Design Thinking Digest

PhizzPop Chicago Highlights

A more detailed post is coming but check out The video hightlights for last Thursday's Chicago PhizzPop tour.

Meet the Chicago PhizzPop Design Challenge Judges

Those of us that went to design school or have worked at a traditional or digital agency have all learned to respect the design review. All design challenge contestants for the Chicago PhizzPop Design Challenge have to present to a panel of industry experts and peers that will pick a winner. Our Chicago judges represent a collection of some of Chicaogo’s best design talent and includes folks that work closely with Chicago 2016.

The judges (subject to change) are:

 

David Armano, VP and Creative Director of Critical Mass, creating of blog Logic + Emotion
www.criticalmass.com/ and http://darmano.typepad.com/
As VP, Experience Design for Critical Mass, David has the privilege of leading talented interdisciplinary teams across a variety of clients while leveraging his background as a creative problem solver and strategic thinker. David has over 14 years experience in the creative field with the majority of his time spent in digital marketing and experience design. An active thought leader in the industry, David authors the popular Logic + Emotion blog currently ranked in the top 20 media + marketing blogs according to Advertising Age. David’s writing and visual thinking has been cited by Forrester, The Boston Globe and landed him in BusinessWeek on several occasions including their “Best of 2006”.

Prior to Critical Mass, David spent time as a creative lead at notable firms such as Digitas and Agency.com—putting in a combined tenure of 8 years in the large digital agency environment. He led multiple initiatives for clients such as HP, Allstate, Fifth Third Bank, Miller Brewing, Grainger, and Bally Total Fitness. Previously, David earned his interactive stripes working with The Chicago Tribune on their site initiatives. David helped launch and upgrade site features, functionality and content for the Tribune’s flagship site. David also accumulated broadcast and direct marketing experience while working for companies such as Fox and Columbia House.

David holds a BFA cum laude in Computer Graphics from Pratt Institute. He minored in Visual Communications and was fortunate enough to study under some of the most creative minds in the industry. He currently resides in a near-northern suburb of Chicago, not far from Lake Michigan. When David isn't working, surfing the net, or riding his motorbike—he can be found spending quality time with his wife and two boys.

 

Blagica Bottigliero, Founder of Bsolutions
www.bsolutions.com

Blagica (blah-gee-tsa) Bottigliero is an Emmy award winning online marketing consultant, blogger and web entrepreneur.

Blagica worked in some of Chicago's most established interactive companies. She started her career at Giant Step (now ARC Worldwide), where she assisted Maytag and Purina with their initial Internet strategies. Blagica moved to the marketing side of the Internet when she joined Orbitz.com. At Orbitz, Blagica negotiated and managed multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, in addition to launching the Orbitz Affiliate Program. After a 'dot com' break in France and sailing home across the Atlantic, she returned to Chicago and managed Q Interactive's search and affiliate marketing efforts.

In the fall of 2005, Blagica formed her Internet marketing consulting company, Bsolutions where she and her network continue to assist small to large sized businesses navigate the Internet.  She also launched  CondoPerks.com, a loyalty program for condominium associations.

Blagica holds a BBA degree from Western Michigan University and is passionate about mentoring young women through her blog, Gals' Guide.  Blagica sits on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association, is also a member of the NBC5 Street Team and is the Managing Editor of the Chicago 2016 Channel.

Bill Bulman, User Experience Director at Ogilvy One
www.ogilvy.com and www.twitter.com/bbulman
As User Experience Director at OgilvyOne, Bill leads Ogilvy's user experience team of User Experience Architects and Content Strategists for a variety of clients, including Chicago2016, American Medical Association, Oscar Mayer, and Allstate, among others.  With over 13 years experience in the interactive field and a focus on usability, user research and most recently social media, Bill has lead user experience teams at several interactive agencies and boutique research and design firms, including imc2. Most recently, he was a partner at Messagefirst, a boutique research firm in Philadelphia.
During his career, Bill has had the pleasure of working with some of the world's leading brands, including  Comcast, Polo/Ralph Lauren, Palm, La Times, Timberland, PBS, Eli Lilly, Kmart, Reebok, MLB, NASCAR, Pepsi, GlaxoSmithKline, Ace Hardware, Adidas, and General Mills.
Bill is active in the user experience community,  including serving as vice chair within the PhiChi organization, Philadelphia's chapter of ACM's Computer Human Interaction special interest group.  Bill has spoken at various events, on user experience, information architecture and social media including The Chicago Convergence Summit, UPA2007, and CHI2002, among others. 

 

Kevin Flatt, Executive Creative Director of Tribal DDB
www.tribalddb.com/
Kevin’s mission is to harness powerful, creative thinkubg form the diverse talent at Tribal DDB to create the most compelling brand experiences through digital media. Collaborating with brand strategists, art directors, writers, designers and producers, Kevin products ideas that integrate the innovative with industry standards.

Over his career, Kevin has created work for clients such as Alamo Car Rental, Amazon.com, Archipelago, BMW of North America, The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, EDS, Gatorade, JCPenney, Miller Brewing Company, Nike, Nordstrom, International Trucks, Lee Jeans, Propel, McDonalds, Radio Shack, RJReynolds, Microsoft, Office Max, Sony, State Farm, Timberland, TIME Magazine, United Airlines, and Virgin Mobil.

His work has received recognition from may respected competitions and publications, including Communication Arts, Graphic, TIME Magazine, Adweek, The Type Directors Club, the Super Reggie, The Art Directions Cub, Clio, the Show Best of Show, Cannes Grand Prix and first ever Titanium Cyber Lion, Kevin is actively involved in the interactive community, speaking at industry conferences and judging notable industry competitions, including The one show, The Art Directors Club and Cannes.

Prior to joining Tribal DDB, Kevin was the Executive Creative Director of Interactive at Fallon in Minneapolis. He was responsible for building an integrating digital creative offering that resulting in a number of notable solutions such as BMW Films. Before focusing on the digital side of communications, Kevin was a Senior Designer with Duffy and worked for Nike.

 

Bryan Jones, Technology Director at Ogilvy One
www.ogilvy.com/
Bryan has over ten years of technology experience leading cross-disciplinary teams, working with clients to define business/marketing objectives and managing the execution of development strategies for clients such as BP, Chicago 2016, CBOE, AMA, Unilever, Allstate, CDW and Kraft.

His experience ranges from large-scale website development to on-line advertising management and campaign optimization. He has extensive knowledge of web development processes, rich media and emerging technologies and consults clients on web implementation best practices across multiple platforms, applications and programming languages.

 

Jeff Smith, CEO of Clarity Consulting
www.claritycon.com/
With over ten years experience in information technology and sciences, Jeff sets Clarity's long-range business goals, and works with the executive team to ensure the goals are met. During his career at Clarity, Jeff has used technology to solve the business problems of corporations in dozens of industries, including construction, financial services, food services, healthcare, insurance, management consulting, nuclear power, retail, software and telecommunications. He serves as Engagement Director on many client projects, playing an active role in the design and implementation of Clarity's software solutions.

Jeff speaks regularly at professional developer conferences throughout the world. He has spoken at VBITS, VSLive, TechEd and Microsoft's Developer Days, and several Chicago-area user group conferences. He has co-authored several books on n-tier client-server application design, and written several articles and white papers on topics ranging from ASP.NET to cryptographic security.

Prior to becoming Clarity's second employee in 1995, Jeff was employed with Lante Corporation where he worked on software projects for dozens of Fortune 500 clients across a wide range of markets, including computer software, healthcare, manufacturing and telecommunications. Jeff also held technology positions with Ottosensors, Inc. where he and a team of ten biologists worked on the development of the world's first real-time blood-gas monitoring system.

Jeff holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University. Upon graduating from college, Jeff also co-founded a real estate redevelopment firm in Cleveland, Ohio.

Jaclyn Valrose, Communications Manager, Chicago 2016
www.chicago2016.org

Jaclyn Valrose is a communications manager at Chicago 2016 responsible for educating the community on Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games through media relations and communications activities.

Prior to Chicago 2016, Jaclyn worked at Edelman and was responsible for strategic public relations activities on behalf of international, national and local clients, including Expedia Corporate Travel and CEMUSA, Inc. In addition to media relations, she managed speakers’ bureaus, award submissions, social media programs and tradeshow activities for client programs.

Jaclyn joined Edelman from TravelCLICK, Inc., where she worked in marketing and communications. Jaclyn was responsible for internal and external communications, including media relations materials, company marketing materials and employee communications. She was also responsible for global customer relations and the implementation of product promotions and launches. Jaclyn earned a bachelors degree in speech communication from Miami University in Oxford, OH.

Meet the Chicago PhizzPop Design Challenges Teams

PhizzPop is a huge undertaking for invited teams and it’s not something that all companies can do. What’s involved?

First teams need to pick three dedicated team members that can go through three-days of intensive training. Then teams need to dedicate 3 to 5 days to solving the challenge. Finally, these teams must prepare and give their presentations to a panel of 7 judges and in front of hundreds of spectators.

This is a big personal investment to team members and their employers that can’t use these talented resources for billable work.

Every team realizes this before they get involved in a design challenge and it’s special for us in Chicago because our challenge is focused on Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid.

Come watch what these teams come up with by registering to attend the PhizzPop Design Challenge at www.phizzpop.com and cheer on Manifest Digital, Quilogy, Roundarch and Tanagram.

Who are these guys? Learn about them below.

Competing Agencies

Agencies competing in 2008 PhizzPop Design Challenge in Chicago represent some of the most capable and powerful collections of designers and developers in the region. Each participant makes a huge investment in time and talent to compete in the challenge and showcase how design and innovation can have a profound effect at the intersection of design, business and technology. 2008 firms competing include:

Manifest Digital
www.manifestdigital.com/
Manifest Digital is a uniquely integrated next-generation agency. Founded in the principles of customer-centered design, we have evolved our heritage to incorporate the right mix of strategy, creativity, delivery, and accountability. We communicate with each other and our clients in a build-to-think process that ties these disciplines together, applying user-centered methods in new ways.

The result is innovative--from evolutionary to revolutionary--depending on your market need.

Build a better website, create vibrant online communities, or tightly integrate multi-channel marketing. Use our custom content management and marketing platform, uxCast, or the technical foundations you already have.

Regardless of the tactics, Manifest Digital applies its proven approach to close the distance between you and your customer.

Quilogy
www.quilogy.com/
Quilogy’s Interactive National Practice, a member of the prestigious Microsoft Metro Early Adopter Program, is a full service digital marketing agency that combines high impact creative designs with robust technologies to deliver compelling and cost-effective online marketing solutions.

Quilogy’s award-winning team of creative designers, writers, usability experts, multi-media specialists and technologists mix and match digital marketing techniques such as web site design and strategy, search engine optimization, e-mail campaigns, banner advertising, streaming video, e-learning and more to help clients win and keep customers, launch new products, penetrate new markets and educate sales teams.

Clients of all industries and sizes engage Quilogy to assist with complete marketing campaign development including out-of-the-box strategy, planning, creative concepts, content, production and deployment along with performance analytics to achieve desired results.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Quilogy operates offices in 17 cities across the United States and is a leading Microsoft National Managed Partner providing solutions for Business Intelligence, Custom .NET, SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics, Web Design and Interactive Marketing.

Roundarch
www.roundarch.com/
At Roundarch, we believe it is better to do a few things very well rather than try to be everything to everyone. We focus exclusively on the Web channel for the world's largest organizations. Doing so requires three key elements:

· Deep expertise in the channel to translate a company's overall goals into a compelling online strategy

· Strong design skills to translate user needs into a Web experience that is both intuitive and a joy to use

· Deep architecture and implementation expertise in Web technologies to assure that Web-based systems are both highly scalable and flexible

Roundarch has spent the past six years honing our skills in each of these disciplines and optimizing the synergy between them. The result is a company that has the depth to take on some of the channel's most complex problems for some of the world's largest organizations.

Tanagram
www.tanagrampartners.com/
Tanagram Partners designs human computer interactions with products you use at home, at the office, or mobile. This includes web and software applications ranging from interfaces for a single interaction to complex product ecologies. We are a hybrid company that is comfortable to be on the edges of traditional categories. We look at all opportunities through four lenses:

Business - Business goals and models drive client decisions. Tanagram understands and has experience with many different types of business models and processes.

Markets - Companies tap into markets, or an aggregated group of users that are defined by certain characteristics and attributes. Tanagram is user focused.

Brand – We live in a world of brands and markets that expect unified branded experiences to create greater affinities with products and services. Tanagram has deep experience in brand strategy and brand building.

Technology – The enabler for experiences and transactions of all types. Developing compelling digital experiences is what drives Tanagram to innovate and create solutions that people want to use.

Our inspired approach is rooted in creativity. By architecting engaging and relevant user experiences, we create measurable solutions that bridge our client’s need for transforming their business, market, and brand futures.

The Chicago PhizzPop Challenge: Posted

Here’s the challenge that the PhizzPop Chicago teams got on Friday, November 14th at 4pm.

Chicago 2016 Olympics Bid Awareness

Overview

You’ve been selected by the Chicago 2016 Committee to help provide digital strategies to help Chicago be selected at the site of the 2016 Olympics. Chicago 2016 has less than a year before the International Olympic Committee votes on which of the four competing cities wins the bid. The four competing cities are Chicago, Madrid, Rio, and Tokyo.

One of the key elements to winning the bid for Chicago is getting the city’s youth behind the bid. Teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 will be in their late 20’s to early 30’s if/when the Olympic come to Chicago in 2016. This is the audience that in 2016 will be going to events, and taking their kids to cheer on the next Shawn Johnson or Michael Phelps.

The committee is looking for ways to actively engage and ultimately generate support with the city’s youth in a demonstrable way. It is very important to not just get the youth involved but somehow show their impact/support in a visual/meaningful way. It is also important to somehow find ways to activate those that influence youth, like teachers, coaches, and parents.

Assignment

Your challenge is to determine how and what the mechanisms are used to engage and create interest in the bid with Chicago’s youth (ages 13-18). We are looking for unique, out of the box experiences that can empower the youth to feel this is their bid.

How can next generation devices, games, social media, mobility and new technologies for sharing and collaboration position Chicago in a genuine, relevant and engaging fashion to youth?

While we have not exhaustively discussed all the possibilities, a few of the following ideas have been discussed, and may give you some food for thought for your projects focus:

• Is there a way to leverage casual gaming to bring kids closer to sport? Games like Line Rider and Desktop Tower Defense have become viral and are very successful across demographics. Is there a way Chicago2016 can leverage casual gaming around sports to raise youth awareness in the Olympics? Are there collaborative and competitive components to the solutions?

• Is there a way to connect the youth with local sports groups? How can we leverage the web to help create/enhance local group activities?

• How do we utilize the concept of becoming a “celebrity” to help drive awareness and interest in the bid. In a time where all it takes is a video with thousands of hits to because a “Web Celebrity”, are there ways to allow the youth to promote the bid that also promotes themselves, through the use of cyber status and popularity?

This is not the end all list of possibilities, so feel free to design something completely different as long as it meets the requirements listed below and also focuses on engaging the city’s youth.

Requirements

• A focus on getting youth audiences is involved in the bid.

• The primary interface for this effort will be Web based and use/leverage services to provide maximum reach and utility for visitors to engage at chicago2016.org or some related URL.

• Variations or parts of the experience can be delivered to desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile device, Surface, etc…

• There are multiple audiences for this interface with different degrees of importance. Youth and awareness around the importance of sports is our primary audience. Secondary audiences include potential donors and visitors to the site that are curious about Chicago’s ambition and enthusiasm for the 2016 Olympic bid and have a desire to know why Chicago is a great venue to host the 2016 games.

• Solutions should make use of technologies and services that provide rich, interactive, unique and collaborative experiences that leverage the best of Web 2.0 and social media, but it should also extend the capabilities and effectiveness of these services. (Including use of audio, video, etc.).

• A safe and controlled environment where students (13-18) will feel safe in collaborating. Consider reviewing COPPA rules at www.coppa.org.

• Abilities to close or manage the network to prevent commercial, distracting or offensive content.

• The ability to provide standardization and interoperability of data and content to other networks and platforms to amplify the impact of the Chicago 2016 committee’s efforts at chicago2016.org.

• Interface(s) must be delivered as Microsoft WPF and/or Silverlight 1 or 2 experience as a core enabling feature.

Considerations

The following are considerations, not guidelines that should be evaluated when designing a solution:

• Extending the experience outside of the Chicago 2016 site to other services or properties (including but not limited to Windows Live Services).

• Use of data visualization for both site visitors and Chicago2016 stakeholders to dynamically represent the enthusiasm of Chicago for hosting the Chicago 2016 Olympics.

• Systems and tools that capture and engage audiences consistently between Olympic events versus just during Olympics events. Ideas and strategies that make Chicago2016 a permanent destination for people.

• Looking at how advances in imaging, casual gaming, advocate networks, offline applications or academic engagement can be utilized for this effort.

• Integration of Microsoft Live Services

User Personas

Persona 1: Junior High Student

Name: Alex

Age: 13

Alex lives in Barlett, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. If asked to describe himself he would most likely state that he is ‘normal’ compared to his peers, he’s not the most popular guy in school but he’s got his own group of friends and in his words “Gets along with everyone more or less”. He’s played football since third-grade but due to his diminutive size he’s thinking of giving it up for something else, but he’s not even sure if he really wants to engage in sports much anymore. He spend quite a bit of time with friends play ingvideo games (mostly Xbox) at their respective houses (He recently received an X-Box Live account and uses the online handle ‘Iron Monk’ when he plays games with his friends online, although he’s anxiously awaiting Gears of War II he spends most of time simply handing out online in Halo 3 with his friends or playing Rock Band II with his band called ‘DeathEater.’

Alex has an older brother, David, who is a Junior in Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Recently David has gotten Alex into casual computing games and into DJing, something David has started doing part time. Increasing Alex is spending time online playing games like Line Rider (www.linerider.com). He’s recently set up a My Space page by has only just started using it and plays with his brother’s electronic keyboard which is hooked up to a Sony VAIO running Virtual DJ Pro.

Alex has been lobbying his parents for some time for an iPhone saying it’s essential he has a cell phone for ‘safety’. Finally his parents relent, but to his disappointment he is given his Father’s old Motorola Razor handset after his Father upgrades to a new Motorola phone. “You just need a phone for emergencies, an iPhone is too expensive,” says his Father. Alex grumbles a bit but is using the phone often for text messaging.

Persona 2: College Student

Name: Jocelyn

Age: 17

Jocelyn lives in Hyde Park, IL. She’s just started taking classes at Loyola University in downtown Chicago, majoring in pre-med. Jocelyn takes her college life very seriously, with the exception of her older cousin she is the first in extended family to be going to college. Between work and school she doesn’t have time for much else.

Currently Jocelyn’s life revolves around three groups of friends, those people she works with at the East Bank Club, where she’s got a job greeting and checking in guests that are members of the club and with many of her new friends she’s made at Loyola. Finally, Jocelyn has a very tight group of friends she’s known since she’s been a small child, although still close to all of them she finds less and less time to interact with them, one of them has moved to Lexington to take a job in a family business, one has joined the Army, and one has moved to Iowa on a track scholarship at Iowa State University.

Jocelyn spends a great deal of time keeping in touch with her groups of friends using her Sidekick mobile phone, mostly through SMS and twitter but more recently she has started using Facebook and Friendfeed to keep in touch as well. She’s not quite sure how she could live without her Sidekick or Macbook that she bought this summer with money earned from part-time jobs.

Sharing student housing with three other roommates and being so immersed in school and her new job still has Jocelyn excited but she wonders if she’s missing something and losing perspective. In high-school she volunteered for many activities and ran cross-country and she’s starting to feel a bit guilty that she no longer makes time for those activities. She’s also become a bit more aware and sensitive about how women are treating in the workplace and, most concerning to her, in the medical workplace, after doing a summer internship. Jocelyn wonders if there are some things she should start thinking about in terms of empowerment but she’s not sure where to start.

 

Persona 3: Youth

Name: Darryl

Age: 19

Darryl graduated 18 months ago from high-school. An outstanding athlete, he eventually went to play basketball for a Division III school in Texas with an interest in studying criminal science. As is true with many students Darryl found that this initial independence and being far away from home proved to be a bit too much. After his first year in School he returned home, in considerable debt.

Over the Summer Darryl has been working a variety of jobs to pay down some of his student debt. His parents have been letting him live at home and recently he just got a job driving a delivery truck for a shipping company. It’s a job Darryl appreciates for the pay and that fact that they offer college reimbursement. He’s committed to giving college another go again after he pays down his debts. His biggest passion outside of work is playing basketball whenever he can with his high-school friends. He lives for the pick-up game.

Darryl has never been a huge fan of technology or even video games. He recently picked up a new mobile phone and got a Windows smart phone because his employer was able to get him a great deal on it and he thought it might be a good substitute for buying a computer. He’s using it mostly for texting with his friends and new girlfriend but has recently been turning to Web sites like Yelp.com that help him determine what to do socially during his free time.

 

Persona 4: The Suburban Dad

Name: Ben

Age: 44

Ben is a working father of two (Jim, 12 and Jennifer, 14), and lives in Arlington Heights, but commutes into the Loop every weekday for work on Metra. He tries to make the most of his time on the train to and from work, so he has time at home with the family. On Tuesday nights he coaches Jim’s soccer team and on Thursdays he helps coach Jennifer’s softball teams. Sometimes it is difficult to keep up with the entire goings on with each of the kid’s teams, but he makes it a priority.

Since he commutes into the city, his time during the week with them is short, so he spends some of his time on his commute looking for things for the family to do the next weekend. Sometimes he finds things in the The Chicago Tribune, but a lot of time he uses his laptop with a wi-max card to scour the local websites like Metromix, Citysearch and others to find things the family can do on the weekend.

Last weekend he and his wife took the kids to see the new Earth Revealed exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. He was amazed on how interactive it was and how engaging it was to the entire family. The kids loved it and he felt it was an educational experience for them and that’s what he looks for.

 

Persona 5: Undergraduate Media Studies Teacher

Name: James

Age: 29

James is an associate professor at a four year college located in Chicago. He’s new to the school and the job and was hired with a mandate to ‘break some eggs’. James’ first teaching assignment is in a class focused on video production and distribution. Rather than go the traditional approach of teaching just the concepts and aspects of script writing, production and editing James wants to teach his students about using the medium and social media to make connections with audiences.

He’s particularly inspired by work that Nike has done in this space and the concept of ‘fan media’ that pervades You Tube. He’s even been mildly impressed by some of the online ‘I’m a PC campaigns.’ He’s looking for a subject and social platform that he can use to inspire his students and engage the messiness of user generated video and online media.

James is a bit of social media nut and he’s currently addicted to his favorite tool, Friendfeed. Recently he purchased an iPhone solely because he liked how FriendFeed displayed on his phone and the access it offered to his large music collection.

Although many of his students have Macs the lab he teaches in is a hybrid where Macs are used for editing and PCs are used for Web and online media design and encoding.

PhizzPop New York

PhizzPop occurred in New York City on November 4th (Yes, THAT November 4th). Get a taste of what’s coming to Chicago on November 20th and register for this free event at www.phizzpop.com before we sell out (We’re getting close).

See an alternate version of this video here. (You'll need and be prompted to install Silverlight to watch these videos.)

The Chicago PhizzPop Tour, November 20th

Note, this post has been edited on November 15th, 2008.

We’ll be hosting another PhizzPop Tour in Chicago this year. You can sign up here. This year’s tour has a twist in that we’re doing it with the partnership with a few important groups. Which are:

Ogilvy Interactive, which is currently contributing services to the Chicago 2016 committee, the group that supports Chicago 2016 Olympic bid (Learn more at chicago2016.org). Ogilvy has helped define the design challenge this year and it will be focused on developing strategies to help Chicago land the Olympics in 2016.

 

We’re hosting this event with The Chicago Convergence, an 1800 member grassroots organization dedicated to turning Chicago into the new media capital of the world.

What is the challenge?

PhizzPop Design Challenge was created by Microsoft to bring together top designers and developers from select agencies around the country to compete in an adrenaline charged three-day competition of design innovation, development, and creativity to solve a unique design challenge. This year PhizzPop is visiting seven cities in search of the best design talent in America. The tour kicked off its first event in New York City, and excitement continues to build for the next stop on the tour: Chicago, November 20, 2008.

How does the challenge work?

PhizzPop Design Challenge was created by Microsoft to bring together top designers and developers from select agencies around the country to compete in an adrenaline charged three-day competition of design innovation, development, and creativity to solve a unique design challenge. This year PhizzPop is visiting seven cities in search of the best design talent in America. The tour kicked off its first event in New York City, and excitement continues to build for the next stop on the tour: Chicago, November 20, 2008.

Who are the contestants?

Contestants are designers and developers from the top agencies in each region. Regional winners will earn acclaim and roundtrip airfare to the national competition held at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas March 15-17, 2009.

For Chicago currently announced participants include:

Manifest Digital – www.manifestdigital.com/

Quilogy – www.quilogy.com/

Roundarch – www.roundarch.com/

Tanagram – www.tanagrampartners.com/

Who are the judges?

Current judges announced for the event include Kevin Flatt, Executive Creative Director at DDB Tribal, David Armano, VP and Creative Director at Critical Mass and founder of the blog Logic + Emotion and Jeff Smith, CEO and founder of Clarity Consulting (And last year’s Chicago PhizzPop winner)

How do I sign up?

Go to www.phizzpop.com and register for the Chicago event.

Something new: BizSpark

Design Thinking Digest has been a bit of a ghost town lately and that’s largely due to two big efforts I’ve been focused on. One is the return of the PhizzPop Design Challenge Tour in the US (which I’ll talk about later) and a new program we announced today called BizSpark.

Some background. It’s sometimes easy to forget the roots and heritage of a company like Microsoft. Like many great businesses of yore it wasn’t sketched on the back of napkin but formulated in a dorm room. It was started by folks with a sense of curiosity—an itch that needed to be scratched. Sure there was ambition, there was also risk, but the founders of Microsoft had something that every great company also had that is seldom discussed. Someone that believed in them and enabled them.

In the case of Microsoft this occurred after Bill Gates called the creators of a new microcomputer called the Altair 8800. Bill and team demonstrated an implementation of the BASIC programming language for the system and afterward the computer maker agreed to distribute Altair BASIC. This enabled (or encouraged depending how you think about this) Bill Gates to leave Harvard and move to Albuquerque, where the computer manufacturer, MITS was located. It was there that Microsoft was founded.

So, how does Microsoft pay this forward as it were? One way we do this is through programs focused at higher education.

One of these programs is called DreamSpark. DreamSpark enables any eligible post-secondary student to download professional design and development tools from Microsoft at no charge during their education. This program is supported by active communities and a global innovation challenge that is called Imagine Cup.

But today Microosft is announcing that we are taking the principles of DreamSpark to a new level and a new audience. That audience is entrepreneurs and the program is called BizSpark.

BizSpark is a global program that will help startups grow into successful businesses through software support and a vibrant ecosystem that will allow new startups to deliver superior business advantage.

We’ll do this in three ways.

1. We’ll help startups receive fast and easy access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions with no upfront costs and minimal requirements.

2. We’ll also help startups receive professional support from Microsoft and BizSpark Network Partners around the world who provide a wide range of support resources for software startups. Network Partners are incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters who are vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship.

3. Finally, we’ll help startups get visibility. A dedicated Website, the BizSparkDB, will highlight promising companies from around the world every day. Through their relationship with Microsoft and BizSpark Network Partners, startups will achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners.

Every great idea needs a little push to be successful.

BizSpark will support startups with a global community of peers, entrepreneurial resources and experts who can help address the unique technical and business development challenges that startups face. 

If you happen to be in Chicago on Thursday you can join me for an event where we’ll discuss what BizSpark means for Chicago.

Please RSVP here or drop me or, if you have questions, drop me an email.

Addendum:

Some great insight on BizSpark.

Microsoft Jump-Starts Global Entrepreneurs With BizSpark

Microsoft BizSpark Puts Startups on the Path to Business Success

Microsoft's BizSpark initiative offers free servers and software to startups

Microsoft offers free software for start-ups

Microsoft launches BizSpark program for startups

Introducing the startup of the day!

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/513652/35371200