Last week at midnight I got a DM from good friend Jesse Lamb, “Hey can we chat soon? I’d love to catch up.” I replied back that he could call me/ Skype me anytime. He called moments later and told me a little bit about what they’d been working on at Dispatch.

In 2011, Dispatch won the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC Hackathon, graduated from TechStars NYC, and raised money. They were rapidly iterating to build Dispatch into something amazing. They were getting ready to start inviting some of the thousands of people who’d signed up for the beta.

He asked right away: “How do you feel about joining the Dispatch team in NYC?”

Robert Scoble said it was the coolest thing he’d seen in NY, and once I got a chance to see what the guys had been working on, I agreed! I love the cloud, I’m obsessed with productivity tools and efficiency, I’d even built a project management system centered around files before. They have a wicked cool office and I would be #7 to join the baller team. Jesse said things like “tackle unfamiliar problems”, “not need handholding”, “before roles can be crafted”…, “dive in immediately”… It’s official! I’m ecstatic to announce that……..

I’m moving to NYC 5/1(ish) to join Dispatch as Product Manager!

Dispatch gives you new ways to work on files with people. We bring together the services you already use – like Dropbox, e-mail, & Facebook — so you can easily share and communicate about the stuff you’re working on all in one place.

It’s in private beta right now, but if you’re interested in trying it out, let me know. Find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, AngelList.

If you’re in Tampa, hang out with me 4/28. If you’re in NYC, see you soon! Please help me figure out the city. I barely know the difference between Harlem and the Upper West Side.

Gotta run! I have to get rid of most of my stuff, pack the rest, sell my car, find a place to live… in a week! Much love, ya’ll!

Timeline:

For those of you who followed the original 4sqday, you’ll know a lot can happen in three weeks. This time, I’m going from zero to moved to NYC! Here’s how it went down:

• 4/12 (midnight): DM from Jesse.
• 4/18 (6am): Fly to NYC and work in the Dispatch office for the day.
• 4/19 (early): Offer Letter
• 4/19 (5pm): Fly back to Tampa
• 4/21 – 4/23: Visit family out of town.
• 4/23: Quick stop in Orlando.
• 4/24: Back in Tampa.
• 4/27: Finals over.
• 4/28: Going away party.
• 5/1-ish: Move to NYC.

Any last minute moving tips? Know anyone who wants a roommate? Must see places in NYC?

First things first: if you haven’t already, go read Getting Started with Pinterest for Your Business. It’s a guide to getting started.

Make the most of your pins

1. Pinterest is a visual site. Make sure you pin visually interesting things. High quality designs and high resolution images go a long way. Keep in mind that others may pin your products and posts even if you don’t, so always choose good images for your products and blog.
   
   
   

   Check out that fancy price!

2. Be mindful of URLs. Try to link to the original source of an image whenever possible. Link to the specific page where people can find the content, not just the website homepage.
3. Adding the price to a pin’s description will automatically add a handy ribbon onto the pin and add the pin to the “Gifts” category.
4. You can tag pins in their description by putting the # symbol in front of the word. They’re called hashtags and they work on Pinterest just like they do on Twitter.
5. You can tag other users on Pinterest in the description of a pin and in the comments just like you do on Facebook using the @ symbol.
6. Most of Pinterest is images, but there’s an entire videos section. Upload a couple of those, too.

Pinterest can breathe new life (and traffic) into old content

Here’s an example:

Back in November, Andi spoke at the Future of Web Design in NYC. She put together an amazingly gorgeous slidedeck, flew to New York and spoke, and then wrote a blog post about it. Where it’s been sitting getting minimal traffic for the last several months.

In five minutes, I scrolled through the slides, found a couple super compelling visuals, took a screen shot, uploaded it, added a description, a couple tags, a link to Andi, and a link back to the blog post she wrote. Ta da! Anyone who clicks on my awesome pin will be taken to the Big Sea site.

Promote your Pinterest presence

• Tweet, post on your Facebook fan page, maybe even write a blog post about joining Pinterest or when you have something interesting to share. Always (tastefully) use your networks to cross-promote one another.
• When you pin, periodically post your pin to Twitter and/or Facebook. Only sometimes, though. Don’t annoy your followers!
• Add a Pinterest “Follow” and/or “Pin It” button to your website or blog. We can help you do this, just ask!
• Want to know what’s already on Pinterest from your website? Replace YOURURL with your company’s website like this: http://pinterest.com/source/YOURURL
  For Big Sea, that’s: http://pinterest.com/source/bigseadesign.com

Collaboration, Crowdsourcing and Contests, oh my!

You can add collaborators to any of your boards. Play around with the idea of inviting your staff, strategic partners, celebrities or even a couple select clients to collaborate on a board with you. Social Media Examiner even suggests using Pinterest to collaborate with your team on office shopping lists.

Just like running a contest on Twitter, you can have people tag you or a hashtag around just about any theme. Depending on your product, one of the most effective might be asking fans to pin pictures of themselves with their favorite product of yours and tag you.

Want to do something with all that fantastic new content? You can repin all of it to a new board, and then maybe even embed the whole board into a blog post.

The concept of contests on Pinterest is still really new, but Lauren Drell recently made special mention of Lands’ End Canvas‘s “Pin It To Win It” campaign. Lands’ End asked users to create a Pin It To Win It pinboard, categorize it as Women’s Apparel or Men’s Apparel, and pin or repin 10 to 20 images from the Lands’ End site or Pinterest page. To enter to win a $250 gift card, all users had to do was email Lands’ End the URL of their pinboard. Some quick searching (and math) tells us that around 200 boards X ~15 images each means some 3,000 Land’s End product images were injected into the streams of thousands of people. Pretty cool!

What’d we miss? Got any hot tips?

You can follow me on Pinterest.

Just a couple weeks ago we were a bunch of strangers drinking in a bar in downtown Tampa. It’s incredible how much has happened in such a short time – we traveled across America, created four amazing startups, pitched to tech communities in different cities all over the south and most importantly, found 24 awesome and crazy new friends… all while on a bus.

Our 1,500+ mile trip to SXSW onboard StartupBus Florida was one heck of an adventure. The highlight of which was when BumperCrop won runner up at SXSW! With steep competition from 55 other teams from all over the US and Mexico, having a Florida company take the #2 spot was quite an honor!

Greg and I feel very lucky and proud to be part of this crew (which, in our humble opinions, is the most cohesive, chill and good-looking group of StartupBus 2012). All four of our teams are still working on their startups, and all have big plans! If you haven’t already, check them out below.

The four Florida teams:

BumperCrop

Grow your Own, Sell your Extra – A platform for connecting conscious consumers with passionate growers

At BumperCrop, we’re doing more than helping to grow local crops. We are growing communities. Promoting healthy lifestyles. And, providing the tools needed to build a local economy, and make it flourish.

http://www.bumpercrop.co / On Facebook: BumperCrop / On Twitter: @_BumperCrop

Give or Dare

Outrageous stunts by famous celebs with frenzied fans to raise money for great causes

Give or Dare is a social engagement platform that challenges celebrities to do outrageous stunts for their fans, creating viral entertainment that directly benefits worthy causes.

Give or Dare, a new Tampa-based startup, is tapping into human psyche behind outrageous stunts and competitive spirit to set the charity fundraising world ablaze!

Give or Dare is betting that your favorite sports personalities or tabloid celebrities will do outrageous dares for great causes and that you would be willing to pay (or donate) in make them do it.

http://giveordare.com / On Facebook: Give Or Dare / On Twitter: @giveordare

Invest Your Heart

A collaborative social change investment platform for people who realize what’s in your heart is just as valuable as what’s in your wallet – and for nonprofits who realize we’re all in this together.

InvestYourHeart creates an opportunity for heartful, conscious, intentional giving to causes you care about. Each time you invest, you’ll be invited to share what’s in your heart while you’re making the investment by creating a “heartspace”. These “heartspaces” will be visually displayed on the landing page, and contributors will be able to offer them as virtual gifts to friends and family by designating a contribution in their honor.

Instead of initiating separate, independent fundraising & social action campaigns for each project on the site, instead, we’ll mount themed campaigns in which like-minded nonprofits may participate as affiliates. By collaborating common campaigns, we can achieve critical mass that attracts more visibility and resources to all participating projects.

http://investyourheart.com / On Facebook: Invest Your Heart / On Twitter: @investyourheart

PopcornU

Your ticket to livingroom learning

PopcornU enhances your child’s viewing experience by adding creative problem solving engagements that align with the movie’s storyline. Learning experiences vary based on interests, reading skills, and targeted academic goals.

Our software incorporates synchronization technology that ‘listens’ to the movie, pausing playback at appropriate points to present your child with a challenge. PopcornU then gives positive feedback and reward points for each correct response, combining movies, fun, and learning!

http://popcornu.com / On Facebook: PopcornU / On Twitter: @Popcorn_U

Just some of the press about us:

– StartupBus pulling out of Tampa, filled with 30 locals who hope to pitch million dollar ideas – ABC Action News – 3/6 [Video]
– StartupBus launches from Tampa to compete at SXSW – Creative Loafing – 3/6
– StartupBus Florida: Notes from the Road – Creative Loafing – 3/11
– Startup Florida: Riding The Innovation Highway, Tampa Bay – 83 Degrees – 3/14
– Congratulations to StartupBus Florida! – TBTF – 3/16
– Bus trip to Austin bolsters startup culture in Tampa Bay – Tampa Bay Times – 3/18 [In Print]
– Catching the StartUpBus: Tampa’s StartupBus makes a strong showing at SXSWi. - Creative Loafing – 3/19

Join us tonight!

StartupBus Florida Demo Day & Post Bus Bash

Friday, March 23 at 6:30pm at The Roosevelt 2.0

Come out and see all four of our amazing teams demo what they’ve been working so hard on over the last couple weeks. There will be great art, live music, good food, cold drinks, and of course — plenty of fun for all who come out. Food trucks and a cash bar. How much more SXSW could it get?!

This event is in partnership with UT’s SEEC event: Self Employment In The Arts

Stay connected:

Follow our Buspreneurs Twitter list and all of the buspreneurs on it!

Follow @StartupBusFL and find us on Facebook.

Interested in being a part of next year? Sign up now!

Oodles of love,

Jessica Barnett (StartupBus FL Co-conductor) & Greg Ross-Munro (StartupBus FL Conductor)

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

If you’re marketing to women, especially women 25 – 45, you should be on Pinterest because:

• People are spending a ton of time on Pinterest.
• Pinterest is growing at an astounding rate and shows no signs of slowing.
• Pinterest primes people for sharing and shopping for the products they love.
• Pinterest generates more referral traffic than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Source: Internet Marketing Inc. (Click image for full Infographic.)

Getting Started Is Easy!

1. Get an invite. Tweet at me if you need one.
2. Sign up with your brand’s Twitter account.
   Notes: You can only sign up with a Facebook profile, not a Facebook fan page. There’s currently no distinction on Pinterest between people (like Facebook Profiles) and brands (like Facebook Pages) on Pinterest. If you are the face of your brand, you might want to sign up as yourself.
3. Choose your username. This is also your Pinterest URL. This should be the same one you’re using on your Facebook fan page and Twitter account.
4. Choose your email. People can find you from this email address, so choose wisely.
5. Choose your password. Pick a safe one that you can share with anyone in your organization you’d want to pin with you as your brand. (Like Twitter, there’s no way to allow multiple people to sign in except shared passwords.)
6. If you choose some topics, Pinterest will follow a few accounts for you.
7. Create some boards. Pick a couple to get started, you can edit these at any time.
8. Add the Pinterest button to your bookmarks bar.

Listen First

The best way to get started on any new social network is to sit back for a little while and listen.

1. Find your friends. If you’re using Gmail or Google Apps for your company email, authenticate and follow everyone it finds for you. (Don’t invite everyone, though. That’d be spammy.) You can repeat this as many times as you want for different email accounts. If I was creating a Big Sea Design account, I could find people on jessica @ bigseadesign.com, andi@, info@, etc.


Be sure to click along the top to see not only the pins, but also the boards and people for each term.

2. Follow more. Do some searches for:
   • Yourself and your website.
   • Your competitors.
   • Relevant keywords and phrases.
3. As you find relevant boards and people, follow them.

Get Pinning!

You’ve set up your profile and you’ve listened, now you’re ready to go. As you find relevant pins, start repinning. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet for a while, finding your own content to pin shouldn’t be too hard. Pinning and repinning couldn’t be easier. Just assign the pin to a board, add some descriptive text to go with it, and you’re done.

Pinterest Etiquette:

Remember, Pinterest is a social network. That means you have to be social. Get a lay of the land by seeing what the people you follow are pinning. Like their pins and comment on them liberally. Don’t blatantly self-promote. Only pin content that’s worthy and repin plenty of stuff from other people, too.

Pregame: Monday, March 5th

Pre-Launch Party

We held a fantastic pre-launch party at Taps in downtown Tampa thanks to @AbsoluteMobile. (We’ll be going back to Taps for our afterparty, too!)The Tampa Bay tech and startup community came out in full force to support for the buspreneurs.

Absolute Mobile Solutions has been helping organizations develop and execute mobile strategies for over twelve years. Their services include Mobile Strategy Consulting, Mobile Design, and Mobile Development.

Day 1: Tuesday, March 6th {Tampa -> Atlanta}

8am:

We were honored to have Tampa Mayor @BobBuckhorn come out and chat with us about our adventure. Reporters from Creative Loafing and camera crews from ABC Channel 10 News, WFLA Channel 8 News and CTTB News all came out to send us off from the Convention Center!

Morning:

Everyone introduced themselves to one another and pitched their ideas to one another. Almost everyone had one idea and  some had several! Our buspreneurs are all AWESOME! They have diverse talents and backgrounds. Most came from Tampa Bay, but we had some from all over. Sean Steinmarc (of team Give or Dare) flew all the way from New York, but Amanda Blain (of team PopcornU) came the farthest, all the way from Ontario, Canada!

Noonish:

We love connecting with startup communities along the way! Our first stop was the Florida Innovation Hub in Gainesville. They were kind enough to offer us lunch, a tour of their awesome incubator and a space for a couple hours. After the (now well-fed) buspreneurs heard everyone’s ideas, they chatted and divided themselves up into teams.

Afternoon:

We loaded back into the buses and the teams got to work! They brainstormed on names, hashed out functionality, markets, monetization strategies, strategic parters, branding and everything in between. The bus windows doubled as whiteboards and filled up with lists, diagrams and notes.They pounded away on their ideas for hundreds of miles. Some of the teams got all the way to wireframing and coding by the end of day 1!

Evening:

Our night in Atlanta was made possible by @MailChimp and the awesome Atlanta startup community! When we got to Atlanta, we met up with the local Atlanta Startup Drinks crew. They call themselves “a drinking group with a startup problem”. We were sold instantly! We had a fantastic time meeting, eating with and (of course) drinking with the @atlsuds) folks! Thanks for the warm welcome @RichardLeBer & co!

Later Evening:

Our teams arrived back at the hotel. Some worked through most of the night.

MailChimp is the easiest, prettiest, most fun way to build email newsletters. You can design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrate them with services you already use, and track your results. It’s like your own personal publishing platform.

Up Next:

Baton Rouge!

Follow along with our adventures with the hashtag #StartupBusFL, by following @StartupBusFL, by following the Buspreneurs Twitter list and by reading our rad blog posts.

More tomorrow! Mucho Love,
Jessica Barnett / @redheadjessica (StartupBusFL Co-Conductor)

Friendly reminder!

Mark your calendars — #4sqDay approacheth!

Two years ago, a group of passionate foursquare fans in Tampa Bay, Florida asked their mayor to officially declare April 16 (4/4^2; it’s delightfully nerdy) ‘foursquare day,’ and encouraged people in their community to check in to their local businesses on foursquare to celebrate.

Thanks to our amazing community, the holiday has exploded since then. Last year, there were over 1,000 meetups around the world, with 19 mayors declaring 4sqDay in their cities! With our 15,000,000-strong global community, this year promises to be even bigger!

Want to get involved? Do you like checking in, supporting your local businesses, and earning badges? There are a bunch of easy ways to be a part of foursquare day:

• Plan a meetup in your city
• Ask your mayor to proclaim it
• Claim your business and create a festive special
• Or just check in with your friends!

The pros on the community-powered 4sqDay blog can show you how it’s done.

There’s much more info on the way, so stay tuned. And in the meantime, check out meetup.com/foursquare to see what people in your city are doing for 4sqDay! (And if an event hasn’t been planned, set it up

Join us:

http://socialchats.net/

January 20th, 2012-Jessica Barnett

My Intentions for 2012

1. Better time management. Follow the schedules and to-do lists I make, but don’t use nearly enough. Say “no” more, prioritize better and spend less time browsing the wonders of the internets.
2. Write more. I’d be happy if I wrote about just about anything at this point as long as it’s more significant than emails, texts and Facebook updates.
3. Move quicker. Send the stupid email, don’t stare at it in Drafts for an hour. Get things out of “planning” and into “production” faster.

—> Read the rest of the team’s intentions over at the Big Sea’s Baitshop Blog