August 28, 2008
The summer of 2008 was a wild one to say the least. How can you not argue that? The iPhone 3G was released, the presidential campaign went into full force, and TMP underwent a transformation. Another big adventure? TMP’s trip to Austin and StartupCampAustin.
StartupCamp, for those who don’t know, is all about gaining tips on how to make your startup better, whether it is already existing or is still in the planning stages. It is a new concept, but just branched off of the existing Barcamp premise which is already extremely successful and popular.
StartupCampAustin was held August 2nd at the University of Texas - Austin Campus, an absolutely beautiful campus for a first-timer (me). It started around 1:00PM and featured seven sessions spread between two rooms. You were free to come and go in between sessions as you’d like. You were also encouraged to participate as there was no defined speech to give by one certain person; it was all about audience participation.
The last session of the day was the “Pitches” session, where you would go up and give your pitch about your company (again, existing or not) and let the audience have a chance to ask questions if they had any. The catch? You only had three minutes to present.
Well, to say the least, we had a very good response to TMP. We had many people come up, chat with us, and say how great the idea was.
After all the pitches were given, you were to vote on which one you liked the best. In a very close race, TMP was chosen as the best pitch of the entire session.
The prize for the best pitch was a 15-day pass to Conjunctured, a coworking space in Austin where members can just hang out and collaborate with others on projects. In addition to the 15-day pass, Matt and I won attendance prizes. Matt received a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and I received a copy of Office:Mac 2008. Once again, we gained more connections by meeting Philip Wheat of Microsoft (pictured below) who was the one that donated the Microsoft prizes, and we cannot thank him enough.
Two hours and two miles of Austin streets roamed (in addition to dinner), we arrived at Conjunctured for the after-party. Lots of networking happened and we met even more people who weren’t at StartupCampAustin, but were at Conjunctured for the remote-section of iPhoneDevCamp. Talk of the day’s events and also future events went on and even continuing on how to further ourselves in the area.
All in all, the trip was one well worth it. It was a shame that the next day I had to fly back to Illinois as I would have loved to stay in Austin more.
Before we wrap the post up, we’d like to thank a few folks. First off would be Brandon Wiley for organizing StartupCampAustin and making it run smoothly. Next, John Erik Metcalf of Conjunctured for the prize of the 15-day passes.
Personally, I would like to thank Jennifer Navarrete for just chatting and giving knowledge and, once again, Philip Wheat of Microsoft for the prize donations. We met many others, but the list would be absolutely huge if we listed, so a big thanks to all who made us feel welcome and contributed to our blast of a trip.
We hope to see you all again soon! (SXSW perhaps?)
–Zach Flauaus
Filed by Zach Flauaus at August 28th, 2008 under Events
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July 4, 2008
You may have noticed our main website has been replaced by a splash screen. That’s because TMP is in the middle of designing and deploying our brand new site. This new website will make it easier to promote our members’ quality content; In addition, the site will also be a ton more organized and a bit more automated (but maintaining our personal touch). It will also bring several big changes to TMP that will mean bigger opportunities to our members. However, we will start mentioning those as the new site is launched. We hope you enjoy the preview. Feel free to click the image for a closer look.
Filed by Matt Pippen at July 4th, 2008 under Announcements, TMP Website
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June 13, 2008
As many of you already know, TMP has been offering affordable hosting to teens though our hosting service. Today, I am proud to announce that we will be modifying our service to include even more teens. We believe that this will help spur creativity and develop the teen new media community.
TMP Hosting will now be splitting into divisions that will each better serve their purpose. The current TMP Hosting service will now go by TMP Hosting - Premium. Our new service will be TMP Hosting - Free.
TMP Hosting - Premium will cover all the aspects of our current hosting service. No details of the plan will actually be changing, simply a name change. This remains as one of the most affordable and easy solutions for teens to host their podcast, blog, or website on the Internet.
TMP Hosting - Free is being introduced to those teens who want less intensive hosting. Customers will be offered a subdomain of teenmediaproductions, can run a Wordpress installation, and use our member email service. There will be some limitations, however, such as a slight limit to customization. Nothing more limiting then you would find with other services, such as Wordpress.com. What makes this service a step above is the community presence found within TMP.
More information will be coming shortly. If you would like to signup for TMP Hosting - Premium, you can continue to do so at teenmediaproductions.com/hosting. TMP Hosting - Free is taking applications starting today. You can apply for our free service by emailing hosting[at]teenmediaproductions[dot]com. Please include your contact info and use for the site (i.e. Blog, podcast, etc.). We will have a form up soon for the free service.
Thanks for your continued support,
Matt Pippen, President/CEO
Teen Media Productions
Filed by Matt Pippen at June 13th, 2008 under Announcements, TMP Hosting
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April 3, 2008
Those of you that had suspicions were right. TMP has pulled it’s biggest prank to date. We hope that you don’t find our prank offensive. It was meant to be pure fun, nothing else.
The prank was at least able to generate some on Twitter to some degree. Many of you seriously believed. Some doubted. Then some went off on ‘It must be a prankz!!1!1!’ No matter how you reacted, we are glad that we have a very supportive and strong presence among the community, especially teens.
In the future we do hope to bring you real developments that will offer our members more benefits. In the end, TMP will not be making decisions based on money but on what’s right for our members. That includes being purchased.
Thanks,
Matt Pippen, President/CEO
Teen Media Productions
Note: I suggest you follow TMP’s Twitter if you want to stay up-to-date on our announcements.
Filed by Matt Pippen at April 3rd, 2008 under Announcements
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April 1, 2008
Teen Media Productions is proud to announce that though a cataclysmic line of events we are being purchased. However, not by just one company but two companies.
TMP and TPN will now be purchased by Podshow for $500,000. This is a greater offer then we have ever expected. This means a greater network as TMP/TPN will now be backed by today’s #1 new media network. Details are still pending around signing, but I can guarantee TMP/TPN staff will still be here. If you are considering joining TPN, now is the perfect time to do so.
However, it didn’t stop there. Very shortly after I started leaking news of the TMP/TPN purchase on Twitter, a company quickly took noticed and contacted me regarding TBN. I am proud to announce that TBN will be purchased by b5media for $50,000. I can not tell you how excited we are to have TBN now backed by a global blogging network with more than 8 million unique visitors a month. Transitions should be very smooth as we both use WordPress.
Most of the details surrounding the changes are still pending on us signing, but I can not be happier to bring you these tidbits of news today.
You will notice that our sites now contain the purchasing companies logo. They will remain in their current state until transfered over to the purchasing companies servers.
Thanks,
Matt Pippen, President/CEO
Teen Media Productions
Filed by Matt Pippen at April 1st, 2008 under Announcements
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