Just Kite It dot com, a community for kiteboarding enthusiasts

After speaking with a friend kiter, she joined a few kiting message board forums, which seemed so outdated in comparison to the social media technology of web 2.0 standards. Armed with not much information about kiteboarding she took her chances and called a school in the Great South Bay, New York in July. Good idea? Bad idea. Summer is the worst time to learn the sport in New York and the nasty green flies leave you with painful bites. Not only is the Great South Bay a two-three hour train ride on the LIRR from Brooklyn and Manhattan, learning to kite is not inexpensive. A lesson can cost anywhere from $150-$200 per hour depending on the level of instructor. At times the school will share your lesson with another student and not inform you of this. In some cases, you could get five-hour lessons for $500. Granted the sport is difficult, you will need more than three hours of water instruction. Kiters who have sailed, windsurfed, surfed and wakeboarded could pick up the sport quicker and faster. It is 90% about the kite and 10% about the board. Meaning, understanding the nuances of the wind and controlling the kite within its power, your kite flying skills and knowledge about your environment is key to enjoying the sport, your safety and the safety of others in the water and on the beach.

In August 2009, after a number of frustrating attempts at lessons in New York and Cape Hatteras, NC due to lack of wind in the months of July – August, Jessica then ventured to the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon. The wind capital of the Pacific North West. “I first discovered the River Gorge through a kiter friend on Facebook.” Jessica a natural traveler has not ventured beyond California for travels to the West Coast. “It looks like a little piece of heaven, why has not anyone mentioned this place to me before?” Another loop hole in the kiting world is the discovery and the level of detail that existing kiting web properties can provide. “Information sharing about kite education, kite spots and the consistent engagement of kiters worldwide is what we hope to solve for the progression of the sport.” Kiteboarding is breaking down geographic and gender barriers for over a decade now. So many untold stories are raring to be shared that will inspire connoisseurs of the sport, viewers and those curious about it. The global and local community’s affinity for wind, water and kite is a natural glue. Every kiter is in love with a fellow kiter’s skills and his or her experiences.

For version 1 of Just Kite It dot com our goal is to provide kiters worldwide and those interested in the sport with as much information about kite education, kite spots around the world through editorially curated from user-generated stories. Version 1.5 will be wrapped around extreme entrepreneurship and technology events for the startup community. It is a known fact, there is a growing number of technologists and startup founders who kite. This could be attributed to the leadership of the Silicon Valley VC, Bill Tai who has been featured on Forbes.com. Version 2.0 of Just Kite It dot com will showcase a fully social web property with mobile applications for engagement in a global scale.

The average age of kiters range from 30-35 professionals with a slow, yet noticeable adaptation of the twenty-something and baby boomer demographics. There is also a growing number of women who are kiting, up 30% from 2008. Kiteboarding is a lifestyle sport and it is growing at a steady rate of 20% annually.

Jessica Valenzuela is also the Founder and Chief Principal of a New York based boutique digital branding agency, Mavin Digital, Inc. the creators of Just Kite It. Her co-founder Marek L. Biestek is the General and Managing Partner of a New York based hedge fund, MSMB Capital, LLC. Jessica and Marek are kiteboarders who met at a parking lot on Tobay Bay, New York after a kiting session.

About Just Kite It dot com (http://justkiteit.com)
Welcome to Just Kite It dot com, a content publisher and social community focused on kite education, sports tourism and connecting likeminded professionals of the sport.

Founded by two kiteboarding addikts, with backgrounds in media, digital branding, social media, finance management and startups, Just Kite It aims to provide a place for sharing information and knowledge kite education, kite spots around the world and connecting likeminded professionals of the sport.

You can find us on Twitter @jkiteit and on our Facebook Fan page.

Mission:
Just Kite It is your source for kite education, kite spot locations around the world, inspiring stories from pro-athletes and enthusiasts,  networking events and off-topic features that will offer insight and make you laugh at the same time.

So who is visiting you website or using your application? How much do you know about them and are you meeting their needs. The more you know about your users the better you can cater to their needs. If you don’t care about your users it’s going to show. Who needs that? What’s the point in building an application or website people use only once and never use again. One tool for better understanding your users is to create a persona. Personas can be used for a new website or application or when re-designing an existing site or application.

So what is a persona? Well it’s just a made up person that you breathe life into.

Personas are documents that describe typical users. They can be useful to your project team, stakeholders, and clients. With appropriate research and descriptions, personas can paint a very clear picture of who is using the site or application, and potentially even how they are using it – A Project Guide to UX Design

A persona is a made-up person you will write to. A real person may have several different goals in mind, but a persona is built around a single goal or main objective. Every time you spot a different goal, you create a new persona…Once you have a persona’s goal clearly defined, dress the character up. Assign a name, an age, an employer, a daily routine, and a car, but not just any car – a particular car with a dent on the front right bumper. The specificity is important because it helps you believe in your own creation. Hot Text – Web Writing That Works

The use of personas is a technique popularized by Alan Cooper in his 1999 book The Inmates are Running the Asylum

There are five methods for gathering the information to create personas.

• Contextual Interviews
• Individual Interviews
• Online Surveys
• Focus Groups
• Usability Testing

For the average person with a small budget I would recommend using online surveys. They are easy to develop and conduct. Ideally using more than one research method will yield more information to write your personas. You can create your surveys using Google Docs or Survey Monkey.

The time invested up front to conduct user research will save time and money in the end. So if you can afford it spend the money on more than one user research method.

You should write at least three personas…yes three… not one or two…three. Some people write more than that so you’re getting off easy. Your persona should at a minimum have the following information:

• Photo
• Name
• Age
• Location
• Occupation
• Biography

You can also add the following information as well if relevant:

• Education
• Online activities
• Offline activities
• Salary
• Comfort with technology
• The list can go on and on…add whatever else you think might be important to make the persona as real as possible

Usability.gov, published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, has some examples of personas . The site also has examples of other documents for web design and usability guidelines.

Personas are a good way to get everyone working on a project out of their own heads and thinking about the people who will benefit from what they are working on. So stick them up on the wall after you create them and read them often so that you remember that “you are not your audience”.

Shelley-Ann West, Guest Blogger

Three client levels, including her royal icon Gwen Stefani, numerous Creative Directors (Five at least) and our rad developer teams co-working in multiple time zones (New York, Chicago, New Jersey and Europe).

My team and I built and launched Gwen Stefani’s L Lamb Fragrance in TWO WEEKS.

Find out how. Write jessica at mavin digital dot com

This project was very personal in many ways. It was what gave me the courage to start my own company now known as Mavin Digital, Inc. The same team that delivered L, Lamb Fragrance with me is behind our success and growth at Mavin Digital, Inc.

L, Lamb Fragrance was released in conjunction with Fashion Week and Gwen Stefani’s world tour. It received an impressive amount of traffic in the first few weeks and fashionistas raved. Sweepstakes and viral marketing was part of the package at launch and are now turned off.

Technology used include Action Script 2, After-effects, ASP.net and HTML.

We delivered this project in behalf of Dogmatic, Inc., MKTG (formerly US Concepts) and Coty, Inc.

For starters, the smartphone is contradicting a trend we currently see in the traditional desktop space. Whereas cloud computing and other technologies are shifting content from specialized applications into browser-centralized spaces, smartphones are being packaged with dozens of applications, and access to thousands more through the application marketplace (Apple’s App Store, for example, just topped 15,000 applications).

And so for this very reason, more and more advertisers view the mobile application as the new website. Today, mobile ad solutions and networks are gaining ground on their traditional online counterparts. By providing a high quality Software Development Kit (SDK) to application developers, companies like AdMob, Smaato, even Nokia, are enabling developers to monetize their applications with display advertising and sponsorship opportunities. From the advertisers’ perspective, there is more than enough volume to justify a buy, and since these advertising features are centrally built, the networks are able to provide rich ad experiences via SDK.

Another “big deal” factor: Consider the recent partnership between Adobe (maker of Flash) and chip-maker ARM (which powers about 90 percent of mobile phones worldwide). While it’s true that more and more phones can browse the Web, it’s also true that many mobile phones have only a limited ability to show much of the Web’s content. Video and Flash-heavy websites simply don’t work well, if at all, on many phones due to the software and hardware incompatibility. But this recent collaboration marks a commitment to bring more of the Web to mobile devices.

All of this of course, has an effect on how businesses and developers approach the mobile Web. With so many people from around the world accessing the web via mobile devices, smart companies and developers will need to:

1.  Understand that brands and access to critical information is always on. Brands today are expected to provide faster and more customizable experiences, more engaging content, and more opportunities for consumers to share ideas and opinions. And a lot of this is happening through mobile devices and applications.

2.  Extend website access to include mobile browsers. It’s no longer enough to test sites on Firefox, IE and Safari. Developers will need to develop and test their sites for mobile devices to see how they look and function there as well.

3.  Develop mobile versions of their websites. In addition to testing sites for mobile-compatibility, developers will need to start considering developing specifically for mobile devices.

4.  Focus on mobile applications. Mobile-compatible sites are good; mobile applications are better (just ask Apple).

5.  Consider sending mobile email and SMS. In addition to “traditional” HTML email campaigns, companies need to look at more effective ways to reach and engage their audiences. Like its websites, companies and developers should be testing HTML emails for mobile compatibility, while considering SMS and mobile-specific landing pages as a complement to these campaigns.

With the maturation and penetration of smartphones, businesses, developers and content providers can no longer afford to ignore users of their websites who happen to surf in on a mobile device. Luckily, it’s now possible to achieve a feature-rich, interactive, and visually impactful mobile presence that serves your brand, extends your community of users onto a new platform, helps make inroads into new user groups and demographics, and above all, positions you well in a rich media environment that is no longer a thing of the future but has, in fact, already arrived.

Eric Pilkington, Guest Blogger