It was a fun and relaxed presentation, and we found the Capital Factory participants to be full of courage, energy and good ideas. These folks are hungry and ready to make a difference.

Here’s the presentation for your review:

Please check out The Capital Factory start ups – you’ll soon be hearing more from these folks:

Cubit Planning
Sparefoot
Hourville
PetsMD

Well that’s Adomatica, a staple in the Austin (and national ad scene). He’s never ripped us before, but I felt obliged to stand up for our fellow ad men and women and give him a bit of the business.

Or he’s a good friend and super-smart online marketer who writes a snarky and helpful blog in his spare time. Grab the Adomatica RSS feed, it’s worth your attention. Unlike the GSD&M / McGarrah Jesse Austin Addy Awards.

Special image thanks to The Foto Booth – a great group to hire for your events.

If you live in the live music capital of the world, you may have seen these OOH and Banner ads:

A couple people we polled wondered if the Dallas Stars were moving to the ATX – keeping the same name as the NHL team will lead to that confusion. But this is an all new AHL team – the “farm” system for the big boys.

We immediately wondered about the campaign – who are they trying to attract – the rock concert crowd?  They do mix with true hockey fans – after all, we’re fans of both.

But would it be better to appeal to the people who love hockey, first? Generate a buzz with die hard fans of the sport by showing players scoring or blocking shots? Or even have the stick blade point in the same direction for the ads? (hockey fans/players notice these things)

Either way, glad The Texas Stars are coming to town. We might have to get some corporate seats (and maybe even make an appeal to the marketing director).

The results were great – 20 cyclists donated and a few spectators brought food just for the heck of it. We’re humbled by the generosity of the cyclists at the Dirt Derby – there’s enough there to fill a small shopping cart.

There’s still time to get on the pick-up list for Saturday’s donation run. We’re riding – with Adomatica and a few other cyclists – from North Austin to South and picking up scheduled food donations as we make our way to the HAMup TweetUP. All you need to do is email HAMup@stalelife.com and give us your address. We’ll show up and collect the food from your porch or your person.

The more food there is, the more people we can feed. And with news of Ike heading toward the Texas coast, the Capital Area Food Bank will use all the food it gets. They provide immediate disaster relief for gulf-coast hurricanes (amongst other things).

Please consider donating.

Yeah, neither did we. That is until some of our friends on Twitter started chatting about it. Next thing you know, the local community is rallying around this great cause and supporting the Capital Area Food Bank with the HAMup TweetUP. Immediately we thought, “how can we help this social event, but with our own spin?”

A coffee’s worth of brainstorming
with Robert Gilbreath of Adomatica and several ideas rose to the top. But none stuck out as much as picking up donations on September 13th and transporting them via bicycle straight to the CAFB. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to donate if you can’t make the event yourself.

There are plenty of ways you can help feed the hungry. Here are just a few:

• Collect donations in your office, church, school or social events
• Spread the word about Hunger Action Month – here are some examples of avatars people have created for their social networking sites
• Take a “Hunger is unacceptable” image and upload it here. Then share it with your friends.
• Volunteer your time at the HAMup TweetUP on 09.13
• Attend the HAMup GrillUP Happy Hour dinner at Whole Foods on 09.11
• Grab your bike and join us on 09.13 as we take a slow stroll from North Austin to South, picking up food goods along the way

If you can’t make the HAMup TweetUP – but you know that you’ll shop for groceries this week or next – let us bring some of these needed items on your behalf. We will even pick up checks made out to the CAFB.

To schedule a pickup, please email us at HAMup@stalelife.com.

Our convoy will leave from Burnet and Justin area and pick up any donation (and riders) between the highways all the way down to CAFB. If you live East of I35 or West of MOPAC and can collect in your area and join us, that would be great.

Let’s feed even more people this year while laying down less of a carbon footprint! You can make a difference in the lives of hungry Central Texans, so please consider helping out.

The biggest requirement was the ability to modify the website in a second’s notice, so we recommended a super blog, if you will. It has multiple URLs landing into one design, with three tabbed sections and 14 subpages.

It’s complex and the taxonomy was a great challenge to figure out with the group that is still trying to figure out everything that they do. Seems like Andrew Stackhouse, bike promoter extraordinaire, is always coming up with new ideas for cycling races in central ATX.

In the past Andrew’s team has posted lengthy reviews and notices, so we used a white content channel to ensure readability was kept to high level. The black border provides a nice contrast and also helps Glennon Simmons photos pop more on the page (he’s got a great eye, that guy).

Head out to the Dirt Derby – you’ll see us in our Stalelife kits every Tuesday. And at the Lone Star Cyclocross events, too.

Instead it’s professionals gathering, discussing and sharing ideas and values with others who do the same thing. It’s the ultimate social tool for business folks, and we’re into it.

Stalelife is definitely going to participate, and we might even lead a make-shift session. After all, if you don’t cultivate this Good Samaritan-ism for Business 2.0, it’ll likely go away.

Topics for this ProductCamp are marketing and project management. Should be good. If you’re in Austin, we hope to see you there.

Look for a couple handsome fellas with a video camera in one hand and a beverage in the other.

On a serious note, we plan to interview our favorite session leaders and some industry insiders. When we see something we think will interest you, our clients and readers, we’ll be posting it.

More to come – the Fest starts Saturday.

It may seem like fun and games but we’ll be attending seminars, panel discussions and meeting with the brightest minds online. This year, we will be binging you daily posts from the festival and video interviews with speakers and attendees to share with you the latest findings and trends of the online world.

For this special Friday Factoid post, we’d like so show you a little tidbit that we found in this months issue of Fast Company about the SXSW festival through the years.

If you or someone you know will be attending the festival, we’d love to meet up. Please drop us a line so that we can set a date and time.

But Sunday’s coverage of the marathon was spotty at best. Watching the male leaders tear through the course on TV, you could barely make out shapes, and the cameraman was often looking at the ground.

Best of all, the announcers (we’re not talking Joe Buck and Troy Aikman here) were extra critical of the connection. It seems that the video is transmitted via broadband, likely the same service that is a HUGE part of AT&T’s core business.

After the twentieth apology about the connection, we got the feeling that the AT&T person in charge of the event should have done some better pre-race testing. After all, if they can carry race coverage through the mountains of France, they should be able to do it on the streets of Austin.

And they may want to consider announcers who are not critical (albeit indirect) of the sponsor. Because now most people think AT&T offers spotty broadband.