Can you believe the ride is so close? Neither can we! The members of Team Mightybytes (Tim, Joy, Bryan and Bill) head out to California today as they eagerly await the start of the ride.

For those who might be hearing about it for the first time, Climate Ride is a non-profit organization that organizes fully supported, charitable bike rides to support sustainable solutions, bike advocacy and environmental causes. Each year there are two rides, one from NY to DC and one along the California coast. The California Ride is set to begin on October 2nd.

One of the greatest rock bands of all time was secretly doling out social media advice well before its time.

While scrolling through the songs in my iTunes library the other day, I came across my collection of Led Zeppelin tracks. And by collection of tracks, I mean every song from all 10 of their albums - yeah, I’m a fan. Well I must have been thinking about social media and community building as I skimmed through the list of songs, because a number of the titles started to speak to me about those exact topics.

Lunch-n-Learn number four was a scorcher inside and out.

Our fourth Lunch-n-Learn Thursday took place on the hottest day of the year so far. Bryan whipped up a salad and some excellent summer squash vegetable fritters with white mushroom sauce while Tim shared his notes for an upcoming workshop for the Arts and Business Council of Chicago on website analytics and social media metrics.

Keeping with the theme of purchasing the majority of our items at the Andersonville Farmers Market, Bryan rustled up a fantastic vegetarian meal, leaving our kitchen 90 degrees and smoky (thanks electric stove), while it was 400 degrees outside with almost 100% humidity. After we ate, Tim gave an informative demonstration on using Google Analytics and social metrics tools to glean actionable business information from your online presence. Here’s what went down…

Tim Frick and Joe Grossman, creative director for Jell Creative, provided tips and tricks for improving search engine optimization and online engagement as part of Harris Theater’s Learning Lab on Thursday, July 14th.

Joe’s presentation to an audience of Chicago-area performance organizations focused on the importance of how companies appear online and continually auditing one’s website to improve search engine optimization while Tim focused on content strategy, social media engagement, and measurement.

Team Mightybytes (Tim, Joy, and Steve) recently returned from the 2011 NYC - DC Climate Ride, biking 300 miles over five days to support sustainable solutions and eight environmental organizations.

Yes, our legs and butts are sore, but we have some great take-aways from the trip. Before and during the ride, we learned a lot about each other, how to effectively raise funds using social media tools, and met dozens of sustainability experts who shared their wisdom with us. Here were some of the take-aways.