Nathan T. Wright, Andy Brudtkuhl, James Eliason, Karri Wells, Rich Drake, Andrew Roger and Hillary Brown will be presenting at Impromptu Studio for What I Learned at South by Southwest 2009. For those who were not able to attend SXSW you will get to hear about everything they learned.
Like most of our great events, there will be a keg of beer from Olde Main and snacks on hand donated by Technology Association of Iowa.
RSVP today, tickets are limited.
At Impromptu Studio we strive to do great things for and with the business and technology communities. It is awful nice to hear feedback and feel the support from our community in whatever medium. Today has been one of those days. To that end, we want to thank James Eliason, Founder of Twittad for making a donation to Impromptu Studio.
“Impromptu Studio not only provides a great work environment for shared office space in Des Moines, it provides a great spot for meetings and conferences. I highly recommend that all local Des Moines and surrounding businesses hop on and support the Studio!” – James Eliason, Founder and CEO of Twittad
We love being a part of the great things that are happening in Des Moines and hope to be a part of everything for a long time to come. So a big thanks goes to James and Twittad for their continued support in making Impromptu Studio a sustainable reality.
Tuesday March 24th Ben Stone of RPO Consulting hosted his ribbon cutting and a general celebration of his brand new company at Impromptu Studio.
Ben had a great crowd with lots of local business professionals, consultants and freelancers. Ben treated all to amazing food and beverages and the party lasted well into the evening.
We are so excited that Ben has decided to call Impromptu home and look forward to watching his business grow.
Doug Mitchell, of CreateWow Media and a member here at Impromptu Studio is hosting a private tax day launch party for their new website operationredstate.com. If you are interested for more information about the event check it out here.
Operation Red State is a membership based website that offers technology and new media training. Operation Red State was conceived by Doug Mitchell after noting a distinct gap of effective technology use between the parties in the last election.
Impromptu Studio will serve as their home for training, creating video, audio tutorials, and political tech boot camps that will be held this summer.
We’ve decided to offer 2 new membership plans here at Impromptu Studio. The first one is a daily membership card that is $75 for 5 days of coworking (the difference from our $50/5 day monthly plan being that these don’t expire) We’ve been working with Rich Drake of VR ID Cards and Tweetup Badges to make rechargeable QRID readable cards that allow us to track everyone digitally by scanning your membership cards. We are pretty excited about this new option and the awesome technology behind it.
Our second new membership plan is our “Partner in Business and Innovation” plan this plan is $550 a month and allows for a full time desk as well as priority scheduling for events and classes. We’ve always allowed members to throw events but have had to work out additional fees for those wanting to use our space to hold a class which they charged admission for. Now with this plan everything is included in one price. We will also be recognizing our “Partners in Innovation” members with an additional “plaque” so that others who work here or stop by realize that they are doing a large part toward making Impromptu a sustainable reality.
If you want to inquire about either of these plans please contact us at info@impromptustudio.com or on twitter @impromptustudio
Mike Wagner of The White Rabbit Group and Mike Ferrari of SmartyPig were our speakers for the final installment of the WhatNow? lunch and learn series. And they certainly did a fantastic job of wrapping things up for us. Mike Ferrari reminded us “you’ll be surprised what you can do yourself” and Mike Wagner emphasized that “Advertising is the price you pay for being UN-remarkable”. Ferrari told us about how he sets aside a few hours everyday to monitor SmartyPig’s online presence. He told us a story about how a small “snafu” early on made him wonder if it was all over before it started but by handling the mess and responding to EVERYONE in a matter of days (from a Friday to a Monday which is unheard of for “banker hours”) they wiped the egg from their face and emerged a more credible and trusted company. Wagner spoke heavily on the relationship with clients affecting a companies marketing strategy and how it fails when the client is no longer in love with their customers.
We want to extend a big Thank You to Nathan Wright of Lava Row and Andy Brudtkuhl of 48Web for planning speakers and hosting the WhatNow? A six part entrepreneur survival guide. We may provide the space to do great things but our wonderful community of businesses and friends make these great things happen.
Wednesday March 25th, Impromptu Studio held a town hall meeting inviting the community to join our discussion about the future of Impromptu Studio.
Andy Brudtkuhl, 48Web and Doug Mitchell, CreateWow media talked about how they use the space, their current projects, and the opportunities that have been presented to them by working from Impromptu Studio.
Nathan Wright, Lava Row, spoke a little bit about SXSW and announced that he and several others that attended SXSW will be putting on a presentation to share with us all the fantastic new things he learned while there. He also talked a little about the WhatNow? Lunch and Learns that he and Andy Brudtkuhl have been putting on and how nice it is that we are around to use as a location for all of the cool events and presentations that he has been able to put on.
Dan also wanted to show that we are not the only space in the area that is around trying to make Central Iowa a better place. So we had Brian Anderson of Ames CoLab speak to us a little about the coworking space that they are opening in Ames and how we plan to work together to offer member reciprocity for both spaces. Scott Kubie of Market Street Media Foundry also got up and spoke about their new space which specifically caters more to Artists and and creative media fields.
Dan announced a few of Impromptu Studio’s membership goals and a membership drive, which he asked the community to help us with. With those goal Dan announced an event series that he would like to get started entitled cultivate:dsm which as we meet our goals we will begin implementing.
We will be talking more about these items in separate blog posts to cover them more in depth. We hope everyone who attended our town hall had a great time. There are some great things happening at Impromptu Studio we want all of you to be a part of it. Stay Tuned . . . .
Brett Trout and Adam Steen speaking at What Now?
Brett Trout , Law Offices of Brett Trout and Adam Steen , 25 Connections spoke about Character in Business and how to not be an @$$hole for part 5 of our WhatNow? Series. Brett gave the group solid advice about developing their own moral “code” by watching others. He pointed out that just because something is “legal” does not necessarily make it ethical and that each person will have to decide for him/herself what is right. He also reminded us that ethical people struggle early on because ethical decisions often don’t yeild positive results quickly. Brett encouraged us by sharing that in 5 years the tables will turn and those that have behaved ethically will have a much better overall position. Adam Steen discussed how in his unique business model relies on trust to work, and that ethically his entire business is gray area because there are few if any precedents. He talked about several specific ethical decisions that he has been faced with and how he’s handled them.
Adam and Brett related their ethical decisions to how quickly with recent technologies unethical people are “outed” as opposed to how long it used to take with traditional means of communication.
Don’t miss our final installment of WhatNow? Friday April 3rd , our topic is Marketing: How to get Creative in a Tight Economy. Our speakers Mike Ferrari, SmartyPig.com and Mike Wagner, White Rabbit Group.
Our big Townhall meeting is just two days away! If you haven’t figured out what our meeting will be about, look no further.
The Townhall meeting is aimed at three types of people and part of the meeting will address each:
The Townhall is a meeting where you can bring your questions and suggestions about coworking or Impromptu Studio. This is an open invitation to shape the way Des Moines works!
For those that are curious about who you might see at the Townhall…. some of the speakers that will be either talking about coworking, Impromptu Studio, or making an announcement include:
We hope to see you there! During the Townhall meeting we will also be collecting video testimonials in our green screen room.
If you like, RSVP on Upcoming.
View of Downtown from Impromptu Studio
Impromptu Studio is asking those out there that support us and our mission to come out be a part of our Town Hall style meeting and discussion Wednesday, March 25th at 7pm. Initially we are organizing a community driven marketing committee headed up by Holly Eggleston and Andy Drish that will need volunteers to help with their goals and ideas. A main component of this will be a membership drive. We will also be announcing our next big event and giving you a sneak peek of Impromptu Studio 2.0.
If you are interested in volunteering to help Impromptu Studio continue on its mission then please come out Wednesday March 25th at 7pm to our space and see if there’s anything that you can help us with.
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