The Killer Robot

Howdy! I'm Jonathan. I love music and fun things. I am the Killer Robot.

I MADE A MOVIE

As we were preparing for SXSW 2011 and the coinciding release of Gowalla 3.0, we decided to make a short film demonstrating the fun of going out with Gowalla. The updated app had some great new features and functionality, perfect for connecting with friends, and helping you discover new, interesting places. We wanted to show it off in our own quirky way.

I worked with Josh to write, edit and help produce a very fun short film which sought to do those very things. Together with Nils Juul-hansen, I created a storyboard, scouted film locations, assisted with casting and our live shoots. I did post-shooting editing work, including helping create the in-film creative elements. I also assisted with securing rights for the music we used, Cameras by Matt & Kim.

You can see it below, or watch it in it’s full HD glory here. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

…there, see?! Doesn’t it make you want to get out, discover, and connect with friends?

I ROCK MUSIC

Obviously, music totally rocks—it needs no help from me! But the music industry itself is in real need of creating meaningful engagement with existing and future fans.

In 2009, I began working with bands and labels to show them how to use Gowalla to interact with their fans in fun, engaging ways. For instance, rewarding fans for concert attendance, or giving them special social media badges for buying records on the first day of release. I helped bands and their management use Gowalla to send notes to their fans, reward them with prizes at the merchandise booth, send them free music, even give them the opportunity to go VIP with their favorite band.

I’ve helped craft unique plans for Josh Ritter, Weezer, Jimmy Eat World, Mercy Me, Owl City, The Vaccines and many more bands in support of their tours and new albums, resulting in thousands of fan interactions and several hundred thousand shares on social networks. I’ve also created integrations for various music festivals, including SXSW, Austin City Limits Music Festival, Øyafestivalen, as well as promotional work for many other music festivals like Outside Lands, Lollapalooza, Edinburgh Festival and more.

Sony Music and Columbia Records noticed the fun we were having and signed up to distribute digital downloads via Gowalla at festivals where specific artists from their catalogs were playing. I also worked with Mom + Pop Records to use Gowalla to highlight up-and-coming artists, as well the soundtrack for the movie Win Win, featuring music from The National.

On the other side of the music business world, I’ve helped book and handle the bands Gowalla has used at our SXSW parties over the last few users, including Matt & Kim, Flosstradamus and Diplo. This has encompassed managing artist needs and contracts, as well as doing promotional and interactive work for the parties.

(I also rock music at home with this silly song I play on my guitar for my 22-month-old about trying to give a cat a bath, but that’s an entirely different story…)

I HELP COOL COMPANIES DO COOL THINGS

One of the things I’ve really loved about my job at Gowalla has been the opportunity to work with some fun businesses, both large and small, to help them understand how they can use our kind of social technology to engage with their customers and users in unique and fun ways. Any time there is something new on the tech block, businesses and agencies alike clamor for the new “shiny” object, but this often results in just slapping a sticker on an already un-engaging campaign. One of my main jobs at Gowalla has been helping people learn how they can do much more than that.

The first business Gowalla partnered with was Incase, maker of some exceptional bags and cases for laptops and all things Apple. We’ve been Incase customers for a long time and loved the idea of using them as our first example of how to use Gowalla for business. I worked with the team at Incase in San Francisco to go through their catalogue and choose 6 of their existing and upcoming products that they wanted to focus on. I then created a campaign for them in which Gowalla distributed digital versions of the Incase items when our users checked-in at Apple Stores. Random Gowalla users who found the virtual items won the exact item from Incase: laptop backpacks, phone cases, and more. The result was fantastic: users of Gowalla were treated to serendipitous moments and rewards, and Incase was exposed to hundreds of thousands of targeted consumers who had previously been unfamiliar with their brand.

The Incase campaign not only did well, but it generated much press, and we were soon inundated with other companies wanting to craft similar experiences for their brands and products. I didn’t want to just cut and paste the Incase campaign for someone else, so it was a fun challenge to create unique campaigns for other brands. We saw some exciting things unfold as businesses were willing to try some things that hadn’t been done before: a partnership with Chevy in which—among other things—attendees at SXSW were rewarded with free transportation in a brand-new Chevy Tahoe, driven by a Chevy representative; a program with Adobe which used Gowalla to help launch Creative Suite 5 by hiding copies of CS5 for users around the world to find in the days leading up to the official public release of the software; work with Universal Studios at Comic-Con to help promote the release of the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

There were many other campaigns I helped large and small/medium businesses build, and that has been a truly rewarding part of my job: helping exciting companies better engage their existing and target market, and simultaneously giving that same group of people a meaningful interaction with the companies that play a part in their everyday lives.

I TALK A LOT

I am a talker, and I particularly love to talk about things that I’m passionate about: music, technology, and helping people learn how they can use them both to connect and share. I hope that passion shows when I speak—it’s something I am asked to do fairly frequently.

This year, I’m most grateful to have had the opportunities to present at a number of great conferences and festivals, including:

- SXSW in Austin
- NXNE in Toronto
- SF MusicTech Summit
- Multiple Social Media Club events

I also had the honor of guest-lecturing at the University of Texas, as well as Texas State University. Sabre Holdings (parent company of Travelocity) invited me to come to their headquarters to talk about company culture, something I’m very passionate about as well. And in a call-my-mom-OMG moment, I was featured in Billboard magazine discussing the future of music and tech.

I had to miss presenting once again at CMJ in New York, but am really looking forward to the opportunity to participate in 2012, when I’ll also be returning to the stage at SXSW, this time to discuss alternative methods of distribution. I hope to see you there!

I BUILT AN AIRSTREAM

After we rolled out Gowalla in 2009 at SXSW, I realized we were going to need a much bigger landing pad to meet users, give away fun swag, and generally give Gowalla a much better footprint on the streets of Austin during the 10 days of fun. I particularly envisioned us using it at multiple events in futhering user acquisition and retention. After a few months of research and looking at vintage Airstreams, I purchased a 1967 Land Yacht and spent the next few months creating the Amazing Gowalla Airstream. This involved gutting the trailer, planning the new space design, including overhauling both the interior and exterior, choosing materials and fabric and stereos and hub caps and lights and an air-conditioner and—well, trust me, a lot goes into building out an Airstream, especially if you want it done right. It took us a few months, but we even got it done early, which allowed us to take it to Park City, Utah, to Sundance Film Festival, where we used it not just as a great interaction point for new and existing users at the festival, but also as one of the official information booths for Sundance itself.

The Gowalla Airstream has hosted tens of thousands of friendly users, VIPs, at least one or two TV film crews, and has seen action not just at Sundance Film Festival, but also SXSW as planned, as well as other interesting events where Gowalla has had a presence.

I AM THE KILLER ROBOT

Thanks so much for taking some time to look at these fun projects I did with Gowalla. As anyone who has been part of a great team knows, nothing on these pages could have been done on my own. I would have gotten nowhere without amazing co-workers and help from exceptionally talented people. These projects aren’t meant to represent things I did in a vacuum, but rather projects that I was tasked to oversee and manage and for which I was responsible for carrying to completion…or failure.

As you can see on this site, I worked in business development for Gowalla, with a focus on music and events. Helping others realize how they can better connect and share is such a rewarding endeavor. I really enjoy the challenge of looking at the needs of a band or a business or what have you, and working with them to create a solution using social technology. Helping someone “get it” and see the fruits of our labor is so worth it, even when it’s a lot of hard work getting there.

That’s where the idea of the killer robot comes in: going after something relentlessly, methodically, and getting results. And it’s what I’m shooting for in the work I do. I love working with a great team, with fun people, and relish helping build good company culture.

Work isn’t all this robot does, though: I have a beautiful wife and two amazing kiddos, the oldest of whom (my 8-year-old) is always asking me to take pictures of him and his sister to “put on Facebook!” I am constantly listening to music, going to shows, and engaging in creative things. Currently I’m doing some painting, designing fabrics for some textile projects, and generally looking for ways to do fun things that put smiles on peoples faces.

Thanks again for stopping by. Wanna talk more? You can reach me at jonathan [a t] thekillerobot.com