As we all gave our final farewells to 2011, 2012 made a grand entrance for our team at Varvid as we received a capital investment from our new partners Brad and Arlin Sorensen. Before Varvid set sail into the open seas of 2012, Arlin Sorensen and Brad Schow traveled to our hometown Bellingham, Washington to take our staff through what’s called a “SWOT” which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This three day program unraveled our entire company by exploring all the systems and structures by which we operate, and through constructive discussion we produced numerous goals which we’re set on meeting within the next three months to prepare our company for significant long term growth.

Directly after the SWOT, Varvid’s President Mike Simmons and Business Development Director Drew Graham traveled to Dallas, Texas to attend a leadership meeting lead by Dan Weston of the Weston Group, who works as a coach for Gazelles Inc. which is a company that provides executive education, coaching and technology services to help mid-market companies around the world build and execute a strategic plan.

Two books were handed out at the event, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish, and Execution Without Drama by Patrick Thean. Overall, Mike and Drew noticed an strong affinity between the business resources and tactics Gazelle had to offer and the strategies laid out by Arlin and Brad from HTG. This affirmation of our current goals and focus was just another positive reinforcement to Varvid’s new path and has been very encouraging as our steps into the future are developing into leaps and bounds.

Video production company’s executive leadership also expanded to enable twin focus on day-to-day execution and advanced services opportunities

HARLAN, Iowa / BELLINGHAM, Wa. – Jan. 16, 2012 – In a move typical of Heartland Technologies CEO and Founder Arlin Sorensen, the industry veteran is once again betting on the future of the IT channel. What’s perhaps unusual this go-around is that he and his brother Brad are doing it with their own cash. The pair is making a sizeable financial commitment to Varvid, a digital media services company, as part of a strategic alliance aimed at expanding business-changing educational content via an online video platform.

“Our interest in Varvid enables us to offer a wide array of digital media services to HTG Peer Group members either through real-time, interactive sessions or on-demand programming that’s not only available when they want to receive it, but how they want to receive it,” said Arlin. “I’m a big believer that digital communication is going to be the separator between those that do well in the marketplace and those that don’t.”

Industry research firm IDC, which recently reported that the online video platform market is estimated to grow from $306 million in 2010 to over $1 billion by 2015, validates Arlin’s view of the situation. And with the convergence of social media and TV services still in its infancy, further integration is expected to create ongoing opportunities.

The investment from the Sorensen brothers allows Varvid to hasten its growth in size and services by utilizing assets and personnel from both Heartland Technology Consulting (HTC) and Heartland Technology Solutions (HTS).  Most notably, the company plans to broaden its support of event services including turnkey solutions related to staging, lighting, sound and multi-camera coverage for both live and on-demand viewership.

Varvid will also continue to build its existing video production services, while increasing its business offerings to provide all-inclusive social media strategies and digital media marketing solutions.  These services will include online video production via remote editing, video hosting, live webcasting, online marketing campaigns, email newsletters, website integration, content generation for social media sites and professional on-site video production.

“Everyone thought the Internet was great in 1999, and it was, but they really didn’t have any idea where it could and would go at that time,” said Aaron Booker, Varvid CEO and co-founder.

“We’re at a stage now with digital media services that parallels those early days of the Internet and it’s thrilling to be at the forefront of that next technology wave.”

Varvid began as a production company helping businesses leverage their online presence through video testimonials, case studies and “live” event coverage. The company also pioneered “Video-as-a-Service” by allowing organizations of all sizes access to the power of online digital media through a number of custom hybrid solutions, integrating both a professional and do-it-yourself approach. In addition to these services, Varvid offers a range of social media solutions aimed at helping businesses expand their online presence through emerging digital platforms and social media outlets.

Focused on the Future

To ensure the company addresses the needs of its customers today and into the future, Varvid has realigned its leadership team. Aaron Booker, formerly president and co-founder, will now lead the company as its chief executive officer with responsibility for developing strategic relationships and driving corporate innovation. Mike Simmons, former Varvid creative director and co-founder, replaces Booker as president, and will oversee the company’s day-to-day business operations. Both Arlin and Brad Sorensen will also join Varvid’s board of directors.

About Varvid

Varvid is an Internet Delivered Video production, distribution and management company that builds IT brands by creating superior timely, powerful, and affordable online video solutions for clients. 
Products & services include case studies, business testimonials, video-enabled email, live webcasting, event coverage, and the newly released “VENUE” video packages – an affordable subscription-based service that features everything clients need to get started in

producing quality online videos for their business. The company also provides all-inclusive social media strategies and digital media marketing solutions as well as viewership metrics for popular social networks including YouTube, Facebook, other platforms and client websites.

Varvid has produced hundreds of recorded and live streaming videos for clients at locations around the world, as well as dozens of testimonial video montages for technology firms, events and trade shows.  For more information, visit: www.Varvid.com and www.Varvid.TV

About HTG Peer Groups

Established in 2000 by Arlin Sorensen as a business and personal development community, today HTG Peer Groups is an international organization of leading IT solution providers. HTG has more than 250 member companies throughout North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia/New Zealand. Each peer group consists of 10-12 IT company executives who work together and share resources and information to formulate and meet business goals such as strategic planning, process improvement and tools, and life-work excellence. HTG offers CEO Forums, vendor peer groups and other educational events, quarterly meetings, and an annual summit that attracts hundreds of attendees, vendor exhibitors and strategic partners. Visit www.htgpeergroups.com or call 712-744-3619 for more information.

About Heartland Technologies Solutions (HTS)

For 25 years, the HTS team has served the IT needs of businesses throughout the Midwest and now has a diverse set of specializations, including Infrastructure Service & Support, Unified Communications, Document Management, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery, Precision Agriculture and K-12 Education. HTS is highly regarded in the vendor community and has strong partnerships with Microsoft, HP and SonicWALL. HTS has seven locations across the Midwest in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

For more information, please visit www.heartlandtechnologies.com.

# # #

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Lynette Bohanan, CommCentric Solutions

lbohanan@commcentric.com / 813-727-0196

If you are serious about your business and have the desire to set in motion a few of the principals and knowledge Jeremy shares, it can make a difference in the level of success you and your organization will achieve.

If you’d like to know more about how you can tell your story, share a case study, lend some professional expertise or simply get good video online, just ask us.  It’s what we do.

Aaron Booker from Varvid joins Arlin Sorenesen of Heartland Technology Solutions in Harlan, Iowa to talk about HTS‘s Channel IT Summit. Arlin explains he’s seeking a way to deepen the relationship with the Vendors he partners with through the Heartland Technology Group by sharing the experience of what it’s like for VARS to be “in the trenches.” Arlin states “what better way than to invite them to come out here to rural Iowa to experience our business at HTS to share some of the things we’ve learned over the last 25 years.”

Arlin plans to talk about HTG, which has over 260 members that are part of his organization worldwide, and his goal for the summit is for Vendors to get a feel for what it’s like to serve SMB customers out in the real world. Arlin thinks that Vendors will be surprised at how complex the business really is for him and HTG, as they aim to serve a vast array of different kinds of clients. HTG services small micro businesses up to some of the mid-market customers, all of whom have very different needs and these different sized organizations expect very different things. As Arlin says himself “it’s not as simple as it seems on paper and we think we’re going to be able to show this to the Vendors who attend this week.”

The main points that Heartland Technology Solutions‘ Channel IT Summit 2011 promises attendees to come away with are:

A comparison of a subscription versus a page.

Facebook’s official announcement states that the new subscribe feature can be used to:

• Choose what you see from people in News Feed
• Hear from people, even if you’re not friends
• Let people hear from you, even if you’re not friends

As far as being able to choose what shows up in your News Feed, the Subscribe Button will give you three choices regarding the amount of content you’d like to see:

• All updates: Everything your friend posts
• Most updates: The amount you’d normally see
• Important updates only: Just highlights, like a new job or move

The Subscribe Button also allows you to hear from people who you aren’t friends with, like celebrities, artists, political figures and journalists; which has much more accurate connotations than becoming their friend, or liking them. One way to conceptualize Facebook’s new Subscribe Button is that it’s very similar to following someone on Twitter.

This a huge move forward for Facebook in the individuals control over their own content aggregation. Instead of your news feed being full of your friends’ exclamations of joy about their day off from work, or woes about their procrastination habit, you’ll be able to receive more developed and curated content; like links to news articles, information on newly released films or music, or important political speeches or events. Additionally, any Facebook user who wants to share their public updates with a wider audience than just their friends list can opt in and add a subscribe button to their profile, so this feature is not limited to celebrities or organizations.

An example of Facebook's subscription option

What does this mean for video? Ostensibly, the new Subscribe Button is going to aggrandize the sharing of video via Facebook in a major way. In the past video has been limited to sharing among friends as posts to their wall, or via a private message. Now, users are granted a much higher level of control over who they’re receiving content from, and profiles who have a large number of subscribers will be able to push their content out to a much larger audience. Considering that Facebook is the 3rd highest ranked site for online video views (according to comScore.com) we can expect to see video sharing to increase drastically with the rise of the Facebook Subscribe option.

The entrance hall at the Philadelphia Convention Center

Our fearless leader Aaron Booker is on the road again, this time stationed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to provide IT and webcasting services for the Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour tournament! Magic is a nearly two-decade-old collectible card game played by thousands of people worldwide, sometimes with thousands of dollars of prize money on the line. This Sunday’s tournament is sure to be extra-exciting, because the gurus behind Magic are rolling out a whole new gameplay format that promises to level the playing field.

To watch the webcast, head over to this page on Sunday, September 4th by 11am EST. Here’s a handy way to find out what time you can tune in in your time zone:

• Los Angeles: 7:45 a.m.
• Chicago: 9:45 a.m.
• New York: 10:45 a.m.
• Rio de Janeiro: 11:45 a.m.
• London: 3:45 p.m.
• Paris: 4:45 p.m.
• Berlin: 4:45 p.m.
• Rome: 4:45 p.m.
• Moscow: 6:45 p.m.
• Tokyo: 11:45 p.m.
• Sydney: 12:45 a.m. Monday

Jim leaves behind his wife Marilyn and son Brian. Following Jim’s vision that Brian go to college, SMBTN has set up a fund to allow Jim’s SMB community friends to contribute to Brian’s college fund. To learn more, go to http://www.smbtn.org/JimLocke.htm

Below are some moments in Jim’s life which we captured on tape. Please join us in remembering Jim.

What do all the names below have in common? They were all chosen as part of MSPmentor’s Top 250 “executives, entrepreneurs, experts, coaches and community leaders shaping the global managed services market.” This list, which is currently in its fourth year, is produced by Joe Panettieri’s team at MSPmentor and Nine Lives Media, Inc. What else do these esteemed companies have in common? They’re all clients and/or partners of Varvid! We’re proud to be able to work with so many individuals and organizations that are being recognized in the community.

Congratulations!

Ashutosh Tiwary, Chairman & CEO, Doyenz

Rick Bahl, President, Quality Systems Solutions Inc.

Arnie Bellini, CEO, ConnectWise

Linda Brotherton, CTO, ConnectWise

Renee Bergeron, VP of Managed Services & Cloud Computing, Ingram Micro

Jane Cage, COO/CFO, Heartland Technology Solutions

Mark Cattini, CEO, Autotask Corp.

Chris Chase, CEO, JoomConnect

Carlson Colomb, Director, Business Development, Level Platforms

Stuart Crawford, Chief Marketing Officer, Ulistic Inc.

Len DiCostanzo, Senior VP, Business Development, Autotask Corp.

Jeannine Edwards, Director of Community, ConnectWise

James Foxall, President, Tigerpaw Software

Dave Foxall, Owner and Founder, Tigerpaw Software

Jim Hamilton, VP, Member Relations, CompTIA

Kevin Hoffman, CEO, eFolder

Ted Hulsy, VP of Marketing, eFolder

Lisa Jenkins, Segment Marketing Manager, Commercial Services, Cisco Systems Inc.

Jay McBain, Senior VP, Strategy & Community Development, Autotask Corp.

Kent McNall, CEO, Quosal

Michael Minnich, CEO, NetGain Information Systems

Rick Murphy, Managing Partner, Cogent Growth Partners

Bob Penland, CTO, TruMethods

Gary Pica, President, TruMethods

Rob Rae, Director, Partner Development & Operations, Level Platforms

Alex Rogers, President, CharTec

Dan Rosedahl, General Manager, Corporate Technologies

Christy Sacco, Director of Operations, HTG Peer Groups

Peter Sandiford, CEO, Level Platforms

David Schafran, Managing Partner, Cogent Growth Partners

Scott Scrogin, President, HTG Peer Groups

Doug Sikora, Director of Software Development, Tigerpaw Software

Corey Simpson, MSP Partners Community Manager, CompTIA

Arlin Sorensen, CEO & Founder, HTG Peer Groups

Todd Thibodeaux, CEO, CompTIA

Erik Thorsell, President, Success Computer Consulting

Jason Tierney, VP, Product Development, Corporate Network Services Inc.

Eric Webster, Chief Revenue Officer, Doyenz

Dan Wensley, VP, Partner Development and Marketing, Level Platforms

In today’s connected world, mobile devices are ubiquitous. One third of American adults own a smartphone, according to a recent Pew study. In the tech industry, that fraction seems much closer to 100%. I see tablets everywhere at conferences, with the iPad dominating usage even in our Microsoft-based ecosystem. However, mobile interfaces and support often continue to lag behind their traditional PC/Mac counterparts. As Jeremy and I agree, this is wrong. Mobile is critical and should be your best-optimized system – because it may be your user’s only option.  For video, we prefer our clients’ viewers to watch our work on the best screen possible.  We’re proud of what we do, and we know that bigger screens make high quality video look better. However, nothing is more critical than the viewer watching the video, regardless of screen size or computing type.

At Varvid, we offer video production, editing, hosting, and webcasting services, and all of those follow our “mobile critical” principle. Our workflow is optimized to deliver files ready to upload (H.264) to mobile oriented delivery platforms, and we make sure that all videos hosted with us are available for playback on mobile devices. When we choose partners for video platforms and webcasting, we pick providers who share our idea that mobile support is paramount. With webcasting, which is decidedly not compatible with mobile by default, we make an extra effort to provide mobile support to the market leading devices. A recent webcast that we worked on was streamed online in four different formats – including state-of-the-art HTML for iOS devices.

How are you supporting your mobile device carrying clients? Does your helpdesk support those users?  How well? AdobeConnect can stand to lose a couple users – can you?

*** For what it’s worth, AdobeConnect is now optimized for mobile, but first impressions are what stick with clients and potential clients.