Digital Capital Week: Opening Weekend In Review

Frank Gruber June 13, 2010 Tweet

Shiny Heart Ventures thankfulfor.com graffiti wall @ DCWEEK

Digital Capital Week (@DCWEEK) kicked off this past weekend in Washington, D.C. with an epic opening party Friday night at the Longview Gallery & Blagden Alley in Washington, DC. The party featured loads of entertainment – everything from bands and individual musicians, to performance artists, film projections, dancers and an interactive thankfulfor gratitude graffiti wall presented by DCWEEK co-producer Shiny Heart Ventures. It asked party-goers what they were thankful for about DC. It was a huge hit – even though in the end, it turned into a flat-out graffiti wall. The opening celebration went on well into the early hours of Saturday morning with a great crowd in the thousands.

Check out the video (below) from the Opening Party at Digital Capital Week.

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon a crowd at the George Washington University venue was completely engaged asking question after question as I moderated a discussion with special guest, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Tony talked about his new book, Delivering Happiness which opened at number one on Amazon and Barnes and Noble last week. You may recall, we last caught up with Tony Hsieh down at SXSW this past March as we toured his Delivering Happiness bus. Here are a few of the great quotes from Tony during the session:

“I hate the term ‘social media.’ We just want to connect with our customers. We do more through the phone. The phone is one of the best tools out there.”

“What is the ROI on a hug?”

“Hire slow and fire fast … bad hires over the last 11 years have cost us over $100 Million.”

If you would like to receive a copy of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness book please tell us in the comments section why we should send it to you. Be sure to sign into comments with a valid email address so we can contact you to get your mailing address. We’ll pick the five comments we like the best and send you your very own copy of the Delivering Happiness book.

Tony Hsieh Delivering Happiness at DCWEEK

Photo by Jim Darling

Tony Hsieh on Delivering Happiness

Frank Gruber and Tony Hsieh at DCWEEK

Photos by J Nicholas Tolson

The session was followed up by CityCampDC moderated by Peter Corbett, from our co-producing company, iStrategyLabs. The crowd spent the afternoon discussing DC issues most important to them, and then in true unconference style, formed into groups using the time to brainstorm three big ideas, assigning team members to follow up on each. Some groups used Sunday afternoon to do some fieldwork around the city – others are following up with their teams with specific action items.