The authors of the hot new book on social business The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts To Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social will highlight the March gathering of the Louisville Digital Association. Renown bloggers-turned-authors Jay Baer and Amber Naslund will make a rare joint appearance on their Now Revolution Book Tour at the Louisville Visual Art Association at the Water Tower (3005 River Road in Louisville) on Tuesday, March 8 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. The first 150 people in who RSVP and are in attendance will receive a free copy of the book, courtesy of Keepio, ExploringSocialMedia and the LDA.

“The Now Revolution operationalizes social media across the organization,” said Louisville Digital Association co-founder Jason Falls. “The book has just hit shelves, but I think this could be one of the more significant business books of 2011 because it makes social make sense to business people. Having Jay and Amber here together to explain it all is a rare opportunity. We hope the business community joins us in the learning.”

Baer, a veteran digital marketer and author of the digital marketing blog Convince and Convert, and Naslund, Vice-President for Social Strategy for Radian6, a social media monitoring platform, and author of Brass Tack Thinking, will discuss their “7 Shifts” which include advice on how to realign your organization internally, hire for the new era of communications and measure your organization’s success.

“This book and this event are opportunities I would recommend for any business owner, manager or even entrepreneur,” explained Falls. “The big question marks a lot of business folks have about the world of social media is how to operationalize it, hire for it and bring it into the company culture. This book and Jay and Amber’s presentation offers answers that others before it have not.”

The event will include hors d’ouevres and a cash bar. It is free and open to the public, but interested parties should RSVP using the form on the Louisville Digital Association’s website at http://louisvilledigital.org.

The first 150 RSVPs in attendance will receive free copies of The Now Revolution, courtesy of Keepio, a Louisville-based start-up that allows users to catalog and share their belongings with trusted networks to buy, sell, trade or share in a true social commerce experience; ExploringSocialMedia.com, a new learning community for social media, digital marketing an online communication headed by Falls and headquartered in Louisville; and the Louisville Digital Association.

RSVP for The Now Revolution Tour Stop Below:

The Louisville Digital Association and LVL1, Louisville’s official makerspace, are joining forces to distribute some mobile app development wisdom with our first collaborative Idea to Execution workshop from 7 to 10 pm on Feb. 16 at LVL1, 814 East Broadway.

How (and Why) to Build an Android OS Application is two events in one: The opening portion features a brief overview of making the business case for a mobile application, the must-have features any professional mobile app should include, and the landmines to avoid when taking your mobile application from concept to deliverable. Following the 30-minute best-practices seminar, attendees will engage in a two-hour hands-on workshop to develop a functioning Android App.

That’s right, attendees of the Feb. 2011 LDA event will leave the session with a functioning Android application they coded themselves. A $10 cover charge and a functioning laptop are required to participate in the hands-on session.

Seating for the Idea to Execution Android App Workshop is limited to 15, so sign up now. The in-person event is targeted at experienced developers looking to get some firsthand exposure to Android development. However, for non-coders and overflow attendees, the business-case portion of the seminar will be live-streamed online. Stay tuned for details on how to catch that broadcast.

Thus, coders can get hands-on training, and everyone else gets a crash course in Android planning from the comfort of their computer screen. Seats are disappearing fast, so sign up now for the workshop. (If enough interest is shown in the initial workshop, we’ll arrange some repeat sessions to accommodate additional developers.)

Details and schedule for the workshop are listed below:

For this workshop, please bring a laptop to use with the Android SDK installed in advance if possible. Follow the Android SDK installation instructions detailed here. If you have trouble installing the SDK, we can help troubleshoot the installation at 7pm before the workshop begins.

7:00pm – Meet and greet, Eclipse and Android SDK help
7:30pm – Mobile app case lessons presentation from Jay Garmon
8:00pm – LVL1 Android Development Workshop led by Mike Borsuk
- Android intro / history / OS architecture overview
- API overview
- Development tools overview / setup
- Build / deploy ‘Hello World’ sample app to emulator and device
- Give users choice of a few sample apps to build and deploy, help with customizations for interested users
- Optional: display and discuss a custom hardware platform running running android as well as some commodity devices running custom Android builds

For any questions about this workshop please email workshops@lvl1.org.

Sign up for the workshop here.

“What’s next?” is the question often asked my technologists, marketers, entrepreneurs and investors. The January gathering of the Louisville Digital Association (formerly Social Media Club Louisville) will help answer that question. Jason Hiner, editor-in-chief of TechRepublic, will discuss the five hottest business technology trends your company will face in 2011. The gathering will be on Wednesday, Jan. 19 from 6:30 until 8:30 p.m. ET at the Louisville Visual Art Association galleries at The Water Tower (3005 River Road).

Hiner, a member of the LDA board of directors, spends much of his time talking to IT leaders and vendors in his work at TechRepublic. Those conversations and insights will provide our group with some rich information and discussion points. Some of the trends he’ll discuss are accelerations of 2010 topics, but also emerging issues in the technology world.

The event is free and open to the public. Hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar will be available.

Please register to attend below to help us with a head count for catering. You DO NOT need to print and bring your paper ticket to the event.

The Louisville Digital Association exists to promote, advocate and empower the digital future of Louisville, Ky. If you are an entrepreneur, investor, developer, programmer, application engineer, marketer, public relations professional, community manager, small business owner, blogger, graphic artist, designer, hacker or in any way touch the Internet or technology in your job, our organization exists to support you and your growth in the Louisville community.

At our December gathering tonight, president Jay Garmon unveiled a new name and direction for Social Media Club Louisville. Welcome to the first post from the Louisville Digital Association, a rebranded and refocused effort of the former Social Media Club Louisville that is focused on growing the digital economy in Louisville and the region.

As you know, we added new board of directors member and elected new officers in October. In that month’s board meeting, we began to plan for this new focus, which will call upon you as well as us, to help foster a more welcoming environment for technology companies, startups, investors, engineers, students and more in the Louisville community. We are not moving away from social media, but rather widening our focus to include a broader spectrum of the digital world and help cultivate our technology and digital ecosystem moving forward.

Please review tonight’s brief presentation to better understand our direction and thinking behind it:

Garmon summed up the reason behind our move nicely when he opened his remarks with this:

“I want to live in Louisville. I want to work in the digital space. Let’s make doing both easier.”

As part of its expanded mission, the Louisville Digital Association has formed four specific action committees to address key areas of development.

The LDA Publications Committee is headed by Garmon, CBS Interactive’s Jason Hiner and Doe Anderson’s David Finch. It will operate the group’s blog and email newsletters, and will serve to publicize key digital industry events, trends and tactics from a Louisville perspective.

The LDA Events Committee is headed by me and HealthCentral’s Chris Hall. It will plan and promote the lectures and guest panels offered by the LDA. As was the case under the Social Media Club masthead, these events will continue to feature some of the most prominent and well respected figures in the technology industry.

The LDA Education Committee is headed by Jason Loehr of the agency Mad*Pow, Humana’s Elle Waters, and Consuming Louisville’s Michelle Jones. It will conduct instructional seminars and bootcamps for LDA members and professionals in the region, with the goal of fostering more and better digital innovation in and around greater Louisville.

The LDA Membership Committee is headed by Jim McDonnell of Papa John’s and Nick Huhn of local startup Keepio. It will oversee the interpersonal networking opportunities for LDA members, with the ultimate goal of fostering connections that lead to the creation of more local digital startups and the local placement of more digital professionals.

The collective goal of these committees — and the Louisville Digital Association as a whole — is to grow the digital economy in and around Louisville. That’s means getting more existing businesses involved in the digital space, attracting more tech-oriented jobs to the region, fostering stronger educational efforts for the changing technology economy from our local universities and encouraging the formation of more local technology startups.

As expected, those in attendance were quick to not only offer suggestions, connection points and volunteer to serve on committees for the new organization. We know we have challenges ahead of us in bridging positive relationships with Greater Louisville Inc., Mayor-elect Fischer and Metro Council, the local investment community and other digital economy related groups, clubs and associations. Our goal is to help anyone whose job touches the digital world grow and grow here. We’re confident that our mission will be compelling to these and other stakeholders and we can continue to serve you and them to make Louisville a more vibrant technology community.

We will accomplish none of these objectives without your help. We’d love you to be involved in a committee or to offer your reaction, feedback and input to our new direction. Again, social media won’t be lost in this. We will still evangelize, educate and discuss social media. But we feel we have a greater contribution to make to the Louisville and Southern Indiana region. We hope you’ll help us do that.