Danny's Finding KC | #GreatIdeas Series

Danny Schumann is probably one of the busiest people that I know. But somehow he manages to be a fantastic dad, a good friend, lead the social insights team at VML KC and put his hobbies into practice through FindingKansasCity.com And why? Because he wants to. 

He took over FindingKansasCity.com about a year ago from a former co-worker who had started the site to review and profile shops, restaurants, bars and other culturally relevant things in Kansas City. He took on the site because he had a great vision about where it could go - but also frankly to keep practicing the skills he had taught himself over the past few years. And his love for Kansas City and discovering all the great things about it helps :) 

How it began. 

In college, he had the opportunity to purchase Adobe Creative Suite and take a class to learn the basics for design.  

"[From my optional design class in college] I learned a base, but 90% of what I learned happened by practicing and looking up small tactics one step at a time." 

At his first job, he bought a book, How to Build a Website, to learn how to code [Ironic, isn't it?] And chapter by chapter, trial by trial was able to learn how to code. 

From there he just kept practicing. And then he got the opportunity to take on FindingKansasCity.com. 


FindingKansasCity.com

Danny says the site had a great base and following, but he had plans to make it bigger. During the Kansas City Royals playoff run, the nation was hungry for Kansas City news and everyone rallied around the city. 

In that timeframe, FindingKansasCity.com: 

• Was featured in a Huffpost article 
• Profiled and partnered with local retailers to promote KC gear and link back to the site
• And activated its social media presence on Facebook and re-invigorated activation on Twitter  

And in the past few months, Danny's managed to find the time to rebrand and re-work the look and feel of the site, resurface and create new content, increase the search traffic to the site and being tweeted by local media. 

What's ahead? 

"[What I've done with FindingKansasCity.com] is not the finish line, but it's my next set of challenges to see what I can do and force myself to keep practicing." 

FindingKansasCity.com has incredible opportunity with the growth and revitalization of the city. So I know that whether it be this project or another, Danny will be successful and make his friends and especially his son, proud.  

Jake - Candi - @DublynDoodle | #GreatIdeas Series

It's a snowy morning in Chicago and I'm laying in my bed, scrolling through my Instagram feed, contemplating burning some toast [well not really, but that's what usually happens]. And as usual, I came across my friends' @DublynDoodle Instagram feed, featuring Dublyn, their lively golden doodle. And I smile as I scroll through the multitude of comments about people who love Dublyn. 

Candi Chadwick & Jake Slobodnik are two fantastic and talented people that I had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago in KC through a mutual friend. They took me under their wing in a tough time in my life, and we became close. While getting to know them, I found out that Jake dabbled in photography (or so he said but he was actually super talented at it) and in September 2013, they adopted a golden doodle, Dublyn. 

Their story is a fantastic case of some people who have turned their passion into a bigger idea. 

The day they added Dublyn to their family, they took tons of photos and immediately started posting on Instagram. They said, they quickly realized they were going to drive their friends insane, or risk losing our friends altogether if they kept posting. 

So Candi came up with the idea to create an account, just for Dublyn. Jake says, "In December, Dublyn came home, and we posted our 'final' photo of Dublyn on our personal accounts, which read At the sake of sounding crazy, but more so you don't have to be inundated with pictures of our new dog, we have created a new account for Dublyn.  Check her out @dublyndoodle." 

Each day Candi & Jake would take pictures of Dublyn and post them with #goldendoodle and #dogsofinstagram. They quickly gained hundreds of followers and in 11 weeks over 1,000 followers who loved seeing their adorable dog. [Even as a non-dog person I got suckered in too]. 

They started adding watermarks to their photos and then were featured on @dogsofinstagram and they felt famous! so far, they've been featured on @natgeochannel, @petbox, @gramoftheday, @glamourpoland, @findingkc, and many more. They've been contacted about becoming a "product spokes-dog" by numerous companies.  Including @whistlelabs, which they recently teamed up with to represent, Whistle, a pet activity monitor, similar to a FitBit for humans. 

They've even won several contests and also entertained the idea of creating an ETSY account selling cards, photos, or calendars, but haven't committed quite yet.  

On October 15, 2014 at 5:45pm their account hit the 10,000 follower mark. And they are still amazed at the success of the account with (now) nearly 13,000 followers. They say their short-term goal is 25,000. Their ultimate goal is a feature by Instagram themselves, #weeklyfluff. 

To maintain the account regularly, it's a two-person gig, including taking the photos [and getting Dublyn to pose], adding the posts, responding to the comments, etc. When the account started, Jake did a lot of the photography but recently Candi has taking some photography classes and becoming adept at taking the photos herself as well. Making their possibilities endless. 

So what's next? 

Some of their favorite Instagram accounts have turned the fun pastime of pet photography into a full time job - through book deals with signing tours or abandoning their day to day jobs to become full-time pet photographers. For right now, they are happy just living our lives and sharing a very special piece of it with our friends, family, and over 12,000 strangers. 

But keep an eye out for a major addition to the account, coming Spring 2015. (Hint:  It might just be a miniature version of Dublyn). 

In the meantime be sure to check out Dublyn on Instagram @dublyndoodle