorming phase:

• Don’t invite the client.
• Keep it short — 20-30 minutes — and do multiple sessions.
• Write down everything. Erase nothing.
• Use your notes; dig through notes from old sessions to generate new ideas.
• Have inspirational resources to look through nearby — but only when you’re stuck.

Here are a few of my own:

• Domai.nr — Know it, love it.
• Mind-mapping software like MindNode (my personal fave) is great for brainstorming by yourself or taking notes during a session.
• Go to lunch! We’ve had good luck naming things over food and drinks. Just remember to bring a small notebook and still write everything down.

What are your brainstorming tips? Do anything radically different in your sessions? Share in the comments.

About the author: Scott is BitMethod’s “Chief Nerd Translator”, filling project management and copywriting roles on most projects. He is passionate about media and has worked in radio, film and event planning. When he grows up he wants to be a Ghostbuster.

Reach out to Scott Kubie at scott@bitmethod.com