Recently, an elite team of Innova-ites hit the road for Big Omaha in our company mini-van. It was a journey westward to hear from some of the biggest names and innovators in social media and modern business culture. Here's what our team took away from the event...

ON INNOVATION...
Sean Conlin, Senior Interactive Media Designer: "First of all, that was the most iPads I have seen in a room – ever. But the part that I dug the most was Jason Fried from 37signals. He talked about how less is more – with design, functionality, proposals, etc. He mentioned that being lazy isn’t such a bad thing – it allows you to focus on the basics. It was also interesting to hear the history of Foursquare. It’s based on game mechanics, and is only about 10% done."

ON BRANDING...
Brian Weber, Senior Copywriter: "My biggest takeaway: Successful brands are maintained over time only when you align business values with branding. Otherwise you’re just faking it and customers will soon realize you’re not who you pretend to be."

James LeMosy, Interactive Media Designer: "The more transparent a company is with employees and customers, the better."

ON CUSTOMER SERVICE...
SC: "It's about scaling one-to-one relationships. Gary V. talked about this and Tony H. from Zappos hit on it too. Zappos prefers that a customer calls their call center when they need something. It builds a stronger relationship and better return customers."

JL: "You have to find ways to have scalable, one-to-one communication with customers, via Twitter, Facebook, email, phone, etc. It’s not what you sell, but how you sell it. The actual product isn’t as important as the customer experience."

SC: "Zappos has an interesting rule for their call center – 'be yourself' and basically use common sense. They don’t have scripts. They want their employees to talk to customers the way they would talk to anyone else."

ON EARNED MEDIA...
SC: "They talked a lot about how to get the 'buzz.' I hate that word and fortunately they didn’t really use it, but it’s what they were talking about. It goes back to the one-to one relationships. Word of mouth = earned media."

ON THE CONFERENCE ITSELF...
Dayne Corwin, Senior Designer: "After hearing the story of his beginnings as a pizza maker, Tony Hsieh illustrated his path to creating the customer service icon Zappos.com. From charity:water founder Scott Harrison’s tear-jerking presentation to foul-mouthed Gary Vaynerchuk’s energetic performance, Big Omaha kept the presentations interesting and lively."

Mollie Batten, Marketing Strategist: "My key takeaway is how motivated and moved all of the speakers have made me. I've never come away from a conference that excited. The last conference I was at was on a single topic, and I walked away from it even more confused and overwhelmed. Everything about Big Omaha was invigorating, from the venue to the speakers, even the amount of time each speaker had. Almost every presenter touched on something that I could relate to. It got me thinking about what things I could bring back to make some positive changes."

DC: "The format of the entire conference was refreshing. You didn’t need to choose one speaker over another, they were all in one room presenting in a consecutive format. The energy and inspiration that flowed in the Kaneko was astounding. It's great to be able to experience something so forward-thinking and innovative."