To a startup, it can be tough to acquire the necessary components for kickstarting your company: the technology, the marketing capacities, and many other company needs. The Innovation Showcase is a unique conference that connects Indiana small business owners and fundable companies can connect with venture capitalists and angel investors. If you have an idea that needs a bit of funding to turn into a reality, register for the July 11 event.

As an exhibitor, you’ll get 60 seconds to pitch your company for the prize package. The top presenters from the pitch competition will gain access to the most well-known angel investors in the area. At least two presenters will go straight in that evening to make private pitches to  HALO and  Elevate Ventures. They (and maybe other presenters) will also gain access to guaranteed pitches to  Stepstone Angels, Purdue’s  P3 Alliance, IU’s  Innovate Indiana Fund, Gravity Ventures,  Allos Ventures and xCap Angels.

Additionally, the day features an entrepreneur panel featuring speakers from Launch Fishers, The Speak Easy, Developer Town, SproutBox and Purdue Research Park, as well as an investor Q&A session.

Want in? Here are the details: 

When: July 11, 2013
Where: Dallara Indycar Factory, 1201 Main St. in Speedway
Time: 1:00 – 8:00 p.m. (Exhibitor Pitches at 3:00 p.m.)
Cost for Event: Early bird tickets are $35. After May 31, general admission is $50 in advance or $75 at the door.
Exhibitor Info: Deadline for exhibitor applications is May 31 – so register to pitch ASAP! The application can be accessed here.

You might also be wondering what all goes into that $60,000 prize package. Well, the winning exhibitor will receive $5,000 in cash. Additionally, they will receive thousands of dollars in free services, including legal and accounting aid, branding and public relations consulting, and a free Max Plan from yours truly. Seriously, the prize package is awesome – you can check out the full list by clicking “Prize Package Details” on The Innovation Showcase homepage.

More information about The Innovation Showcase can be found through its website or by calling (317) 339-6205. Good luck, and see you in July!

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Over the past few months, we’ve been promoting small business growth and conversation through the use of cloud computing tools. Through the Build Indy website, visitors could download a cloud computing toolkit with information about the ways cloud-based tools could grow their companies. And to sweeten the taste of progression, we decided to give $5,000 to one local small business or nonprofit.

“Excited people are the most interesting people.”
On April 26, we announced our 10 finalists from over 96 nominations, and each finalist had to complete a follow-up survey to provide more information about how they would spend the $5,000. A panel of Indianapolis professionals selected United State of Indiana as the winner, and Graham Brown (founder of the company) accepted the grand prize last night. In addition, Graham and the rest of the USI team will be receiving an app package from ProApps Live, who agreed to waive the $1,500 startup fee for the development of a USI mobile app. Graham will be using the $5,000 award to create a video series highlighting creators and innovators living in Indiana, with a focus on how living in the state has shaped their imagination and creation.

Photo by Sarah Murrell

“United State of Indiana was created in 2011 with a simple image: the state of Indiana and six vertical stripes. The goal of United State of Indiana, from the start, was to provide an outlet for collective excitement. USI has grown from a guerilla art project to a full-fledged clothing company. Our growth can only be attributed to other passionate entrepreneurs who have made USI a small part of their story.” – Graham Brown, founder of United State of Indiana.

Crowd Favorites
At last night’s Build Indy event, the audience also voted on two “crowd favorite” award winners. Two of the 10 finalists were selected via a live vote to split all of the money from ticket sales and the silent auction, as well as split a generous $1000 donation from MainSource Bank. Our first crowd favorite was Urban Patch, who received $1,258 and a website audit package from DK New Media. The second was Growing Places Indy, who also received $1,258 and a logo redesign package from Stefan Bean Branding + Design. All of the money received at last night’s event went directly to the crowd favorite finalists.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to such a successful event, including sponsors MainSource Bank, Launch Fishers, Mixwest, and The Ball Project. We plan to continue Build Indy in some capacity, so stay tuned for new developments in our effort to support and grow Indianapolis.

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Crowdsourcing is a popular way to find out what your customer (or future customer) is interested in and to make sure your efforts are on the right path.

Why Crowdsource?

Crowdsourcing unleashes the power of collaboration and draws upon not only the strengths of those within your organization, but the ideas, talents and opinions of those in your network as well. Crowdsourcing will enable you to broadcast your idea to a large and diverse audience – using cloud tools (such as Formstack!) – and ask them to contribute ideas and solutions.

Crowdsourcing is not only powerful, but it’s smart. It has proven to be an effective way to engage customers, and it mirrors something most of us are already very comfortable with: social networking. The explosion of social media has changed the way we communicate with each other, so why not change the way you communicate with your customers?

How do I Crowdsource?
In order to crowdsource, you will need a smart way to collect and manage data. Sound familiar? A Formstack survey form posted on your website, shared across your social networking sites, or sent out in an email with a nice little note asking people to participate, will make collecting responses easy and effective. You can use surveys to gather feedback on a customer’s past experiences, solve current dilemmas, and plan for the future.

• Be Clear - to make sure your responses don’t spin out of control and off topic (squirrel!) you must provide a clear purpose. This not the forum for open-ended consumer feedback. Instead, be specific when asking for input. Writing Yes/No (True/False) or multiple choice questions forces the user to decide and provides you with more focused, concrete data.

The best way to build these questions is to use Radio Buttons, Checkboxes, or Select Lists and make each question required. If you want to provide a little more room for further suggestions, you may consider adding a Long Answer field at the end.

Here is an example of a simple, but effective, customer feedback survey. If you are a Formstack customer you can copy this form straight into your account – pretty cool, huh?

• Be Diverse – Research shows that the more diverse an audience, the more creative the solution. In fact, those with the least expertise in an area are often free to solve a problem with a fresh perspective and an open mind. So get that form out to as many people as you can, and don’t leave anyone out! The best information may come from the least likely source.

• Be Simple – Avoid anything that is too long or too complicated. People will lose interest early and often! Participation will be low if the form is seen as boring or cumbersome, so make it short and sweet.

• Be Cool - Have some FUN! We try to put a little of our personality in everything we do here at Formstack. So what’s your company personality? Don’t be afraid to build it into your form (how do you really talk?) and if you can, throw in an incentive for those that participate. Free t-shirt anyone?

Now What?
Be prepared! When you ask for a mass of information, there is the potential for mass chaos. With Formstack you will be able to easily sift through all your responses and start using them, by searching in the Submissions tab, creating and sharing charts/reports and exporting data. So the next time you need to come up with the next great marketing campaign, product innovation or problem solution – crowdsource the answer with Formstack!Recent Posts:

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Drag & Drop User Permissions:

You can now drag & drop user permissions easily on the Settings page of each individual form. When you give a user permissions on a form, you assign either Full, Write or Read permissions. If you are managing multiple users across many forms, now you can simply manage user permissions by adding user permissions on each specific form.

If you want to move users between permission levels, simply drag & drop that user to the correct permissions box.

Read More About User Permissions

Form Example Imports:

You can now import the online forms on our form examples page directly into your Formstack account. See a nice form you would like to start from or implement? Well, just hover over the form you want to copy and click on the “Get this form” button.

A lightbox will then pop up allowing you to either login to your Formstack account or create a new account right from the page.

Once you do this, the form will be copied into your account. You can use the form as is or modify the form to fit your needs. Being able to import an example form works very similarly to our predefined form templates, but the nice part about copying an example is that you get the styling, formatting & images!

See Our Examples Page

We hope you take advantage of our new drag & drop user permissions, and go add some of our example forms to your account! Let us know what you think of these new features in the comments below.Recent Posts:

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Love one of the companies you read about? Register for the event and come out to vote for your favorite finalist, who could win the second place prize. ALL of the money from your $10 ticket will go directly to the second place finalist – so the more people in the door means more money for your favorite organization.

We’ll be featuring the finalists in alphabetical order, so our last blog post is highlighting Urban Patch and United State of Indiana, who provided us with these descriptions:

Urban Patch

“Our work began in 2010 by researching our family history at the Indiana Historical Society. We discovered that our patriarch, Albert A. Moore was involved in the Flanner House’s community self-help programs in the 1940s that included urban gardens, educational programs, and a housing program serving hundreds of families. With many of the same social and economic issues still affecting our inner cities today, we founded Urban Patch as a legacy project to help educate and revitalize our communities.

Collaboration is critical for our work and we have engaged a number of partners and collaborators including local development corporations, nonprofits, banks, contractors and entrepreneurs, educators and artists, community elders and youth, friends and family. Since our founding, we have completed a number of pilot projects in Midtown Indianapolis in the Mapleton Fall Creek neighborhood and have invested nearly $200,000, many resources, and countless work-hours in revitalizing the community.”

United State of Indiana

“United State of Indiana was created in 2011 with a simple image: the state of Indiana and six vertical stripes. I used an interest in street art and screen printing, as well as the numerous creative skills of my friends, to mass produce this simple flag on everything I could find and share it as a reminder of the exciting things happening here.

The goal of United State of Indiana, from the start, was to provide an outlet for collective excitement. I think excited people are the most interesting people, and when a city or state is reminded of the exciting things going on all around them, I think they’re more eager to share their creativity, positivity and passion.

I didn’t have a mission statement back then, but the words “United State of Indiana” seemed to sum it up pretty well.

Since then, USI has grown from a guerilla art project to a full-fledged clothing company. Our shirts, stickers and artwork has been shipped to 45 states and 8 countries and are sold around Indiana from small bike shops to the Indiana State Museum. Our growth can only be attributed to other passionate entrepreneurs who have made USI a small part of their story. My purpose has become to reciprocate the unbelievable support that so many people around the state (and world) have shown for this simple idea.”

Are you affiliated with one of these finalists? Want to connect with them? Let us know in the comments below!Recent Posts:

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Our final video in the series features Homesense Heating and Cooling, a locally-owned HVAC air conditioning and furnace repair company. Struggling with finding a way to organize all of its carbon forms, Homesense turned to Formstack to streamline its work processes and create forms for several tasks, both in the office and on-location at customers’ homes. Thanks to all of our fantastic customers at Homesense for letting us highlight their uses of forms. Watch to learn more about this awesome Indy business:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video series was created to profile just three of the thousands of incredible businesses in Indianapolis. Through Build Indy, we are also celebrating 10 more small businesses and nonprofits in our city. We’ll be giving away $5,000 to one of our finalists on May 16 and allowing attendees to vote for audience favorites to win smaller monetary prizes. For more info, visit formstack.com/buildindy – we hope to see you there!Recent Posts:

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Love one of the companies you read about? Register for the event and come out to vote for your favorite finalist, who could win the second place prize. ALL of the money from your $10 ticket will go directly to the second place finalist – so the more people in the door means more money for your favorite organization.

We’ll be featuring the finalists in alphabetical order, so today’s blog post is highlighting IndyFringe and Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc., who provided us with these descriptions:

IndyFringe

“In 2001, a public meeting, ‘Theatre City Indianapolis 2012,’ was organized where Mayor Petersen met with a panel of experts and more than 250 Indianapolis citizens. At a further meeting on January 28, 2002 the single best idea—the one that met the most needs expressed in the room—was the idea of an Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival. In 2013, IndyFringe will celebrate its ninth festival and ownership of the IndyFringe building, a low cost rehearsal and performance space, at 719 E. St. Clair Street, 46202.

The IndyFringe Festival is the cornerstone of IndyFringe’s programming. This ‘first come- first served’ annual festival creates local theatre and attracts national and international acts to Indianapolis representing diverse cultural, economic and social backgrounds. Throngs of artists share their creativity with the Indianapolis community, and the community itself makes waves throughout the Mass Ave Cultural District as they attend theatre events, enjoy free street performance, and patronize the many shops and restaurants lining Mass Ave.

The l00 seat IndyFringe Basile Theatre serves as a low cost rehearsal and performance space in a city which has very few such amenities. The theatre offers a year round eclectic mix of emerging artists, new plays, established theatre groups, returning Fringe performers and community events which continually change and attract a diverse audience. The theatre is fully booked for 2013 with 217 shows plus DivaFest and OnyxFest. Storytelling Arts of Indiana will host their tenth anniversary Frank and Katrina Basile Emerging Storytelling Festival in November.”

Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc.

“Founded in 1976 as Indianapolis Clean City Committee, Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc. (KIB) initially worked to reduce and prevent litter in our city. KIB became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1980, and later changed the name to better reflect our broadened efforts in the community. In the late 1980s, KIB began environmental education for schools as well as the management of voluntary recycling programs and revitalization and beautification efforts. KIB is a community improvement nonprofit organization, and an award-winning affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, Inc. (KAB), the national organization dedicated to preserving the natural beauty and environment in American communities.

Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc. engages diverse communities to create vibrant public places, helping people and nature thrive. This statement guides all of our operations and activities. Through an application process, we work alongside neighborhoods and their representatives who identify their needs. This ensures a grassroots approach with buy in from the neighborhood. This is important to the ongoing sustainability of projects. KIB in turn secures resources and partners to help. We work with a multitude of groups and individuals who share an interest in bettering our environment and helping neighborhoods thrive.”

Are you affiliated with one of these finalists? Want to connect with them? Let us know in the comments below!Recent Posts:

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Love one of the companies you read about? Register for the event and come out to vote for your favorite finalist, who could win the second place prize. ALL of the money from your $10 ticket will go directly to the second place finalist – so the more people in the door means more money for your favorite organization.

We’ll be featuring the finalists in alphabetical order, so today’s blog post is highlighting Growing Places Indy and Historic Indianapolis, who provided us with these descriptions:

Growing Places Indy
“Growing Places Indy started with the belief that everyone deserves to be nourished by food that is good for people and the planet, clean – free from toxins and petroleum based inputs, and fair to farm workers, processors, and customers from seed to plate. This is the premise of the Slow Food movement, and it is why each of our current three growing sites is called a Slow Food Garden. We have come to believe is that the health and sustainability within our food systems is a powerful indicator of the health and sustainability within all of the other systems that are so critical to the vitality of communities. This has lead us over the past four years to pursue food as a gateway to community engagement, transformation, and understanding broad spectrum sustainability and wellness.

Our original garden was established in White River State Park in 2010. In 2012 we expanded to include a residential lot in the Cottage Home neighborhood, as well as a partnership at the Chase Near Eastside Center to operate the greenhouse and gardens on-site.  These sites provide strategic connections to the community – 1) a high-traffic state park where people of all walks of life from all over the world intersect, 2) a community center focused on improving the quality of life for the residents it serves, 3) a residential lot on a busy intersection that models the opportunity that anyone can grow food virtually anywhere.

We have also expanded our programming from basic gardening workshops and a summer internship in urban farming, to include after-school and summer camp sessions with elementary and middle school students; evening gardening, cooking and nutrition classes for adults/families; and a unique and innovative 10-week summer apprenticeship program that empowers participants to engage in their lives and communities with a greater understanding of and vision for sustainability, wellness and how food is central to both.”

Historic Indianapolis

“Historic Indianapolis.com has blossomed from a casual, periodic blog into a flourishing daily website/ e-zine and oft-cited resource on all things Indy history in less than four years. Historic Indianapolis.com reveals little known tidbits on a variety of subjects, interests and angles and has grown from a sole writer/creator to feature a number of passionate contributors. There is a movement afoot in Indy to get more connected and passionate about our city and Historic Indianapolis.com is proud to be playing a part in that. The more people know about the city, the more they like it and can enthusiastically share with others. That knowledge and enthusiasm is fuel for creating a more engaged, knowledgeable and enthusiastic citizenry.”

Are you affiliated with one of these finalists? Want to connect with them? Let us know in the comments below!Recent Posts:

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1. An electronic form can be sent ALL over the world in a matter of seconds

2. You can edit your survey at any time.

3. You can close your survey automatically after a desired number of recipients or a set date.

4. Results/feedback are immediate.

5. You can analyze, sort, and quickly search your collected data in your online database.

6. You can create charts, reports, and share your collected data with others with just a few clicks.

7. You can export your collected data to keep in your own records.

8. You can trigger Confirmation and Notification Emails to go out upon submission.

Now that I’ve convinced you that you are in the right place and Formstack is the right tool, let’s explore 5 simple steps that will help you create your survey.

Step One: Determine Your Sample Group
When conducting a general survey, it is important to survey a group of individuals that will give you the most accurate, unbiased results. When conducting a survey specific to a set of beliefs, then you must intentionally gather like individuals. This step involves research and planning. Once you decide what type of group, you must decide how many to survey. If conducting a general survey, that really depends on how high you want your level of confidence or how low you want your margin of error to be. If you want to get technical, the appropriate sample size can be determined with this online calculator by Raosoft.

Step Two: Create Your Questions
With a Formstack form, you can use the following field types to display your questions: Select List, Radio Button, Checkbox, Matrix and Short or Long Answer. There are a few differences:

Select List: Drop down answers – this can make the form look more compact because selections are hidden in a dropdown format. Individuals can select multiple answers by holding CTRL while clicking. You can add values to your selections.

Radio Button: Selections are listed and only one selection can be made per field. You can add an “other” option. You can add values to your selections.

Checkbox: Selections are listed and more than one selection can be made in a field. You can add a “check all” or “other” option. You can add values to your selections.

Short/Long Answer: These fields are open-ended and you can set a maximum number of characters to limit responses.

Matrix: This field type is good if you need to compare or rank related statements/ideas. You can limit to one selection per row or column, or both.

If you are going to have weighted selections, you will want to choose either a select list, radio button, or checkbox field. To add a value to the options on any of these fields, click on the “Option” tab when in the field edit mode and click to “Use Separate Values”. If you have one right answer, then you can make that selection worth “1” point (or whatever value you choose) and the others “0”. Note, values must be unique. If you have several of the same number, you will have to differentiate them as I have done below.

At the end of your survey, you can use a “read-only” Number field to calculate the results. Check out this post to help with creating these calculations: Support How-To: Setting Up and Calculating Fields. I won’t go into this here, but after you create your questions, you can customize the styling of your survey with a default Theme or a custom Theme that you create with our easy Theme builder tools.

Step Three: Test
After you have finished creating your survey, send it out to a few individuals that weren’t involved in the development process and allow them to take the survey and give feedback on the process. Things you could ask:

1. Did my survey seem biased?

2. Were my questions worded in a way that you could easily understand?

3. Was my survey too long/short?

4. Did my survey flow well?

5. Did your results seem accurate?

After you get their feedback, you can make changes to the questions by clicking to edit the field when in Build mode.

Step Four: Get it Out

You can embed your survey on your website or on a Formstack Landing Page. We provide you with the Javascript, iframe, lightbox, and Advanced HTML embed codes under the Publish tab of your form. You can also email the survey link out to your contacts via your email service provider or email marketing tool. It may be helpful to note that we integrate with several Email Marketing platforms including Constant Contact, MailChimp, ExactTarget, AWeber, iContact, and Campaign Monitor. That means, you can also add/update your records in that tool via a Formstack form submission.

Step Five: Analyze Your Data
Since submissions are immediate, you can begin analyzing your data as it starts flowing in. As I mentioned above, you can sort and search your collected data in your online database for easier viewing. From your data, you can create charts and reports to compare the selections to questions. You can easily switch type charts between horizontal and vertical bar charts and pie charts via the “gear” icon on the bottom left of your chart.

Once you create your reports, you can share these online with others via Share links. You can also export your collected data to keep in your own records or send to others.

You can follow up with correspondents after the survey closes via our Email Campaign tool.

Need any help creating your first survey? Any other questions or comments? Let us know in the comments below!Recent Posts:

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Love one of the companies you read about? Register for the event and come out to vote for your favorite finalist, who could win the second place prize. ALL of the money from your $10 ticket will go directly to the second place finalist – so the more people in the door means more money for your favorite organization.

We’ll be featuring the finalists in alphabetical order, so today’s blog post is highlighting Drink Up Downtown and Fathom Voice, who provided us with these descriptions:

Drink Up Downtown

The Drink Up Downtown project started in August 2012 as a weekend project to compile all of the drink specials around Indianapolis for personalreference. Evolving quickly from a spreadsheet, Drink Up Downtown drew interest from Carmel investors within the first week of the minimum viable product being completed. This interest catapulted the Drink Up Downtown product from a resource used among a group of friends to a product set to debut nationally that seeks to become a necessity for every 21-34 year old looking for a good deal on a drink. Put simply, it provides mobile device users a way to access their city’s drink specials at the palm of their hand.

Fathom Voice

Fathom Voice was founded by two childhood friends, Cameron Weeks and Bracken Fields. The company was born in their dorm room of Shreve Hall in 2007 while the two were students at Purdue University. What started as a development and web design project soon transformed into the Fathom Voice we have today. After finding their calling and passion, the two men then began to build a team of passionate co-workers. What started as two quickly began to change. Weeks Communications, now known as Fathom Voice, grew rapidly as they began adding departments and positions vital for its expanding client base. Today, Fathom Voice is an up and coming Hosted VoIP PBX provider that is branching out nationally on several different venues. What started out as a dream in a dorm room has now transformed into a company’s vision.

Are you affiliated with one of these finalists? Want to connect with them? Let us know in the comments below!Recent Posts:

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