And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor: ORBTR

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Kelly Tidd

Straight from the Ignite Denver community, ORBTR is the brainchild of Erik Wolf, who brought us the timeless presentation a few Ignites ago called “Is My Web Guy F#cking Me?” He’s come up with a marketing automation suite that makes sure you don’t get f#cked.

orbtr_wc_logo

It’s designed specifically to integrate with WordPress sites and does so with ease. ORBTR installs just like any other plugin and it’s easy to use since it’s WordPress based, so the organization and workflows are very familiar and the learning curve is minimal.

ORBTR is like a crystal ball for salespeople. It shows you exactly HOW your best prospects use your site by tracking their every page view and notifies you in real time via email when a hot prospect returns you your site. This helps you improve your follow-ups, close more deals and build intelligence that can be used to refine page content.

But wait, there’s more! ORBTR integrates with SalesForce, Highrise, Zoho, MailChimp, Gravity Forms and more within WordPress so you don’t have to go from one account to another. Easily handle business as you normally do, but in WordPress instead of another account and, voila! You’ve just covered all your bases, Holmes.

We’ve been using ORBTR for the last couple of months and we can dig it. You should check it out too. I mean, they offer a 14 day free trial and then after that, the rates are super affordable.

What have you got to lose? That’s right, nothing. Support an amazing local business run by one of our very own in the Ignite community.

Posted in Ignite Denver 14 | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Announcing the First Ever June-O-Ween at Ignite Denver 14!

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Kelly Tidd

I won’t lie. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love coming up with costume ideas (I plan them for months, actually), I love seeing other people’s costumes and I love candy corn, the official disgusting candy of Halloween.

The one thing I HATE about Halloween in Colorado is that it always manages to take place during the first cold snap of the year. So all these great costumes are covered by bulky North Face parkas or ladies in skimpy costumes look miserable rather than jovial as they freeze their little butts off in the cold.

Well, NOT ANYMORE! We here at Ignite Denver are changing the rules and we’re having Halloween in June (or June-O-Ween, if you will)!

June-O-Ween Ignite Denver

Someone please, pretty please, wear this costume.

That’s right; Ignite Denver 14 is going to be Halloween themed. Come decked out in your favorite costume and don’t worry about having to cover it up with bulky flesh-toned tights or a turtleneck underneath. Wear that costume the way it was meant to be worn: in dead sexy fashion.

Gorillas, ghouls, school girls or Tarzan. We want to see you in an outfit you’ve never worn to Ignite Denver before! We’ll be giving away prizes for best speaker costume, best audience costume and best group costume and local awesome photo booth company, Chipper Booth, will be there to capture your most ridiculous poses and memorial moments.

We have to give credit to the Denwhere? crew for helping to make Ignite Denver a June-O-Ween dream. If you haven’t heard of them, Denwhere? is an organization that recently formed in order to facilitate community, entrepreneurship, and education in Denver and Ignite Denver is their flagship event.

We’ve got a couple other surprises up our sleeves for June-O-Ween and Ignite Denver 14, so stay tuned for more awesome announcements.

Posted in Ignite Denver 14 | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Ignite Denver 14 Spark Submissions: Now with Extra Minty Flavor

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Kelly Tidd

minty-freshHopefully by now you’ve heard that spark submissions are open and you’ve already started thinking about the topic that you want to present to an audience of 400 (think of all the lives you’ll change). We encourage anyone and everyone to throw their name in the hat for presentation consideration but there are a few guidelines to consider before you commit mind, body and soul to Ignite Denver 14.

  • Be available June 13th. Yeah, it’s a no brainer, but please make sure that your schedule is open on the night of Ignite.
  • Attend one of two (or both, because the more run throughs you have, the better your presentation will be) mandatory run throughs on 5/27 and 6/10. If you don’t attend one of these, you will be removed from the lineup. Seriously. </hardass>
  • Be ready to rock some minds.

PLUS, this time around we’ve added Ignite Workshoppes (yes, they’re super artisan, hence the “e” at the end)! In order to help our community be better Igniteers, we’re developing a series of get togethers/round tables to help you or that “friend of yours” feel more comfortable with the Ignite process. None of it is mandatory, but our goal is to help you end up with a finished product that kicks more ass than an angry donkey in a pen with a lot of other donkeys or some other metaphor much better than that one.

Take a look at the schedule and see if any of them look interesting to you:

Creating the Perfect Pitch (April 29th): Learn what to do and what not to do when developing an idea for a spark and turning it into a pitch. What types of topics do well? What’s old hat?

Organizing Your Thoughts into a Presentation (May 6th): Tips for taking your idea and putting it into slide form. The best way to craft the “flow” of a presentation so that the information is actually accessible, meaningful and memorable.

Presenting to a Crowd (May 20th): A workshop focused on honing public speaking skills. Talk about common roadblocks and mishaps that occur during public speaking and offer solutions on overcoming the challenges.

First Run Through (May 27th): Go through first round of Ignite presentations. It’s mandatory that presenters attend this meeting or the following run through (June 10) in order to be able to present on the 14th.

Second Run Through (June 10): Same as above, but there is an opportunity for an additional run through for those that attended the first run through.

Even if you aren’t presenting on June 14th, we still welcome you to join in on any of these workshoppes. The topics we want to cover apply to a lot of other avenues besides just Ignite Denver (read: these are just plain good workplace skills to have), so anyone can come and learn. I mean, that’s what we’re all about, right? Learning.

All of the meetings will take place at Shift Workspaces, one of our awesome sponsors, at 6 pm on the dates listed above.

We hope to see you at one or all of them, or any interval in between one and all.

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