Compete and J.D. Power presented an analysis yesterday stating that the auto industry would be better served searching out new buyers on social media networks rather than search engines like Google and Yahoo.

The speech was given at the J.D. Power and Associates Automotive Internet Roundtable in Las Vegas at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa.

Compete and J.D. Power studied the web URL addresses that new-car buyers had visited and recommends that a social media presence like fan pages or profiles is beneficial for interacting with potential buyers. The round table also commented on social media’s ability to understand consumers. The biggest topic at the round table was social media’s future in the automotive industry as a game changing tool.

Other information gained from the study found:
• 1/3 of buyers visit auto brand or third-party sites 6 months before purchase
• 2/3 of buyers visit auto brand or third-party sites 3 months before purchase
• 19 % of buyers, who search online, claim to visit dealer sites first.
• 41% visit OEM sites first
• 40% visit third-party auto sites first
• Online buyers consider an average of 2.9 cars before making a decision

Last week I wrote about A Night with Chris Brogan at Chapman University. A video was posted of the event on Vimeo tonight. I’ve included it below. If you’re interested in adding social media to your business model, you should definitely take a look.

Chris Brogan

I just came back from A Night with Chris Brogan at Chapman University in the city of Orange, California. Chapman was the eighth venue of the day for Chris, who was touring the greater Orange County area talking about the importance of social media integration and selling a few copies of his book Trust Agents.

Chris was introduced as a Social Media Rockstar. Which he is. He has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. He’s one of the top five bloggers in the nation and he has been at the forefront of social media for over a decade. But, in the social media world a rockstar isn’t the same as it is in the music industry. Chris was humble and soft spoken. “I’m a typist. A guy who types, that’s it,” Chris said in response to the moniker. He even found an opportunity to make a joke at the expense of Chris Garrett, a regular contributor on this blog.

To me Chris came off more as a social media philosopher. His speech wasn’t punctuated with bullet points. He didn’t have a fancy PowerPoint presentation. Although his message was clear, he still spoke in generalities. He spoke about the broader importance of this transformational period in our society. It was obvious that he had a deep seeded love and passion for his topic. He seemed to respect it enough to not pimp it out to his captive audience.

Chris focused on the humanity of social media. Social media allows companies to be human again. They can speak to their customers and more importantly they can listen to their customers. Businesses can become part of their tribe and when they are able to connect with their customers through this humanity, then they can truly grow as a company. The problem with business today has been the loss of that humanity.

It was nice to see someone who spoke about social media as if he was writing a love letter. From time to time businesses can lose sight of the things that are truly important and after seeing Chris speak about this social media utopia where customers speak and they are heard, I was hopeful that it would become a reality sooner rather than later.

Left to Right: Adam Siegel from Inkling Markets, Melody Hildebrandt from Transcapitalist, Ryan Hahn from World Bank, Robin Hanson from Consensus Point, Shyam Sankar from Palantir Technologies, Emma Antunes from NASA, Don Burke from Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and David Resseguie from Sensorpedia

BOALT co-sponsored a D.C. event last night called “Tap the Collective” along with Palantir Technologies.  The event which was hosted by Adam Siegel, founder of Inkling Markets and Melody Hildebrandt, founder of Transcapitalist, was by far the most interesting event that I have been to since I moved to D.C. a year ago.

For starters, it was a fresh new crowd.  It was the first time that I was really able to understand how large enterprise organizations are adopting some of the most recent new media technologies and realized that although it may be a slippery slope, we’re making a lot of headway.  The main focus of the night was how to use “collective intelligence solutions to enable decision-makers to efficiently gather actionable information without the political overhead that usually accompanies meetings, status reports, emails, and other standard communication methods.”

The thing that impressed me the most was how large organizations were using prediction markets.  Ryan Hahn from World Bank discussed how they were using Inkling Markets internally to predict different organizational issues.  Prediction Markets, as defined by Wikpedia, are “speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. Assets are created whose final cash value is tied to a particular event (e.g., will the next US president be a Republican) or parameter (e.g., total sales next quarter).”

So what does this mean in plain English, an organization such as World Bank will use a group of employees and give them virtual currency to invest into the predictions of the outcome of different World Bank initiatives.  So for example, World Bank could predict a certain gross national product (GNP) and employees would either use their virtual currency to buy into that prediction or even short the prediction.

In the end, employees that make accurate predictions would in turn increase their virtual currency and be rewarded by that organization.  Prediction markets aren’t perfect though, they definitely present some challenges Hahn stated. For example, he posed the question internally, “Do you think X country will default?”, and that backfired on him since World Bank is an organization run by different countries and certain questions could be considered sensitive or hurt country relations.

Don Burke from the CIA, started Intellipedia, an internal Wiki that could be used by the intelligence community.  Intellipedia, which is updated by different intelligence agencies around the world, is a central location to keep information about countries and certain people of interest.  Don who’s been working on the project since 2005, stated that large organizations have certain process inefficiencies that prevent them from adopting new technologies and collective intelligence requires certain internal synergies to make them work.  He also stated, “Data begets more data which begets more knowledge.”

Lastly, I really enjoyed hearing about NASA’s internal social network, Spacebook, which is run by Emma Antunes.   NASA is currently using this social network to source information from its employees to continually optimize their organization by listening to what their employees have to say.

I want to thank, Melody Hildebrandt and Adam Siegel for organizing such a great panel and I urge all of you to watch the video of the event as soon as it’s ready.  I will update this post and twitter about it (@boalt), when I get a hold of it.

BOALT sponsored and attended the Social Matchbox Summer Social 2009 last Thursday at the E Street Cinema. The event hosted ten early stage start-ups that were picked from a pool of 50 applicants. The audience consisted of 200 handpicked industry leaders, investors, designers and press.

According to Social Matchbox, the audience also included representatives from Ashoka, Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, The DC Office of Economic Development, Department of Defense, Grotech Ventures, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, The Obama Administration, Sunlight Foundation, Valhalla Partners, the Washington Post, ThrillList, and TechCrunch.

Each emerging company presented their plan in a four minute secession followed by four minutes of Q&A. The event also set aside time for 60-90 second presentations in an open-mic session– “Opportunities and Ideas for Startups”.

Presenters:
TapMetrics – Mobile / Advertising (A Launchbox Digital Startup)

Diditz – Social Media

Wegora – Online Collaboration

Giv.to – Social Media

Unblab – Email / Productivity (A Launchbox Digital Startup)

SEC Watch – Government 2.0 (A Launchbox Digital Startup)

Grasshopr – Government 2.0

Earth Aid Enterprises – Green

WinTheTrophy – Gaming

GrouperEye – College Recruiting

Opportunities and Ideas for Start-ups:
Ashoka – Social Entrepreneurship

Apps for America – Sunlight Foundation

Apps for Democracy – iStrategy Labs

Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

After the pitches, audience members were invited to invest in the most appealing start-up with their “MatchBUCKS.”

At the event reception, the Community Choice Award winner was revealed: Earth Aid Enterprises. Earth Aid, founded by Ben Bixby, is a site that helps consumers rationalize their home energy consumption and in return lower their utility bills.

The Social Matchbox Sticky Pick award, based on votes from the event’s 10 person organizing team, went to Unblab, a startup that helps consumers find email messages that matter most with machines that automatically learn preferences.

We want to thank all of the great startups and presenters and of course the organizers of Social Matchbox for a great night. We appreciate the opportunity to see the newest ideas in the tech startup world.

BOALT has sponsored the upcoming events and thinks you should attend.  Also, we’re currently looking for a LAMP developer, so give us a shout!

• Social Matchbox on August 20, 2009
  More Info | Register >>
• Refresh DC on August 20, 2009
  More Info
• TechCocktail on August 27, 2009
  More Info | Register >>
  
• Tech Adventure on August 29, 2009
  More Info | Register >>
• Tap the Collective on September 2, 2009
  Register >>
  
• Ignite Annapolis on October 1, 2009
  More Info | Free Transportation | Register >>
• Ignite DC on October 8, 2009
  Register >>
• Ignite Baltimore on October 22, 2009
  More Info | Free Transportation | Register >>
  
• RE BarCamp DC on October 27, 2009
  More Info | Register >>
  
• TedX (Baltimore) on November 5, 2009
  More Details

Need a ride?

BOALT will be providing transportation from D.C. to the following events: Ignite Baltimore, Ignite Annapolis and TedX in a MotorCoach.  Plenty of beer, wine and snacks will be provided by BOALT.   There is room for 25 additional people for each event.  If your interested in hitching a ride, just RSVP in the comments below – make sure to include names of each person and the event.  (limited space, so we’ll contact you to confirm reservation)

If your hosting an event and would like BOALT to sponsor the event, just email us!

Also, look for us at some national upcoming events:

• Digital Dealer Conference, November 1 – 3, 2009 in Nashville, TN
• NADA, February 13-15, 2009 in Orlando, FL

Tonight, I headed over to the Science Club, a cool little bar in Washington, D.C.  (trust me, it’s cooler than it sounds)  and I heard Tim O’Reilly talk about government 2.0 and social media.  He specifically talks about government transparency,  public/private partnerships and trying to bring web 2.0 into the government.  I was fortunate to have my camera on me and I filmed him talking.  Try to zone out the darkness and background music…

Vivek Kundra, D.C.’s Chief Technology Officer, invited me to his office yesterday to discuss the upcoming inauguration and government operations with the other Apps for Democracy winners.  I walked away from the meeting thinking one thing – Vivek Kundra is a bad ass!  I never in my wildest dreams thought a government official would make it to my top 10 technology hero list.  He now sits along side Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Kevin Rose and Michael Arrington to name a few.

Forget about the fact that he manages a staff of 600 people that provides technology services and leadership for 86 agencies, 38,000 employees, residents, businesses, and millions of visitors, his approach to technology and government spending is unbelievable.  He has taken a $500 million yearly budget and visualized it in such a away that a 4th grader could understand it.  His rationale was that before he arrived, the government was spending an unforeseeable amount of tax payers’ money and nobody could account for it.  Now, everything is elegantly displayed on dashboards that surround what looks like the trading floor of a stock exchange.  The custom built Ruby on Rails solution displays everything you need to know, including budgets, time lines and even a  ‘happiness’ factor.  I’ve seen a lot of cool things and just recently went to the Google I/O conference and the TechCrunch 50 but nothing tops the operation I saw at his office.

If you ever get an opportunity to meet him, don’t hesitate.

After several weeks of hard planning, I’m sure that Peter Corbett of IStrategyLabs is glad to know that the Apps for Democracy was a huge success.  I’m glad that BOALT took home the agency 1st prize and was able to build an application that was going to help the community so much. So what’s next for DCHistoricTours.com?

After speaking with D.C.’s Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Kundra, last night, he told me that one of the reasons we were chosen was because they wanted to use our application on main D.C. inauguration website.  This would provide the many anticipated visitors this January a helpful resource to learn more about our nation’s capitol.  I thought that was pretty exciting so naturally I stayed up last night wondering what I could do to improve the app.

Well for starters, we rolled out a social feature last night that allows visitors to comment on other tours. This way users can interact with the person who created the tour and the community.

Next on the agenda, is to create an official inauguration route as per the request of Vivek Kundra.  If anybody would like to help out, please contact me.

And finally, on the not too far horizon, we are planning on developing a location-aware mobile version of the app. That way visitors can retrieve their tours while they are on the actually tour and be provided with useful facts based on their location.

BOALT has no intention on monetizes this app at the moment, and welcomes any volunteers.

Disclaimer: Should the costs to maintain the website exceed our threshold in the near future we might be forced to find a way to monetize the app through sponsors, etc but the application will always remain free to visitors.

Mayor Fenty to the left of me.

I just got back from the mayor’s press conference which was held this morning.  BOALT is proud to announce that it won the agency 1st prize for its submission, DCHistoricTours.com.  This is a great accomplishment for us as we just opened our D.C. office 2 months ago.  It was an honor to shake Mayor’s Fenty’s hand and receive the award today!

I wan’t to thank Peter Corbett for all of his hard work and dedication in hosting the contest.  I also want to thank Sichon, Phil and Tim from BOALT for their time and effort over the past 2 weeks in building the application.

UPDATE: Thank you Justin Thorp for sending me your video.

Check out the video of the event:

Also, congrats to Travis Hurant, Tim Koelkebeck and Brian Sobel for winning the Indie 1st prize!