In our 12 Questions blog series, we feature interviews with someone from the crowdSPRING community. For these interviews, we pick people who add value to our community – in the blog, in the forums, in the projects. Plainly – activities that make crowdSPRING a better community. Be professional, treat others with respect, help us build something very special, and we’ll take notice.

We’re very proud to feature Rommel Rojas (crowdSPRING username: rommelrojas) today. Rommel lives and works in Valencia, Venezuela.

1. Please tell us about yourself.
My name is Rommel Rojas, I live in Valencia, Venezuela. I’m multimedia designer and amateur photographer/filmmaker. Working as a freelancer for the last 6 years, I’ve been involved in various art projects including two major art exhibitions in my country’s contemporary museum of art.

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Today, Apple is considered one of the best brands in the world. The iPod wasn’t the first mp3 player but it redefined the entire industry. The iPad wasn’t the first tablet PC and yet Apple may sell more than 10 million of them in 2010. Apple may sell 48 million iPhones in 2010.

Today, nearly everything that Apple touches turns to gold. But this wasn’t always true. From the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, Apple was a niche company with many product failures and a poorly defined vision.

The transformation that turned Apple from a niche player into an industry giant started when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. That transformation offers an important lesson for startups about marketing and branding.

Speaking in 1997 about Apple’s Think Different campaign (released the same day as the speech), Steve Jobs eloquently and passionately explained the difficulty of marketing when you’re competing for attention with so many other brands:

Marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world; it’s a very noisy world. And we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. And so we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.

This is a very important lesson for entrepreneurs and startups. It’s even more important today because social media creates opportunities for companies to engage customers, but also adds a tremendous amount of noise to an already noisy marketplace.

There are many ways to seize opportunities to tell your prospective customers what you want them to know about you. Some leverage an effective tagline. Others present products as stories. Yet others study and leverage social currency. Many different approaches work for different companies.

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I have a couple of kids and, although they are getting older now and moving towards their own adult lives, I learn from them every day. Watching them grow, learn, and develop into individuals has taught me many lessons, including how to be a better entrepreneur. It is valuable to step back and consider ways in which we can all do and be better and lessons we can draw from children and their unique approach to living, their fresh attitudes about others, and their ongoing joy in making their way through the world.

1. Kids have their own logic.

2. Kids are curious.

Kids are curious about the world around them, about how things work, and about other people. They grow, change, and learn new things constantly and have an innate ability to absorb and process information quickly. Entrepreneurs can benefit from their example – be like a kid and move up the learning curve as quickly as possible: seek out new information; gather new ideas; grow new theories. Never stop looking at how others do things and extract the best practices for your own business.

3. Kids are creative.

Kids are ever resourceful: they devise new ways to build, figure out different ways to do things, and constantly craft new solutions to challenges as they arise. They do not hesitate to make up their own answers and are not afraid of being wrong. Entrepreneurs should be equally fearless and equally inventive in their approach to business and work.

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Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week about social media and marketing.

Why you should give ideas away for free – http://tinyurl.com/347uf83

This Week in Brand Strategy & Advertising – http://bit.ly/c9xn8k

Your Facebook Friends Are Watching You—Did We Just Move Closer to 1984? – http://tcrn.ch/bzwCwG

5 Reasons Why Facebook Places is Kind of a Big Deal – http://bit.ly/9zC42y 4SQ

Social media works and is respected – http://bit.ly/aOy9Yj

Good thoughts from @benkunz about SXSW panel voting – http://bit.ly/cRuszQ

A Guide to Online Marketing Tools – from Wall Street Journal – http://bit.ly/btCfB1

What’s your favorite post about social media or marketing from the past week? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week relevant to small business.

A Guide to Online Marketing Tools – http://bit.ly/btCfB1

How to get more exposure for your Facebook pages – http://bit.ly/9x36uY

Ruralsourcing: A Win-Win Idea for Small Businesses – http://ow.ly/18CEkD

Revenue Development – http://bit.ly/8YR9ZS

Pricing Models, the Freemium Myth and Why you May Not be Charging Enough for Your Product – http://bit.ly/aiotbt

5 Rules of Thumb for A/B Split Testing – http://t.co/9LC83uw

How to Stop Being A Control Freak – http://bit.ly/bScIx8

What is the next wave of entrepreneurial opportunity? – http://is.gd/elIvk

Products that never see the light of day don’t make anyone uncomfortable – http://bit.ly/cjQ7PR

What’s your favorite post for small business owners from the past week? Feel free to leave below in the comments.

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week about startups, entrepreneurship and leadership.

The screenshot on the left features Becky McCray’s Small Biz Survival blog – an excellent resource for rural and small town businesses.

Why Finding Technical Cofounders Is Hard – http://bit.ly/atHjHQ

Products that never see the light of day don’t make anyone uncomfortable – http://bit.ly/cjQ7PR

5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches – http://bit.ly/91ezcb

A Guide to Online Marketing Tools – http://bit.ly/btCfB1

10 Insights From SocialDevCamp Chicago – http://bit.ly/d8qjsv

How to Stop Being A Control Freak – http://bit.ly/bScIx8

Why you should give ideas away for free – http://tinyurl.com/347uf83

What is the next wave of entrepreneurial opportunity? – http://is.gd/elIvk

24-year-old entrepreneur putting high-speed Internet in rural areas – http://bit.ly/cgMkti

Google and the Myth of Free Time – http://bit.ly/bFmD21

What’s your favorite post about entrepreneurship, startups or leadership from the past few weeks?

It’s South by Southwest panel picker time again! August is when folks from around the world have the chance to view panel submissions for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival and things are in full swing.

First a shameless pitch – VOTE FOR US! Ross and I have submitted proposals for the 3rd year in a row and hope, once again, to be selected to participate. Our 2009 panel “Is Spec Work Evil? The Online Creative Community Speaks“ (http://sxsw.com/node/1527) was a wild success and many attendees said that it was the best panel of the conference that year! in 2010 we hosted “Third Coast: How to Be a Startup Outside of Silicon Valley” (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4509) and had a great audience of entrepreneurs from around the world to discuss the topic.

This year we have proposed two really cool panels and would appreciate if you would click through to vote and leave a comment!

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week about graphic design and web design.

The image is the movie poster for The Godfather, one of my favorite movies. It’s in one of the posts below highlighting typography in movie posters.

An in-Depth Guide to Working With Typography in Illustrator – http://bit.ly/cCAhGQ

How the New York Times Creates its Infographics – http://post.ly/qIBN

30 New Free High-Quality Fonts – http://bit.ly/cOxnqS

6 Killer Text Replacement Tricks to Improve your Typography – http://bit.ly/c5gvR5

35 Purple Web Designs to Inspire You – http://bit.ly/98PYVY

50 Exquisite Wine Label Design Samples – http://bit.ly/d7nXUh

50 Exciting Party Flyers Design – http://bit.ly/bV9S7B

Beautiful Contact Forms for your Inspiration – http://ow.ly/2nleP

30 Fun and Fantastic Wedding Invitations - http://bit.ly/blMuBS

20 Must See Examples of Signin & Signup Pages – http://bit.ly/aEMGNX

Tutorial: “Lady Luck” T-Shirt Illustration http://is.gd/ekaAb

Know Your Icons: A Brief History of Computer Icons – http://bit.ly/dfIJdh

Typography in Movie Posters – http://bit.ly/bDBTRo

Beautiful Ladies Illustrations – http://bit.ly/dk7rF1

28 Creative PowerPoint and Keynote Presentation Designs – http://bit.ly/bSoO9J

50+ Very Useful Free Vector Illustrator Patterns & Resources From 2010 – http://bit.ly/8ZGdqg

25 Tutorials for Getting Started with your Wacom Tablet – http://bit.ly/bUFN1o

100 Delightful and Pleasing Color Palettes and Swatches – http://bit.ly/bOBsJD

3 Deadly Sins of Print Design – http://is.gd/e624I

Collection of Wonderful Vintage Beer Advertisements and Posters – http://bit.ly/9Kb39G

60+ Useful PSD Templates for Graphical Designers – http://bit.ly/dmzrOu

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Give Back is the crowdSPRING community’s way of helping worthy non-profit and charity causes in need. Creatives in the crowdSPRING community have agreed that for these special projects, no monetary awards will be given. crowdSPRING will waive all fees and will assist the organizations with posting their project. We will collaborate together to help those less fortunate. You can read more about the origins of Give Back here.

We’re thrilled that the crowdSPRING community’s next Give Back project is for MagazineLiteracy.org

MagazineLiteracy.org is an innovative effort to help families and at-risk kids. The organization’s mission:

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Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week about social media and marketing.

The image is the title slide of one of the 28 creative PowerPoint and Keynote Presentations linked below.

We’re Living In The Dark Ages Of Social Media – http://bit.ly/smdarkages

Google’s New Forced Transparency: Is Your Agency Ready? – http://selnd.com/cp8yXI

Forget Strategy: How do you Scale the Social Media Strategists – http://bit.ly/9Ys59V

28 Creative PowerPoint and Keynote Presentation Designs – http://bit.ly/bSoO9J

Correlation between popularity and influence weaker than expected – http://scr.bi/cdxueL

Follower hyperinflation and what truly matters – http://bit.ly/dcDDx1

55% more web site visitors for companies that blog – http://bit.ly/aC1jtP

Fun video on evolution of advertising – http://bit.ly/bYT99C

Worry About What You Say More Than What Others Say About You – http://bit.ly/bSXROY

A Guide to Online Marketing Tools – from Wall Street Journal – http://bit.ly/btCfB1

What’s your favorite post about social media or marketing from the past week? Feel free to leave a comment below.