FG SQUARED is a full service Interactive Marketing Solutions firm. We blend our expertise in marketing and interactive technologies to help our clients increase their bottom lines. Our core competencies span the spectrum from strategic foundation development to tactical implementation.
FG SQUARED interactive marketing
621 E 6th Street Suite 200
Austin TX 78701-3766
Can you think of someone in your business or social circle that you’ve seen around for months, you’re not sure who they are, but you feel like you need to know them? Maybe you’re not sure if they are necessarily a future business contact, but you sense you need to introduce yourself just to find out who they are? Wesley Faulkner is that person you see everywhere where there is a gathering of techies or social media enthusiasts. He’s exactly the kind of talented individual who embodies the best of the Austin interactive community and someone I made sure that I got to know.
In my view, Wesley Faulkner stands out in the Austin community as one our most valued members. He’s an engineer for a major technology company in the city and he’s also a vital member of the group of creatives and techies that make Austin the great community that it is.
You’ll run into Wesley at meetings of the Social Media Club, the Social Media Breakfast, at the Kickball Tweetup, the Austin American Statesman tweetup and just about anywhere you’d find active members of the interactive community. Wesley is literally everywhere. We’ve teased each other that we are stalking each other because we cross paths so often.
Wesley’s bio on Twitter really captures what I think makes him a very important member of the Austin interactive community: “Tech enthusiast and social chameleon. I’m looking for friends not followers. Let’s chat and get to know each other. Search #GTKWW for more.”
Like a lot of us in the social media and interactive community, I have a host of favorite groups I participate in and places online and off where I tend to congregate with people who have similar interests to mine. It seems that I run into Wesley Faulkner almost everywhere I go; which makes me think I’m attending and joining the right groups. Mainly, though, I’m glad I made the effort to meet Wesley online and in person and to become his friend.
This past weekend I joined my friend Alan Graham President of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, David J. Neff, and others on the streets of Austin to spend 48 hours with our homeless friends. It was my second time to sleep in the great outdoors on cardboard and asphalt with the good people of MLF. Both times Alan and I brought along some of the gadgets Alan actively uses to create various forms of social media, including some Flip-Cameras, iPhones and a Netbook, to assist with the MLF mission. They make it possible to document our experiences and share them instantly with followers who are supporting us with encouragement and even visiting us during the 48 hours.
Following is a YouTube Alan recorded before the retreat started which explains more fully. When it finishes you can view more updates added during the weekend.
Our hope for the weekend was to help bring about more awareness for the work Mobile Loaves and Fishes does to alleviate the suffering of the homeless population in Austin and other cities, like New Orleans, where they’re located. What I’m really excited about, though, is that we also engaged in some pretty serious policy discussions surrounding the City of Austin and the creation of a community on the grounds of my old high school in Del Valle. We discussed ways to utilize interactive marketing and social media channels to raise funds and organize around this initiative.
Look for an action plan describing Alan’s initiatives and our ideas to help in the very near future. Mobile Loaves and Fishes has already been working to build the necessary tools and after seeing what Alan is already doing, I think anyone would agree that we can actually help make a difference.
The image below is of a small mobile recreational vehicle that can be used to house a currently homeless person. It’s an actual solution - a home. (Click the image for more information.) It’s not just a vision, it’s already being done. What will be new is the use of interactive strategies to make more homes available faster by utilizing the online tools for fundraising and organizing.
Alan Graham is an enthusiastic user of social media and interactive tools. I’m very excited that his willingness to employ these new technologies and the power of online communities could help make Austin the model for its handling of homelessness. Please follow Alan at @MLFNOW on twitter and ask how you can help. You can also contact me at @MikeChapman and I’ll help connect you.
David J. Neff, known to many of us as @daveiam because of his Twitter name, was on the street retreat and submitted this great post about the weekend. Following, also, is a YouTube David put together documenting our experience this weekend. Enjoy.
Austin is rich with talented people who could easily make their way on either coast of the U.S. or anywhere else in the world. The reason we live in Austin is almost spiritual. It involves more than a quantifiable checklist of pros and cons - it’s a feeling, a “vibe” that we plug into as we’re getting off the airplane at ABIA or driving back into the Austin metro area after we’ve been away.
Because of its unique attraction, Austin has an abundance of talented people who you might think are based in Silicon Valley or Boston if you had just met them. They purposefully choose Austin instead because we not only have plenty of other techies to work and socialize with, we also have a vibrant creative community that interacts socially and professionally with the tech community.
Sure, we have some big-name celebrities that are really well known, including Willie Nelson, Lance Armstrong, Sandra Bullock, and Michael Dell. That’s great. What really makes Austin special, though, are the people who not only call Austin home, but are also fully integrated with the rest of the community and truly making it the creative capital.
Bill Leake, the CEO and Founder of Apogee Search, is one of those Austinites who can, and has, demonstrated that he could thrive anywhere but chooses to make Austin his home because of its unique character and creative mix. He’s not only a leader in our local community, he is known around the country as an expert in the interactive, space including search engine optimization, paid search advertising and website effectiveness.
A former McKinsey consultant and Dell veteran, Bill Leake draws on a deep expertise in both business and marketing to help increase revenues for a wide range of clients. He has been involved in driving provable revenues through internet marketing techniques since the early 1990s when, as part of the management team at Power Computing, he built the first company to sell $1 million of product over the internet. Bill has guided Apogee Search from inception to its current position as the largest search engine marketing firm in the Southwest, and one of the 20 largest in North America.
I used that last paragraph from Bill’s official bio purposefully because I could easily write a few thousand words telling you his story, as I know it, and without even getting to the business side of his personality. Bill is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to online technologies and business and just about any other topic you feel like discussing. He’s also a great family man and member of the Central Texas community. As a leader of the Austin Interactive Marketing Association, Bill is a major part of the conversation regarding the interactive community here. Most importantly to me, though, he’s a good friend to a huge number of us.
As the Austin Interactive Initiative takes shape, Bill will be a major resource and community leader in bringing attention to the interactive community of Central Texas. He is very available and is someone I would recommend anyone consult with if they want to know where search and technology in general is headed in the future. We’re lucky to have Bill, his family, and Apogee Search here in Austin.
When I think of the people who exemplify the best of the best of the interactive community of Austin, Texas; Michelle Greer always comes to mind. Michelle is easily one of the most recognizable people in the Austin creative and tech circles and has been justifiably recognized for her acheivements in bringing people together to use the tools of social media for the good of the community.
Recently, Michelle was selected from among her peers as the overall winner of the first Texas Social Media Awards given by the Austin American Statesman. Personally, I don’t think there could have been a better choice for the honor, which included nominations and input from across the interactive and social media communities throughout the nation.
The Statesman article on the TSMA winners, which described Michelle’s contributions to the Texas social media scene, gave a good glimpse into who she is. Michelle is a web strategist by profession, a geek’s geek by reputation, and one of the most sincere and caring people you could ever meet in real life.
I consider Michelle to be the kind of person you want as a friend, an ally and as a member of Austin’s burgeoning interactive community. She’s fiercely loyal, she’s smart, she’ll tell you what she thinks and then listen to your ideas and opinions too. When she talks about “community” in the context of the online world, she absolutely does so with the belief that we’re here to look out for each other and not just to locate new markets and customers for our products and services.
From Michelle’s point of view, a view I share, those companies, organizations and individuals who present themselves in an honest and open manner - in other words, they’re authentic and appropriately transparent - will succeed well beyond those who try to simply sell to the online communities.
As we work to establish Austin as an important hub for economic activity on the socially engaged web, we will do very well to use Michelle Greer’s approach to life and business as a model for our overall efforts for Aii and beyond.
As part of its Changing the Game initiative, it was announced recently that the AMD Foundation is funding, “Game On!,” a four-week, project-based internship experience in which 20 high school students in Austin, Texas, design and produce socially conscious video games. Game On! is a program put on by the Digital Media Council, one of the industry councils that are a part of the Skillpoint Alliance.
Students in theVelocity Prep: Game ON! program select issues that affect their local community and develop socially-conscious video games that teach or raise awareness about these issues. Supported by Austin’s Gendai Games and a team of volunteers from the Chamber of Commerce, the City of Austin, the Digital Media Council and others, students are trained to create their own 2-D video games using Game Salad (http://gamesalad.com/), a game development tool designed for new and experienced game developers alike.
There might still be a need for volunteers who are subject matter experts; people who can present on problems that affect our community, what causes the problems and what the possible solutions for the problems are (and even might be in the future). Also, game developers interested in helping students develop games, testing and providing feedback are needed. If you would like to volunteer, contact Joey Harding, the Game On! program coordinator, at joehharding@gmail.com.
This is a great way for members of our interactive community to contribute to the well-being of our larger community. Our hats are off to the folks at the AMD Foundation, the Digital Media Council and the Skillpoint Alliance for giving back in such a meaningful and effective way.
Last week I promised to begin a series focused on the people who will be playing key roles in the Austin Interactive Initiative, or Aii for short. In order to give a fair representation of the organization and movement, I need to start with the person who is one of the most vocal and active evangelists for Austin’s interactive community and who will be very much at the center of the Aii - Steve Golab.
Steve has spent his entire career integrally involved in the interactive community of Austin. His journey started while he was still a student at the University of Texas almost two decades ago. There he piloted the College of Engineering’s Multimedia Lab. He is an original founder and partner of FG SQUARED - the second G in the company name - and he now serves as CEO and President. In his current role, and as the title of this post declares, Steve is an active evangelist for the interactive community of Austin.
In the interest of full disclosure, Steve didn’t know that I would be writing this post. In more than seven months working with him he has never read a post I’ve written before it was published. That level of openness and trust, in my view, is a solid indicator that Steve understands that a collaborative approach to business can bring out people’s best and most effective thinking. This willingness to solicit and allow everyone’s point of view, and then strive for the mutual benefit of the community, gives Steve real credibility in his efforts on behalf of the Austin interactive community.
Aii, as Steve envisions it, will provide a vehicle for the community and create the “bigger pie” from which everyone can benefit. For those of us who are believers in the power of collaboration, community and conversational communications, Aii is a welcome development in the Austin business community.
To kick-start the process, Steve has been working with some well regarded community leaders in Austin to put some initial thoughts on paper and to create a plan for a gathering of community members and local leaders who want to work together.
In my conversations with Steve, it’s clear that he is genuinely concerned about the global economic situation and the pain it has caused our local economy. He’s somewhat taken aback, given the level and amount of creative and technical talent in Austin, that we’re not receiving the recognition that other communities and cities do. Our city is more than a great place to hold SXSW and it occurs to him, and to many of us who are working with him, that we need to better communicate to the rest of the world the depth of resources that exist right here in the Central Texas area.
Following are the specific bullet points that have been developed for the purpose of beginning a conversation:
1. Aii is an economic development movement in the Central Texas region that aims to help make Austin be better recognized by global business communities and media outlets as an epicenter for Interactive and Social Media.
2. By working together in a collaborative manner, customers will be attracted to the whole of the talent that resides and works in the Austin area and that focuses on interactive and social media.
3. To accomplish this, the Aii would establish an active online community where stakeholders can communicate and collaborate around the issues of economic development as they pertain to the Austin Interactive community.
Please join the conversation and comment. In the true spirit of community, all who are affected or interested are invited to get involved.
The team at FG SQUARED commends the City of Austin on listening to the protests of our citizens about hiring a non-Austin firm to create a Web site intended to accurately represent our community. It was admirable that the city also recognized the interactive community’s concerns that outsourcing the project to a California firm would have undercut the local interactive industry’s reputation.
A new RFP that provides more flexibility in open source technologies will benefit the project and Austin in the long run. Incorporating feedback into the bidding process will also assure that the right groups are selected to do the work. We are thrilled to see that the city’s leadership understands the importance of recognizing the breadth of Austin’s interactive talent and of providing opportunities to local firms.
Following up on the highly successful Interactive Austin 2009 conference, FG SQUARED’s Steve Golab and other community leaders are reaching out to the interactive and creative communities of Central Texas to start the Austin Interactive Initiative.
The goal of the Austin Interactive Initiative, or Aii, is to spur economic development in Central Texas by galvanizing the tremendous talent and technological expertise among the people who live and work here.
Aii is an economic development movement in the Central Texas region. Community leaders who are interested in supporting Austin as a center for social media and creative technology are invited to join this effort on Twitter. In case you have trouble linking from here, the address is http://twitter.com/atxii.
The Austin area has long been a destination for members of the creative class from around the world. Let’s turn this tremendous resource of people into an economic force that will benefit the entire community.
Over the coming months, the SQUARED Root will feature key individuals in the Austin interactive and creative scenes. Let us know if there is someone you feel is an important member of our community who should be featured. We want to meet them and you and then work together to make Austin the hub for social media and creative technology.
Since our last post on HB 1876, which would create the Texas Health Care Access Fund has been added as an amendment to another bill, HB 2154, which has passed the Texas State House of Representatives. Currently we are working to get the bill through the Texas State Senate. A vote is possible in the Senate Finance Committee today!
There is a tremendous push to gain passage of the bill including a decision by the Texas Association of Business to begin running radio ads statewide in support of the measure.
From the Quorum Report, we read this headline this week.
May 19, 2009 4:30 PM
IN RARE HARMONY, TAB JOINS TAFP SUPPORTING SMOKELESS TOBACCO TAX
Both agree on urgency of helping medical students pay back med school loan in order to help under served areas
The Texas Association of Business and the Texas Academy of Family Physicians are rarely on the same page but when they are, it is significant.
TAB announced today that it was initiating a statewide radio campaign supporting HB 2154 which funds a loan repayment program for physicians working in underserved parts of the state. The program is funded by a change in the tax structure on smokeless tobacco. The bill is currently at the tende mercies of the Senate.
“We are facing a health care shortage across the state, an issue paramount to the employers and business community of Texas,” said TAB President Bill Hammond. “HB 2154 will help attract physicians to the 114 medically underserved counties in Texas by closing a loophole in the manner in which the state excise tax is assessed on smokeless tobacco products.
“This proposal enjoys overwhelming public support,” Hammond said. “Addressing the doctor shortage is good for Texas, and TAB is pleased to be sponsoring such a positive program with a very positive ad campaign.
Then yesterday, again in the Quorum Report, a story was posted about a poll conducted by Baselice which indicates deep support for the physician loan repayment program in HB 2154 among Texans.
May 20, 2009 12:29 PM
BASELICE POLL FINDS DEEP SUPPORT FOR PHYSICIAN LOAN REPAYMENT PROGRAM
Survey was commissioned by TAFP and TAB to give a boost to HB 2154, which is sitting in Senate Finance.
A solid majority of Texans back a proposal to help physicians pay back medical school loans if they agree to practice for a time in medically underserved areas, according to the results of a phone survey being released today.
The survey also finds support for the program remains undiminished when respondents were told the funding source is a change in taxes on smokeless tobacco. Support for the loan repayment program cut across party lines and that majorities of both Republicans and self-described conservatives backed the proposal.
Buzz Central wrote yesterday about the strange bedfellows that the Texas Academy of Family Physicians is keeping in its efforts to push the physician loan repayment bill through the Lege. The bill is currently in Senate Finance after managing to clear the House last week. A vote isn’t expected there until tomorrow at the earliest.
The Texas Legislature is in session until June 1st and every communication with any member of the legislature is important.
If you haven’t joined the Facebook group or started following the effort on Twitter you still have time.
All Texans deserve access to health care. Together we are making progress toward this goal. Please join us today by contacting your Senator.
FG SQUARED has worked with the Texas Association of Community Health Centers (TACHC) for many years. Starting this weekend the Austin based interactive marketing agency is working with TACHC to spread the word about a bill being considered by the Texas Legislature that would create a fund to make it possible for more Texas physicians to choose primary care as a practice specialty.
TACHC has proposed a bill that will help ease the strain on Texas’ physicians, the Texas Health Care Access Fund. HB 1876/SB 2527 directly addresses this very real need for funding more physicians by closing a loophole in the smokeless tobacco tax.
This should be an easy bill for the Texas Legislature to pass, but because of the power of the tobacco lobby (and because lower-income Texans don’t have their own lobbyists); the TACHC is up against some pretty big odds.
FG SQUARED is using some social media channels to help get the word out about the legislation. A Facebook group and a Twitter account have been established. Full disclosure has been provided in both places including a link back to the SQUARED ROOT right here.
You are encouraged to join in on the effort. The idea is to make the information as available as possible in as many places online as is practical. Hopefully the more people know about what the TACHC is working on, the more they will support them by actually contacting legislators who control the fate of the bill.
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