Questions? Ask @Daniel Gerous on Twitter
Gangplank Book Club Starts Feb 1st.
We will be reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
At this event we will be doing a round table to discuss the book. Let’s share our love for learning!
You can purchase the book at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe for 20% off (paperback) or at Bookman’s.
Join the book club on Good Reads:
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/27169.Gangplank
Want to learn Objective-C for iPhone development? Now is your chance. We will be putting on a basic iPhone development class.
There is no charge, but you will be expected to participate. There will be a quick overview of Xcode and Objective-C and then we will go right into pair programming a sample application.
It is assumed you will know basics about programming.
This weekend we have a special Gangplank Jr event scheduled. We have teamed up with Phoenix Comicon to host a Comic Create event. Kids 5 to 15 show up and learn from the comic masters! Published comic illustrators/authors will be on site giving an overview on the process and techniques to make a comic book. Every kid will then go through the steps to create their own comic book. As a bonus this event will be at the new Gangplank location in downtown Chandler.
I collected over 20,000 comic books (and still have them) when I was a kid. I wanted to be a Stan Lee more than anything. I’m not sure I have ever given up that dream, but I hope to experience a little of it this weekend with my kids. Hopefully, you have similar fond memories and will be bringing your kid(s).
We have found ourselves in the press and in front of powerful people more than we are comfortable with lately. The first thing that people ask is “What is Gangplank”. Our problem has always been explaining it in a sentence or two without feeling like we are doing it a complete dis-service. We had been playing around with changing some branding, but ended up talking to Greg Head, of New Avenue, who has a bit of experience in positioning companies. It made sense to wrangle him in and ask him to help us regain our focus and tell our story.
We went through a great exercise with him. We started with trying fill out this template.
Target Market
- Metro Phoenix
- Knowledge Worker
- Creative Class
- New Economy
- Startup
Final: Innovative companies and creative people
Category
- Infrastructure Creator
- Creative Economy Catalyst
- Place
- Movement
Final: Collaborative Workspace
Unique Benefits
- New Economy Jobs/Companies Startups
- Infrastructure To Create
- People Who Can Help
- Fulfilling Work
Final: Infrastructure and community that creates the new economy
At this point we had hit the allotted two hours we set a side to start. We were all curious to see what we considered competition and we were on a roll, so we listed some competition, but we never came up with the final.
Competition
- Traditional Companies
- Social Media
- Lone Wolf Entrepreneurs
- Incubators
- Coworking
- Executive Suites
Final: Not yet defined
Additionally, we never got to talk about the Gangplank does… We hope to hit both these in the future. In the meantime, we came up with a pretty good focusing statement.
The most revealing thing to us and something that everyone else had clued in on better than us. Gangplank is indeed a PLACE at it’s very core.
We struggled a lot with the target market. Something that came up over and over in discussion was “people that get it” vs “people that don’t fit”. So we decided to break down what that meant as the discussion went on.
People That Get It
hungry, passion, encouraging, ethic, collaborate, participate, plugin, help, connect, cooperate, creative, social, the new way, inspired, tribe, community, danger, adventure, future-minded, non-traditional, post-industrial, un-machine, excellence, learn, share
People That Don’t Fit
bureaucrat, 9 to 5 mentality, ego too big, loner, not familiar with new ethic, secretive, greedy, old school
It is important to note that this is a work in progress.
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