Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

Jon Kelly and I put together something pretty radical for the Think Tank.

I know folks at Internet business events come because they want to connect and have fun. They usually learn more from each other than they do from speakers. That’s why I had this event in the first place. No Speakers!

What better way to get to know your fellow attendees, than by throwing each other around?

This is actually going to be very safe and controlled, because Shawn Tompkins is considered by many in the know to be the greatest fight trainer alive. Randy Couture, the five time world champion in Mixed Martial Arts (Ultimate Fighting), uses Shawn as his trainer. Shawn also trains many of the other top competitive martial artists in the world, and has been the coach of many world champions.

Shawn is probably the top professional fight trainer in the world, and SureHits is paying for him to train us. Jon is really into athletics and wanted to help me pull this off. For those who don’t know, SureHits is an affiliate company that gives webmasters like us adds to run on our sites to get our users to insurance and mortgage companies. Both Jon, and his company SureHits have an amazingly good reputation in this industry as an affiliate company to work with.

I know most of internet business guys are pretty out of shape, although some of the Think Tankers are quite good athletes, Jon Kelly included. I love martial arts, studied a little in the past, and am really looking forward to Shawn Training us.

I am going out to Vegas next week for Defcon, anyone else going? and will stop by the Couture gym to meet up with a few people, and possibly train.

Shawn will be going over practical methods of self defense that are actually usable for beginners, and if we have any experts in our crowd, Shawn will customize a bit of training for them personally.

I know from my own experiences as a professional skimboarder and expert swim coach, that often you can correct a certain guy on one thing, and then suddenly their ability increases dramatically.

Shawn is also an amazingly great guy. When Jeremy Schoemaker first hooked me up with the Couture camp, I expected them to be a bunch of arrogant tough guys. In reality they are a bunch of the warmest sweetest people I have ever met, no kidding! They do change a bit when they get in the ring! Ha Ha!

We had a blast today at Comic Con. Lived in San Diego almost 20 years, and have never gone. As many of you know, I use a lot of cartoons in my marketing so this was right up my alley.

Most of it was focused on Space Aliens and super heroes.

In a place like this, you have to keep an eye on your hot wife, since everyone else is too.

Jo enjoyed it a lot too.

You get to run into lots of random cartoon characters brought to life,

But also random uber-hot undead cheerleaders.

One of the main reasons i went there was to find Dean Yeagle, famous Playboy cartoonist for a project that we are working on.

Initially, the only Playboy cartoonist we could find was Doug Sneyd, who has been cartooning for playboy magazines for around 40 years!

Ya gotta love his work!

He was nice enough to do a little sketch of Jo.

He was amazingly full of the joy of life! Can you imagine 40 years of taking the hottest girls in the world, and having to carefully study them and turn them into cartoons?

Then I found Dean. He is famous for his cartoon Mandy. Dean told me that until the head brass made them take her down, she was painted on many vehicles and planes in Iraq. You can see Mandy in the background with the blonde hair. The drawing I am holding is the girl that the poker tournament graphic will be based on this year. Dean is going to make us something very special!

Here is the new poker girl in closeup from a print we got to hang at home.

Here is another drawing that is also going up.

Dean’s works have all been copyrighted, so please don’t copy these images.

They have a wonderful place called Artists Alley. You can find amazing artists, many of whom have not become fully appreciated yet, meaning their work is very affordable.

Because of the small format, a lot of these sites don’t do justice to the artists.

Alain Viesca  does lots of women, and fantasy stuff. It is just breathtaking to see these in large format prints.

Stephen Silver is much more polished at promoting himself, and has had good commercial success. He has some great characters. He also keeps a blog of his cartoon work.

Molly is from Santa Barbara and does really light fun characters.  You can even buy these high fashion t-shirts with her characters on them.

There was a fascinating guy by the name of Todd Klein, not a relation that I know of, who does lettering for comic books and has for decades. One never thinks about it until you sit there and look at his work. In a world of fonts it is amazing to see someone who creates fonts from his mind, and does these amazing hand written styles of lettering.

One of our final places we stopped at was the booth of Travis Hanson. The first thing you notice about Travis is himself. He just glows. You can tell from the second you talk to him that he is a hard working, friendly, good guy. In a place like Comic Con, the majority of the work involved demons and devils, and the lighter funner work was naked women. Travis does incredibly detailed works that focus on the creativity and inspiration that live inside of us. Looking at his work just makes one happy!

Wordcamp San Francisco registration just opened!

Don’t get confused, this site you are on is about The ThinkTank in Del Mar in September, but this post is about WordCamp San Francisco.

Word Camp rocks!!!

Word Camp is a wayyy super casual event for Word Press users.

Where else can you hang out with Matt Cutts for a half hour eating lunch, and only two or three other people in the room even know who he is! (Sorry Matt if you are going this year!)

(Matt said no one ever noticed him in public. I wonder when that will change )

A huge percentage of us run our sites, and or our blogs off of WordPress.

At Word Camp you have unbelievable access to Matt Mullenweg,

lead founder and developer of Word Camp.

You also can chat with Donncha (you never respond to my e-mails! ),

an amazing guy in person, who also is one of the founding developers, as well as the rest of the technical crew.

Matt has put together a group of the absolute nicest, goodest (yes I know not really a word) , and most brilliant people and I predict they will all be there!

The cost to get in is a staggering $20, and I predict it will include lunch. The San Fran version of Word Camp is where Matt Mullenweg lives, and many cool Internet folks also live.

Last year they had a page that linked to everyone who signed up, which is where I got the idea to do that for the poker tournament, and the ThinkTank.

Last year we had everyone from Matt Cutts to a guy who was thinking about maybe getting a website soon, as well as a cast of about 200 others.

It will be the weekend before SES San Jose, and I highly recommend it!

If nothing else you can come, find me, and we can do something fun while other people are speaking!

I’m a little worried because this year it sounds like it is going to be in a nice place. But I am sure with the surely wordpress crowd, the place will feel like home in no time!

Go To Wordcamp!

By the way, if you are wondering what the ThinkTank is, you can read about it here.

If you are looking for something cryptic and angry, go here.

dk