Dan Harbison resides in Portland, dreams of Scotland and lives here.

Jack is here!

Monday, March 26, 2007


That's right, a week ago at 5:38pm John Gary Harbison (aka Jack) was born at Good Samaritan Hospital here in Portland. He was born 8lbs and 21 inches. If he waited until his due date (March 28th) he would've been 9+ lbs. He has his own blog here. Plenty of pictures on the blog and some on Picasa.

Also, I will be speaking at the March meeting for the Portland Social Media club. Tim Germer saw me speak at SEMPDX and asked me to speak. Here are details:

March 27th
7pm - 9pm
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave
Portland, OR 97253
(503) 708-0851

Should be a really cool setting to talk with some of Portland's bright minds in blogs, podcasts, social networks and other social things, like drinking? Does karaoke qualify as social media? We'll talk about why we're using Web 2.0 at the Trail Blazers and how it is working for us. Hope to see you there.

Labels: , , ,

posted by DanHarbison at 10:04 PM 3 Comments

SEMpdx Search Fest '07

Monday, March 5, 2007


On Wednesday I will be speaking on a panel with other Web 2.0 enthusiasts at SEMpdx Search Fest 07. The panel will consist of:
Web 2.0 / RSS
Utilizing RSS Feeds as a Powerful SEO Tool
Doug Hay, Expansion+;
Janet Johnson; SnapNames;
John Anthony Hartman, Feedia;
Dan Harbison, Portland Trail Blazers;

I'm always excited to interact with other people who understand why Web 2.0 is exciting and share ideas on what we're all doing. I also get really excited to brainstorm on where we go from here.

One constant battle I see from Web 2.0 is the amount of crap that gets out in the internet. Now with Web 2.0, everyone has a voice and everyone has the ability to converse. My thought of Web 2.0 is to improve the knowledge that is out there. A collective brain is smarter than a singular one. You can have more rounded knowledge on a larger breadth of topics if you have multiple people who are experts in their own field. Where it breaks down is not having a "crap filter" on comments, or tags. Many times I have gone to someones MySpace page, looked at the first 5 comments and then bailed... instead getting carpal tunnel by wading through 200 comments and scrolling down to the bottom of their page. That is what I consider poor use of Web 2.0. Having all those comments didn't better my knowledge of who that person is, or help me decide if I want to be friends with them. A lot of the time it's for some DJ's party in St. Louis or someone's really bad hip-hop that they made in their mom's basement (DJ SharpTongue I'm looking in your direction...) Editing on Web 2.0 by authors and users is essential. Wikipedia does a great job of doing that. Allowing everyone to contribute, but if it's crap... out it goes.

I will post my presentation about Web 2.0 and what we're doing at the Trail Blazers after the panel on Wednesday. I recommend you check it out if you are interested in SEM. Here is a quick "3 questions" I did with their blog.

Labels: , ,

posted by DanHarbison at 5:41 PM 0 Comments

Review from Pat Coyle

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Check out this great Sports Marketing Blog from Pat Coyle (Director of Database Marketing & E Commerce for the Indianapolis Colts), shares the observations, research and results that will inform the Colts digital strategies.

He recently reviewed IAmATrailBlazersFan.com. He has some great insight as he is going through a similar adventure as we did with the Trail Blazers. The Colts have been working on a social network for some time now. I'm eager to see some of the features they roll out with. The name is My Colts Network

One thing that seems that they will be focusing on Colts Fans around the world. I think that's great to look outside of their normal geographic territory. One thing that the Colts have to their advantage is that their team has been performing well. That is something that you need to focus on... if you can't sell any more tickets, but still need to bring in revenue, you can A) sell more sponsorships B) sell merchandise. That is where I think focusing on a world wide marketing (especially after winning the Super Bowl) is so key for them. They'll sell out next season, but where can they go beyond that.



Mock-ups of mycolts.net



Labels: , ,

posted by DanHarbison at 8:42 PM 0 Comments

Toyota's Social Network

I live in Oregon. I walk to work sometimes (thankfully I live close enough). There is a problem with pollution (anyone see An Inconveniet Truth?)... so I'm seriously considering a hybrid for my next car. One drawback, and this is the superficial side of me coming into play, but the Prius is really not that attractive.

I'm not here to bag on the Prius... I wanted to talk about the social network that Toyota and multimedia firm Firstborn and ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi LA and Enjoy User Experience launched Toyota's Hybrid Owner Site.

It's a great place for people to showcase, in a stunning visual way, why they bought a hybrid. This is a great way for the Toyota customer to wave the flag on something they are passionate about and give the customer endorsement in an authentic way. This is stuff that brands thrive on. Kudos to everyone involved to bring social networking wrapped together to help the environment in such a stunning way... all in flash mind you.

Labels: , , ,

posted by DanHarbison at 9:02 AM 0 Comments

I Am A Trail Blazers Fan LAUNCHED!

That's right... after many many months... 8 months to be exact, we have finally gone public with IAmATrailBlazersFan.com. This is the first social networking site for a single sports team.

The NHL launched NHL Connect in late October. It is one social network for the full league. One reason I don't like it is it each team's brand is watered down to be more generic. I applaud them though for the feature set they rolled out with and being the first.

Our social network was developed by the guys at Affinity Circles in Mountain View, California. They had done social networks for university alumni associations (I found out about them when they did the "Duck Pond" for University of Oregon). We will continue to partner with them to help build this network into something really special for the fans. By no means is the site a finished product. When people become complacent on the web, their site will fail. You must always be evolving your site to make it more usable and more relevant.

Feel free to give IAmATrailBlazersFan.com a spin, even if you're not a Trail Blazers Fan. You will see the passion of the fans there, a pretty solid design (thanks to opus:creative and a unique website for the Portland Trail Blazers.

Labels: , , , , ,

posted by DanHarbison at 8:34 AM 0 Comments