Ten FourSquare Badges We'd Like Made To Honor Community Service

At this year’s South by Southwest interactive conference (SxSWi), geo-location service, FourSquare, released 16 new badges that users could earn – all of which had different requirements. For those using services like FourSquare or even GoWalla, the interest in using these tools is pretty much for the entertainment value, meaning that they don’t care how many “points” they get, just that they received a new badge which would entitle them to bragging rights. With this great appeal towards these virtual badges, we here at Stage Two thought that some more meaningful ones should be created for FourSquare users to truly “connect” a bit more deeply.

Stage Two loves to do community service and with all the great talk about geo-location, we felt that this is just another evolutionary step FourSquare could take to add some more meaning to their ever-popular application. We’ve done a few service projects here at our agency and had a lot of fun in the process. For me, it was great getting to help others and these badges could be used as a way to pay homage to  those who spend their time helping others as well.  Here are the ten new badges Stage Two would love to see show up – cheesy names and all:

1. Spare a Pint? Badge – (Blood Bank) One of the things people think about when they’re helping others is giving blood. So now you’ve unlocked the “Spare a Pint?” badge on FourSquare! Just like it’s as easy as getting a Starbucks badge on FourSquare just for checking in and getting your coffee, getting this badge should be just as simple, except you’re going to be saving someone’s life as a result of getting the badge.
2. Serve Em Up Badge – (Soup Kitchen or Food Bank) How often do you feed the less fortunate? In unlocking this badge, you’ve spent some time at your local food bank making sure their food gets delivered to others. And if all you need to do is package some ocra or bundle some cabbage or oranges, that’s the least you can do to earn this badge.
3. Welcome Home Badge – (Habitat for Humanity) Usually in FourSquare you have to create a venue or have one already established in order to check-in, but in this case, you’re going to put the cart before the horse…you’re going to get a badge for helping to create place that someone’s family will be able to call their home.
4. Delivery Boy/Girl – Badge – (Meals on Wheels) Get this badge to show your support and commit to saying that you’re proud to drive around and deliver meals to the needy.
5. Biggie Badge – (Big Brother/Big Sister) A lot of children participate in Big Brother/Bisg Sister and need our help to stay out of trouble. Whether that’s mentoring someone to do better in school or just being there for them, everyone who helps out at this organization and checks in on FourSquare should be given this badge – it can proudly be displayed and tell others that that person wants to help others succeed in life. Bravo!
6. Kris Kross Badge – (Red Cross) Not one to exploit tragedies, but if you decide to help in an emergency, whether it’s local, statewide, national or even international, you should be recognized for your actions and good deeds in helping out the Red Cross. This is in honor of all the volunteers who risk their lives to help others.
7. Bell Ringer Badge – (Salvation Army) Helping those less fortunate is more than just a tax write-off at the end of the year. This badge is in honor of those people at the Salvation Army who spend their days helping those who can’t help themselves.
8. Think of the Children Badge – (Toys for Tots) Young children should not go without the toys they need. Donating toys to those kids for the Toys for Tots program is a noble gesture and this badge gratefully acknowledges your charity.
9. Red Ribbon Badge – (AIDS Walk) A lot of people sadly die each year from AIDS. By participating in an AIDS awareness and event, you’ve earned this badge that will go along with your red ribbon to remember those with this terrible disease.
10. Good Samaritan Badge - Earned by gaining any five of the above badges (or by going to five different volunteering venues/facilities).

There you have it…ten badges we’d like FourSquare to create to honor those who volunteer their time helping to make the community a better place. What other badges do you think FourSquare should make that would promote community service or other worthy causes?

Why Companies Are Catching On To Social Media

Twitter’s attraction in the past year or so has been quite intriguing. For most companies, there’s probably still some confusion as to what it’s good for to generate leads, sales, profits, etc., but this number is slowly dwindling as the months go by. And in a sure sign of Twitter’s growing popularity, a study conducted by the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR) found out that in 2009, companies listed in the Fortune 500 were eagerly signing up and jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. It seems that these large brands like General Motors, Exxon Mobil, US Steel, General Electric, Proctor & Gamble and Boeing are finally understanding the potential Twitter can play across all spectrums of the communication channel.

Here are some other interesting statistics:

• AdWeek reports that 35% of the Fortune 500 companies on Twitter had active accounts – meaning that they had posted something within the past 30 days.
• With the top 100 companies, 47 of them actually had a Twitter account
• 22% of all the Fortune 500 brands only had “public-facing corporate blogs”
• 4 of the 5 top corporations consistently post to their Twitter account – Wal-Mart, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and GE
• Insurance was the industry with the largest Twitter presence – 13 Fortune companies participating
• 19%  of Fortune 500 corporations were using podcasting and 31% using video blogging

So what does this mean? From the standpoint of companies and brands, it shows that now the large companies are starting to pay attention to social media. In its infancy, social media was probably viewed by large corporations as something that couldn’t scale. However, more companies are now embracing it and what may have started out as a small experiment within brands like Wal-Mart, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and GE has exploded into being a major part of their marketing channel.

But why is Twitter becoming the medium of choice to communicate with customers instead of blogging? Sure, blogging will get you to post your own thoughts and get your message across, but when you compare the potential audience on Twitter versus the one currently visiting your blog, there’s a big difference. For one, you can send out a tweet to anyone  - just a random thought on Twitter and it’s not limited to being seen by the people following you. Secondly, you’re going to be able to see how viral your message can really get through retweets and commentary. Without wanting to sound cliche, you’re going to be able to join in the “conversation” in near ‘real-time” as well. Imagine being in a large reception area where people are talking about different things. You being there is representative of you being on Twitter. In walking around, you might hear something said about your company, brand and/or product OR something else not-related, but interesting. By you interjecting to be a part of that discussion, you’re engaging customers. You can’t necessarily do exactly that in a blog, or at least not in real-time. This is probably what companies are discovering and find that Twitter lets them relate to their customers on their level, NOT from the customer. This is pretty much the same thing with all other forms of social media.

So what is the power behind this social media and what is its appeal? It seems pretty clear that companies are starting to think more “outside the box” and seeing a little less clutter in social media than there are with other mediums like traditional advertising, radio/broadcast, websites, etc. Also, the statistics shown above are saying that these Fortune 500 companies are thinking that if they want to get involved with customers, they’re going to have to find a new way of reaching them – essentially going to where the customers are spending their time.

Source: AdWeek and iMediaConnection

It's Easy To Make A Video, But Takes A Lot To Make It Viral

Last year, I was very fortunate enough to attend the Inbound Marketing Summit hosted by Chris Brogan and Justin Levy. It was there that I was first introduced to Tim Street, a video producer and social media marketer – perhaps better well known for French Maid TV. It was there that he brought up the topic of how to create a viral video. You know about a lot of them – you’ve probably seen them and also passed them along to your friends and family. They’re the ones that really catch on – like the one featuring Susan Boyle from Britain’s Got Talent – remember that one? Well since that conference, I’ve been hearing a lot of people asking what does it take to create a viral video. The answer is a lot of work…just because you can create a video does not mean that it’s automatically going to be a hit on the Internet and that millions of viewers will want to watch it.

According to Street, there are four components to making a video viral:

• Make it easy to share.
• Make it OK to share.
• Controversial – takes risks.
• Emotionally engaging.

The first part is pretty easy – make it easy to share. If you’re going to create a video, don’t just put it on your website. Make sure that it’s placed in a high-traffic area, like YouTube or Facebook where people can find it and refer others using other viral tools. If you put it only in one spot and don’t help people share it on social networks, then you just have a video, NOT a viral one. People love it when the options are there to make their lives easier. If you make it too difficult, chances are that they’ll simply watch it and give up on sending it to friends. Why? Because no video is that good to endure such difficulties. Keep it simple and accessible.

When talking about being “OK to share“, I believe that you shouldn’t make it too risque – but I’m sure it depends on the tastes of your audience. In other words, make sure that it’s safe for work and that your message gets through without diminishing the intent of the video or being too vulgar that it soon gets pulled off the website. But let’s not confuse this with the third component: be controversial – take risks. A plain video with no message about which side to take probably doesn’t go anywhere, but being controversial always sells and can be a good attention grabber – if anything, people who have seen your video will tell others about it just so they can either support or admonish it later. Make sure that you take a risk and play on your issue’s provocative nature.

Lastly, never forget that people become invested in something when they are emotionally engaged. Videos of Susan Boyle were a hit because people felt compelled to watch and the emotion they felt helped to spread the movie clip further. Find a way to get the viewers involved…whether that’s a comedic bit, happy ending, anger or sadness, emotions are a powerful tool in video virality.

So now you’ve created a viral video, what steps can you take in order to help people pay attention to it?

Through relationships, strategic placements and syndication can you achieve virality – at least according to a ClickZ article.

One of the first things to do is to make sure some influential people in that industry take a look at the video and see if they’ll pass it along. It is also recommended that you penetrate the video networks like YouTube, Vimeo, Blip, etc and see who is doing the most sharing. Just like you might do with a story idea to a journalist or how you pitch an influencer, doing video marketing is no different. It would behoove you to go ahead and start building a relationship with some of the people in the community and after a while, when you’ve earned their trust, you can go ahead and see if they would be interested in your video. Granted, simply being friends with them will not guarantee that your video will be shared – in fact, at that point, it depends on whether your video is good to begin with. You can also tap into some video seeding services like TubeMogul and VidMetrix for help or talk to social media enthusiasts either in your company or agency you work to see if they have any leads.

As for strategic placement, if you have money in your budget, you might want to consider doing some paid placement. You’re not paying for people to share your video, but you’re just non-chalantly placing your video where the most trafficked areas on the site are. For example, you could have your video on the front page of YouTube where that’s the starting point for millions of people everyday to find interesting things to watch. That alone could generate the returns you seek.

Lastly, make sure your video is syndicated. I’m sure this goes in line with the principle we discussed earlier of making it easy to share, but just to re-emphasize that you want people to easily pass along your video. Don’t be afraid to let influencers embed the video on their website or other networks. Like it’s written in the ClickZ article: “Let your viewers decide where and how they want to view your videos.“  Don’t disrupt the process or interfere in how they share.

While you might think that the above steps are easy to do, I must caution you against underestimating what it takes to build a viral video. Yes, it is easy to create a video, but when you want to begin trying to make it viral, you need to balance between making sure people find your work organically and without pressure  AND that it’s also not bordering on being too marketing/sales-like. The best viral videos are user-generated and anything commercial may be frowned upon.

A closing thought?

Advertisers will always have a difficult time playing in the viral space. People want pure entertainment. Even the most minimally branded videos are often rejected.

Where will you draw the line on your video?

Successful Social Media Campaigns Don't Happen Overnight. You Need Planning & Organization.

Just because social media is practically free does not mean that companies can run with a program and hope that it makes them millions of dollars. In fact, it seems that the fact that it’s free means that you need to take it a bit slower and look closely as to the right application of the service and make sure that it doesn’t hurt the message that you’re trying to send out.

In an eMarketer report on February 11, 2010, it is reported that social media has essentially plateaued. By this, I mean that it has reached a point of maturation where marketers can no longer simply stand idly by and let social media programs run on their own. Moreover, it is becoming even more readily apparent that marketers are also understanding that it’s not a matter of whether social media should be part of their marketing mix, but how and where should it reside. Bottom line here? In order to run a great marketing campaign, thorough planning must be necessary.

Public relations thought-leader, principal of FutureWorks PR and author of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, Brian Solis wrote in a Mashable article a pretty good summary of this issue:

Instead of researching the best ways to engage, many businesses create accounts across multiple social networks and publish content without a plan or purpose. However, businesses that conduct research will find a rewarding array of options and opportunities.

Just automatically setting up things you think you’d need versus sitting down and plotting the objectives, goals, plan of attack and measurement of success won’t lead you to the ROI you so desire. Instead, don’t rush with social media. Look at your audience, what’s being said about you and what tools are available that maximize your reach. Don’t think that all tools in social media must be used, because they don’t have to. As highlighted in the eMarketer.com article, if you have a strategy, you’ll be taken much more seriously than someone who sprays and prays with social media. It is believed that customers think most, if not all, companies should be savvy in using social media so having the knowledge and information lends more credibility and authenticity.

As a benefit of planning and organizing your social media efforts, you’ll be able to look even more closely at the purposes for your web 2.0 needs. In the above chart, you can see some of the top reasons for using social media by US Executives. Over 80% of the respondents indicated that they wanted to use social media to build their brand while over half indicated it was for networking opportunities. Regardless of your needs, you can see that through planning and organizing your thoughts, you can build a strategy that can be integrated with your other marketing channels and help accomplish your objectives, whether it’s research, business development, networking or simply generating awareness about your company.

The message here: don’t operate things in a silo. Social media is nothing special that necessitates it being separated from the rest of your communications channel. Plan for social media like you do your other marketing campaigns and you’ll reap all the rewards from it.

Just How Influential Are You? Secrets Revealed About Twitter Influence Tools

For a lot of people, the one thing we know what Twitter is used for is conversation. For businesses to possibly get at least a hint of usefulness, we’d need to look at metrics. Now with social media, the metrics we look at and analyze are different from other online metrics – which is to be expected. In this area, we’re going to be looking for influence, because that’s one of, if not THE, main measurements of assessing the return on investment. Sure, with Twitter you could track all your links using Google Analytic tracking, but keep in mind that not all tweets will have a link. What’s more, you’re not interested in links. You’re going to want to be interested in evangelists and people who you believe are really passionate about your product. Once you’ve found them, you’re going to need to gauge their influence over others. So how exactly can you do this? Well currently it doesn’t seem possible with Twitter directly, but there are several tools that can help shed some light on this area for you.

In this blog post, I’m going to look at three well-known Twitter influence analyzing tools: Klout, Twitalyzer and Twitter Grader. Each one will be dissected to look at their offerings and whether it’s really interesting enough to look into further. I’ll also be exploring the applicability of each as well.

WHAT ARE THESE TOOLS?

Klout is a social media influence tool that not only focuses on you personally, but looks at brands and industries to help assess influence. In a way, Klout will show you your social graph and assess just how influential you are along with who is influencing you.

Twitalyzer is dubbed the “serious analytics for the social media expert” which may lead some to believe that it’s going to provide you with much more relevant analytics to make you have a superior web 2.0 strategy. Twitalyzer will offer you more visualizations, easy-to-read statistics, integration with Google Analytics and is free.

Twitter Grader is a tool straight from the guys at HubSpot. Perhaps one of the early influence metrics out there, Twitter Grader assesses your influence by location and gives you a percentage as a score. It too is also a free tool and will display word clouds in your past tweets along with other pretty interesting metrics.

SO WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL WITH THESE TOOLS?

After using each of these applications multiple times, I’d like to think that there are some differences amongst all three – some major and some minor – that would give pause to any company interested in using either one.

In the first place, if you’re talking simplicity of style and information, then I would go with Twitter Grader over any of the other two. Why? It’s because you’re just asked to provide a username and it spits out a score with no explanation or description of what it means. From my understanding and observation, it seems that quite a few people have received percentage scores of over 90%, but then what really separates me from, say, Chris Pirillo, Brian Solis, Jeremy Toeman, etc.? It seems more irrelevant, right?

The one redeeming feature with Twitter Grader is that it gives you a ranking as well – so my ranking is 12,037 out of 6.1 million people. Now, that’s only 6.1 million people who have entered their username into the search query, NOT all the Twitter users in the world. To have that number would be truly impressive. But going back to simplicity, Twitter Grader offers us the option of looking at a more geographic setting so we can see who the top “influencers” are by city, state or perhaps even country.

If you want more metrics and statistical analysis, then perhaps you might be interested in Twitalyzer. Out of the three tools described in this post, I’ve seen more metrics provided on Twitalyzer than any other. You’re going to be able to measure the impact of a person’s influence, their ranking in terms of engagement, influence, generosity, and clout. I think that this specific tool would be perfect for large companies who want to assess their influence and report back to their supervisors, then Twitalyzer would be a good metric to have. If you just want to know the basic information, then you might want to stay away from this because it’s too much for what you’d like to do. I do like how Twitalyzer has links to definitions so you’ll be able to easily understand what each metric means instead of wondering whether that 5.0 is a good or bad number.

But what if you want more topical or categorical influential data? Then that would belong to Klout. While all three of these tools clearly understand how to assess influence in the real-time stream, one thing that separates Klout from the other two is the fact that they understand how to segment all the influencers out in the stream into different buckets of information. So why is this important?

Imagine that you’re a business that is interested in seeking out influencers to review your product or perhaps help you promote it. If you’re a consumer electronics giant like Sony, Boxee or Panasonic, you’re going to want a way to filter out all the noise to get to the information. Through Klout’s algorithm, they’ve already done the work for you. You’re going to be able to sort through a list of influencers with respect to consumer electronics, technology,etc. A preview of one such list is to the left showing you the top influencers that talk about technology according to Klout, along with their Klout score – almost like it’s Digg for Twitter, only there’s no voting to increase the score.

ALL THE NUMBERS ARE DIFFERENT – HOW CAN WE TELL WHAT’S IMPORTANT?

One thing that you’ll encounter is that the numbers offered on each of these tools are completely different from one another. Their algorithms can vary across the board so you will never have the same results. In order to properly evaluate someone’s influence, you should look at not just the number, but in fact who they are, the types of content they are producing (tweets, blog posts, video podcasts, etc.) as that will be a good gauge of what you might need. Each of these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt – measuring influence isn’t a true science and is often subjective.

To show you the difference between the three, below is a chart with the information on several popular individuals on Twitter:

• Jeremy Toeman is an avid user of Twitter and is the founder of Stage Two – understands and tweets about gadgets & consumer electronics.
• Adam Burg is a semi-frequent user of Twitter.
• Chris Pirillo is a well-known Twitter user and tech “geek”.
• Rafe Needleman is a member of the media who reports on technology trends & uses Twitter pretty often.
• Deb Schultz is an analyst and uses Twitter somewhat frequently.
• Veronica Belmont is an Internet celebrity, host of Tekzilla on Revision3 and has a huge Twitter following.
• Ken Yeung is a prolific Twitterer and social media enthusiast.

As you can see from the table above, there is not a single uniform measurement out of three social media metric tools available on the Internet today. So what do these influence number really mean? Like I said, it’s subjective. IF you choose to use these for a benchmark project, I would recommend being uniform in your execution. Do not choose to use Klout and then use Twitter Grader as that will skew your results and leave you with questionable reporting. It’s similar to web analytics – a unique visitor could be calculated differently from one analytic tool to another, leaving you with inconsistencies that may not paint a complete picture.  In the end, there aren’t any easy solutions on assessing one’s influence. You’ll need to really dig deeper to find out how motivating that person can be in persuading their friends & family to do something.

Stage Two helps to feed those in need during Social Media Week

Today, the entire team from Stage Two spent the entire morning helping the community. For the second time this year, we were honored to participate in some community service at the San Francisco Food Bank to do some social good – a perfect tie in to Social Media Week in the city. Joining us this time were Alyce Lindquist, the president of the San Francisco/Silicon Valley chapter of the Social Media Club and Dana Oshiro, writer for tech blog ReadWriteWeb.

While last time we had a good time packaging orzo pasta, this time we were needed to package cabbage and oranges that would be sent to schools and other non-profit agencies who would distribute the goods to those who needed it. You might think it was tedious work for the three hours, but it was really fun to talk with other volunteers and the employees there about the Food Bank’s mission.

To help highlight our efforts to bring social good to Social Media Week, both Jeremy and Dana Oshiro were guests on the Social Media Hour – a weekly podcast that highlights different trends in the industry and is hosted by storyteller and thought-leader Cathy Brooks. You can listen to the entire podcast by clicking here.

At the end of the day, our reward was hearing how much we have helped the community. For just three hours, we packaged around 12,000 pounds of food! If you consider the fact that 150,000 people in the city alone go hungry every day, the amount that was done in such a short time just by volunteering speaks volumes and can greatly help the people that truly need it.

To help out at the San Francisco Food Bank or to learn more about what you can do, please click here.

Here are some photos from our time at the SF Food Bank (and even a short video!)

Most of the entire gang that helped out today at the San Francisco Food Bank

Team Stage Two and volunteers packaging cabbage

Jeremy Toeman doing some social good

Even the oranges were happy for the help!

David Speiser helping to package some oranges

Mielle Sullivan with her specially formed orange

Jeremy Toeman just can’t stop himself from packaging oranges!

Camping out to kick off Social Media Week in San Francisco

Today marks the beginning of Social Media Week around the world. Social media enthusiasts gather in Berlin, London, New York, Sao Paulo, Toronto and here in San Francisco. To kick off the week, Chris Heuer & Kristie Wells of Social Media Club organized the Social Media Camp in the Presidio. Designed to be both a conference and an unconference, today’s event centered around helping people understand social media. Presenters offered much more than a “101″ view on social media and gave lively and informative discussions on things like how you can measure your return on investment, creating a social media business, understanding the synaptic web, professional storytelling and a panel that addresses the reality of the real-time web.

If you’ve never been to an unconference before, the standard model is that at the beginning, the attendees submit panels that they are interested in participating in, typically as a speaker/panelist. Once voted on, the ones the majority find interesting are placed into different times. Essentially the agenda isn’t set until that actual day so participants will be able to have a thorough and customized plan for the day.

The Social Media Camp opened with three great keynotes. The first one was by Echo founder Khris Loux who talked about the synaptic web and how the depth of connections was a powerful mechanism designed to continuously bring important information to our attention. After that, Ribbits/BT’s Vice President of Web Services, Kevin Marks, took the stage to promote the chief communication officer before Cathy Brook’s thought-provoking keynote on personal storytelling and why the hell we are really matters.

Afterwards, the agenda went into full swing with breakout “camp” sessions and more panels that helped educate and influence the way people used social media. According to the organizers, the hope was that the attendees would enjoy hearing from leading voices in social media and make some connections with people of different backgrounds.

Even our very own Jeremy Toeman took part in helping to educate folks at Social Media Camp. During the last panel, he teamed up with Collecta co-founder Brian Zisk and ReadWriteWeb’s community manager & blogger/reporter Jolie O’Dell to wage battle on the reality of the real-time web. It was a lively debate on how people how people have & are responding to customers almost immediately and even presented some great takeaways.

When all was said and done, the attendees left hearing from these “thought leaders” on a wide arrange of topics. It wasn’t about how to use Twitter or what benefit you could get from Facebook fan pages or anything elementary. The Social Media Camp helped teach people how to communicate using social media with an emphasis on listening and customer service. It was all about understanding the fundamentals of social media and not about transparency, authenticity, credibility or any other buzz word imagined.

So for the opening day of Social Media Week, I’d say it was a good one. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more in the next few days.

Happy Holi-Warming-Versary from Stage Two!

It’s been a while since we’ve moved into the new office and we definitely wanted to celebrate the holidays, so we figured that this year, we’d knock off some long-delayed things to celebrate, including having a nice office “housewarming” party and  to celebrate our third-year anniversary.

To help spruce up our place, we turned to our friends at 1:AM gallery and Quinn Wharton who generously provided art and photography work that is currently hanging on our walls. And not one to leave our friends famished and parched at a party, the fine folks at Work of Art event planning & catering made some delicious hors d’oeuvres and set them up on our very own meat tree – yes, you heard that right…we had an artificial tree that was filled with meat on a stick on the tree. It was absolutely delicious!

Stage Two also made a couple of cool announcements as well, including a new “soon-to-be” website for the company and our next new product called Gunman – the first iPhone First Person Shooter using augmented reality. We encourage you to give it a shot and to let us know what you think.

We thank you for stopping by our office for our Holi-Warming-Versary party and regardless of whether you were there or not, here’s a recap of photos:

Some of the artwork provided by 1:AM Gallery

Photography art provided by Quinn Wharton

Legacy Locker’s Gregg Delman

Stage Two’s Adam Burg & Jeremy Toeman

It’s our very own meat tree!

Decorating the meat tree.

Transforming the Stage Two office.

Ron Hirson of BOKU and Sol Lipman of 12seconds.tv

David Cohn of Spot.us and Stage Two’s Jim Schaff

David Cohn, Dave Mathews, Jim Schaff & Kevin Brown checking out Gunman

Jeremy Toeman with CNET’s Rafe Needleman

And what holiday party wouldn’t be complete without some Foosball? It’s David Speiser, Gregg Delman, Andrew Kippen & Jim Schaff.

To view more photos from our holiday party, please click here.

Client News: Ardica Celebrates The Holidays & Announces Its Design Contest Winners

Last Saturday, Ardica Technologies had a holiday party at their headquarter offices in San Francisco. To add to the celebration, there was also an awards ceremony to honor the winners of their first-annual “Power to the People” Design Contest. This was a contest where hundreds of entries were submitted and eight finalists were chosen from among young, talented designers & technology aficionados. As part of the contest, Stage Two participated in making this a more interactive program by creating the “People’s Choice Award” and inviting the public to choose which of the eight finalists they thought were the best. The winner was also announced at the ceremony.

The winners from the “Power to the People” Design Contest were:

• First Place: Ardica Voltage Sleeping Bag
• Second Place: Coal Mining Respirator
• Third Place: Backpack for Professional Photographers
• Special Recognition Prize: Ardica-enabled Ski Patrol Vest
• “People’s Choice Award”: Coal Mining Respirator

You can read some of the coverage of Ardica and their Moshi Power Pack here:

• VentureBeat: Battery-charged clothing, anyone? Ardica could convince you it’s worth it.
• CNET: Wearable battery-pack contest unzips winners (photos)

Here are some photos from the evening:

Arriving at the Design Contest to view each finalist’s entry.

After tallying up the votes, the winner of the “People’s Choice Awards” was the Coal Mining Respirator.

Some tech influencers and bloggers that came to the event – Harry McCracken, Marie Domingo, Andru Edwards & Gina Hughes.

Ardica’s CEO Hap Klopp with GearLive’s Editor-in-Chief Andru Edwards

The First Place winners of the Ardica Design Contest – the Moshi-powered sleeping bag.

Ardica’s CEO Hap Klopp being interviewed by VentureBeat reporter Thomas Slater.

You can read the full press release of the Design Contest here. For more pictures from the evening, please click here.

Client News: Ardica Wants You To Vote For Your Favorite Design & Win!

In June, Ardica announced its global “Power To The People” contest designed to have creative designers from around the world come up with a brilliant new application using their miniaturized, portable power system called the Moshi Power Pack. From over 120 entries, the judges narrowed it down to eight finalists that will present to the judges at the Ardica offices on Saturday, December 5.

Judges from technology websites Gizmodo and Wired, IDEO, Mountain Hardwear and Stanford will examine each entry carefully and ultimately award the winners cash prizes for their innovative ideas for integrating the Moshi power pack into their design. But what exactly is a Moshi? It’s a battery pack that is both lightweight and unobtrusive and can charge most electronic devices quite frequently. The Moshi power pack can even be used as a heater so when you’re in a cold environment, it’ll keep you snug and warm.

As part of the Ardica design contest, they have also decided to award one of the eight finalists the “People’s Choice Award” whereby that winner will receive an extra cash prize of $1,000. In order to be the winner of this prize, Ardica is asking for people to cast their votes by clicking here, looking at each of the eight finalists and casting their vote. As an added incentive, three random voters will be given a Moshi power pack!

Voting goes now through noon on December 4. To cast your vote, simply click here.