Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

9:00 Cameron has surfing down by the tent.
10:00 Breakfast first opens. An amazing crepe place, three blocks south of the hotel.

View Larger Map

You can arrive there up until 11:30.

Call me if you get out of step with the group!

Much Love,
dk

Meet in the hotel lobby for breakfast at 10:00.

Dress casual for a great breakfast.

If you are running late, just call me on my cell, and I will direct you!

Much Love,
dk

Whooooh. Are you kidding me? I am stoked about this.

Super Super curious to see who wins.

I saw he mentioned the contest we are working on for the event.

The lawyers are working on the rules of the contest right now. The full legal details will be posted on this site when we have it all worked out. But it is going to be amazing. All I can say is that the plan is that teams will compete for a significant prize at the end of the contest (assuming we get it so all the parts are perfectly legal).

I am unbelievably grateful for Jeremy (Shoemoney) for his contest.

We are honestly working to make this the event that people will be able to say it was the best event they have ever been to.

For my attendees, just make sure to let me know anything else you need to make this perfect for you.

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

(The $999 slots sold out. There are now a few at $1099,

Full Price is $2,499)

I am excited that you are reading about ThinkTank2008
It is me, dk, the guy who threw the poker tournament.

What you are about to read is going to rock!
ThinkTank 2008 will be in Del Mar California on September 26th, 27th, and 28th.
There will be no formal speakers, but just guys and gals getting together to help each other learn, grow, problem solve, network and succeed. (While hanging out by the pool, at the restaurants and bars, and by the beach!)
There will be great food and drinks, and a wayyy super casual atmosphere by the beach.

It is an invite only event, and the invites will be going out today. I really want quality, nice people at this thing who are willing to open up, network and help each other. We already have some top guys and gals signed up. If you did not get an invite, but feel you belong, just send me an e-mail letting me know who you are!

I apologize if anyone does not get the chance to register. There are a limited number of slots available. There are some very discounted slots available for the early signer-upers. Some people who know me found the site and already signed up.

The hotel is super nice, they just spent ba-jillions on its renovations.

The different locales of the event are a few minutes walk from each other, and they are all right near the beach.

Details about what the ThinkTank2008 is Here

Hotel info is here.

Info about getting invited and registering is here.

After you register for the Think Tank, then send me an e-mail and I will give you the most recent information on the hotel costs, and the best way at the time to reserve the room.

My e-mail is dk (the funny at sign) purposeinc.com

If you contact me, I may or may not be able to point you to a much, much lower rate.

This is going to be fun!

dk

Been a busy week.

Lot’s of issues to handle in the office.

A new assignment to write a press release.

A couple of crises to handle.

Then an e-mail arrives. Snuck up on me, it did.

One of the charities from the poker tournament at Pubcon was The Children’s Project School

They are orphaned begger street children whose lives consisted of thing so unthinkable that I wish it never even enters your dreams. They now get to live in a beautiful plantation in the jungle far from the city.

All of us who participated in the poker tournament kicked in a bit of money. This charity got their share.

By the way, from now on all of you are now Dr. Klein Uncle.

Here is the letter.

Dear Dr. Klein Uncle

Hello Uncle, how are you? Thank you for giving us the laptop and we like it very much. The webcam came with it and we had a lot of fun playing with it. We are writing newsletters, playing typing games and Harry Potter games which we love to play. Thank you for caring about us.

With all our love

Saritha,Ganga, Anitha, Aliveli,Anjinamma,Maheswari,Dhanamma,Anji

The students of 5^th standard writing class, Children’s Project Trust School.

Here is the photo. Click on it for the large one.