Memorial Day has come and gone, Father's Day is just around the corner and the mailbox is full of graduation announcements. That can only mean one thing - summertime is coming! It's time to begin planning your vacations and deciding on a few leisure activities you'll enjoy in the warmer weather. We hang loose year-round in Hawaii, but we work hard, too. The longer days of summer will give us a few extra hours to squeeze some fun into each day. When I introduced myself to you as a guest blogger for Izea I promised I'd try to show you a little of how we live in Hawaii. Here are some of the things we'll be doing this summer.

Getting wet. With or without a surfboard, we love to cool down by the ocean.

Trying new foods.   Excellent Polynesian and Asian cuisine at fast food prices - what's not to love?

Getting wet Oh, did I mention that already?

Catching our own dinner. My little community started out as a fishing village a few hundred years back. Sustenance fishing is still a way of life. There's always an expert around to help me improve my skills. I mostly catch bait.

Exploring the deep blue. Wonder if I can still get my expanding backside into my wetsuit?

Ordinary things. Kite-flying is pretty popular here. Must have something to do with the trade winds.

Hanging with the gang. Sometimes just being with friends is the best activity of all.

Soaking up some culture. There are festivals most weekends during the summer that celebrate the many cultures that are a part of our local population.

Spending quality time with loved ones. You'll make some time for that this summer too, won't you?

You don't have to live in paradise to enjoy your time off, but it helps. I hope you'll find some great ways to relax this summer, and that maybe some of you will be coming here to visit. I'd love to meet up with you for a cup of coffee. Yeah, we do that here, too. Kona dark roast for me, please! 

Posted by skeet at 09:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Today's monthly get together was mucho loco!  Just the way we like it....  The food was yummy.  The cakeplows were messy.  There was even a hot-dog-eating contest, from which a couple of photos must be featured:

You can find more photos in the slide show featured below. Post-lunch and the hot-dog gluttony, the teammember with the most "creative" spirit was given the honor of playing a little Disney trivia, and won a couple of games.  Today's winner:  Andrew (aka, "Wonder Woman").  With a little help from Magical Trevor (and Veronique -- shhhh) he some Disney games!  Moving on to our "of the month" winners:

Advertiser of the Month:
Spark Communications.  This is the Advertiser who brought you the cool "Burn Notice" Opportunity last May, and is currently running the "In Plain Sight" campaign.  We know you Posties love campaigns like this, so help us congratulate Spark Communications on their win!

Postie of the Month:
Karen Moser.  Karen has actually been with the IZEA family for quite some time, and even lent her experience and insight as a blogger and a Postie when she participated on the "Fab Four" panel at PostieCon last year.  Karen certainly deserves this recognition, and we appreciate her continued support.  Karen's blogs can be found at:

- http://www.chatbugkaren.com/myroad
- http://karensopinion.com/
- http://www.chatbugkaren.com/
- http://www.xanga.com/Karen_S

RockStar of the Month:
Travis Andrews.  Unless you've met Travis or are an avid follower of the award-winning RockStartUp series, you may not recognize Travis.  That's because he's typically behind the camera, filming and producing the web documentary.  This recognition is well-deserved.

Congratulations to our May winners!

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So that's IZEA Loco.  Think you can handle it...along with working on the IZEA Team?  Visit the "Careers" tab at IZEA.com to check-out current openings or submit your resume.

Posted by Ashley at 04:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

We noticed that some of you mentioned changing your stats in last night's Town Hall. So, we just wanted to take a quick second and show you how to change your stats from private to public (or vice versa) in SocialSpark.

The first thing you need to do is log in to your IzeaRanks account at http://www.izearanks.com/

Next, you need to click on "account". Once you have done this you will notice that in the "my sites" section you will see the URL's of all your blogs listed. Next to your URL will be a small box under the word "public".

Check this box and click "refresh all". This is all you need to do and within 48 your SocialSpark account should begin to start showing your stats publicly. Enjoy!!!

Posted by Annie Kabourek at 03:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

It's Friday.  It's Loco.  We're ready to celebrate!

If you can spare the time we'd love to meet-up with you today for May's IZEA Loco.  Starting at 11:30am (EST) we'll gather together to share some good food, acknowledge fabulous Advertisers and Posties ("Advertiser of the Month" and "Postie of the Month) as well as reveal the IZEA "Rockstar of the Month."  And this month we'll be having a special trivia challenge with those who are joining us via live chat.  Simply visit http://stickam.com/rockstartup for your chance to be selected.

To catch-up on the fun from past IZEA Locos visit our Flickr profile.

Posted by Ashley at 10:51 AM in Company Events | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Sorry for the short notice of the final details, but I'm happy to confirm that the Townhall meeting tonight is set to go ahead.

Point your browsers at breeze.mindcomet.net/izea at or before 7pm Eastern to join in the fun. We look forward to seeing you there :)

 

 

Posted by Peter Wright at 06:36 PM in Advertisers , Customer Love , Posties , Town Hall | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The long awaited PostieCon episode is here!

The Day of Reckoning:
After months of planning and a large investment of time and money, its time for PostieCon.  The team hurries to set up before people arrive while Pete and Ted scramble to fix an oversight for their first public demo of SocialSpark.

Bonus!  Here is a new Izea Confessional!  Karen has some big news to share!

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, business, company, documentary, entrepreneur, internet, izea, marketing, money, orlando, payperpost, people, programming, reality tv, rockstartup, sales, social office, socialspark, startup, technology, ted murphy, venture capital, web 2.0

Posted by Travis Andrews at 02:39 PM in RockStartUp | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Can you drive mad traffic? If so you may very well wind up with a cool $250 in your pocket at the end of this month. Here’s the dealio. The blogger profile with the most profile views according to their SocialSpark profile page at midnight May 31 will get a cool $250 cash. Not bad eh? Good luck to you all, I hope that traffic drive mores Opps for everyone.

Posted by tedmurphy at 01:29 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

So there I was, minding my own business, making proposals for the Sales team, when Dan gets a package in the mail- a big brown box.  When he opened it, I was floored!  Boardgames!  Awhile ago, I completed a proposal for Screenlife Games, makers of the popular SceneIt! DVD games, and others.  They'd sent Dan Banzai, the Disney DVD Bingo game, and SceneIt! Second Edition.  I LOVE our Advertisers!

Allow me to explain my love for boardgames- I started collecting them in high school, finding them at garage and estate s ales.  By the way, if you ever feel awkward and weird at a garage sale and want to leave, just ask if they have boardgames or picture frames- they never do.  Then you can leave without feeling guilty for not buying something.

Anyway, I love boardgames so much, that I am constantly on the search for them.  So much so, that the success of my personal vacations is measured by the number and quality of the boardgames I acquire, such as this modern version of The Ungame I found.  For example, here I am in North Carolina...and here are some I bought in Seattle.  In fact, in Seattle, I hit a bonanza- I had to buy a suitcase, too; so that I could take them back with me- and if you read my travel blog, you know I don't check baggage, this was a big deal!

To give you a visual of my obsession, here are a few pictures of my house:

Long story short- I was super excited to see these boardgames come into the office and they are awesome boardgames, too!  Hae you ever seen the Japanese TV show, Banzai?  If you watch G4 and love Ninja Warrior and other wacky videos of Japanese game shows- this game is for you.  For serious.  The Disney DVD Bingo game looks neat, too.  I've never played it, but I love Disney movies and can't think of a better way to get my Bingo on.  Anyway, I was just so psyched over these boardgames, I thought I'd share.  Anybody own any cool boardgames? 

Posted by Veronique Conus at 10:27 AM in Posties | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

I am pleased to announce another town hall meeting this Thursday at 8pm EST 7pm EST. Join me to discuss anything and everything on your mind (keep it clean Mr. Fab). I look forward to hearing from you, more details to follow.

UPDATE : You may have noticed the time change above. I forgot about LOST (thanks benspark.com) . You all can chat in a separate area about LOST while you are waiting for me to answer questions : )

Posted by tedmurphy at 09:19 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

We held in event this past Wednesday in Chicago called Agency Bootcamp on Social Media. IZEA partnered with some of the social media heavy weights MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and CafeMom. The event was designed to be an educational forum to inform advertising agency planners, buyers and strategists, and marketers on how to effectively market, engage, start conversations about brands, products and services. We had 191 people register for the event online and had a turnout of around 120.
The feedback from the partners and attendees was the Agency Bootcamp was a
huge success!

View here the Chicago Tribune article!

We are currently in the process of planning this event in other key markets like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Michael Brito Social Media Manger of Intel was the moderator and the panelists included our own Ted Murphy, Tom Arrix, Facebook, Bryce Emo, MySpace, Kent Austermann, Bebo and Andrew Shue CafeMom. You may recall that Andrew played Billie on Melrose Place and his sister is Elizabeth Shue known for her roles in Leaving Las Vegas and Back to the Future.

Below are some photos from Agency Bootcamp.

View of the panel far in the back.

Andrew Shue of Cafemom & Kent Austermann of Bebo.




View of the attendees at the event.

Posted by Britt at 11:50 AM in Advertisers , Company Events , Conferences & Tradeshows , Media , Networking , Social Media | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)