Tech~Surf~Blog

Jason Kintzler of PitchEngine Speaking in Twin Cities July 13

According to ace conference organizer Jen Kane of Kane Consulting in Minneapolis, it's now a "brave new world" in public relations. And to help managers of local businesses and PR practitioners alike better understand how "new hybrid media forms" are changing the game, she's flying in a national speaker who's an expert on the subject. 

Called "PR 2.0: The New Tools of the Trade," the event will be held Monday July 13 from 8:00 am till 4:00 pm at the Westin Galleria, 3201 Galleria, in Edina, MN 55435. Jason Kintzler, founder and CEO of PitchEngine, is the keynote presenter.  PitchEngine, based in Casper, Wyoming, is "a social media release service" that enables PR professionals to package stories and share them with journalists, bloggers, and influencers via the social web. (By the way, if you want to follow Jason, here's his Twitter page, which tells us he's also a former journalist, a graphic designer, a fly fisherman, and a snowboarder.)

Said Jen in announcing the event (she's pictured below, and that's colleague Kary Delaria at right),  "If you’re in the business of sharing facts, telling stories, starting conversations, and monitoring dialogue about your company or client, this is stuff you need to know."   

 The conference will also feature eight breakout sessions reflecting the most cutting edge and innovative thinking on how to navigate this rapidly changing industry. I know most all these folks and can attest they know their stuff.

The breakout sessions include:

•  "Using Social Media Behind the Firewall" - Gary Koelling, Best Buy, and Cameron Gross, GreaterThan Media, a consultant to Best Buy.
•  "Pitching Using New Media Tools" - Eva Keiser, Senior Vice President, Risdell McKinney Public Relations.
•  "Online Reputation Management" - Greg Swan, Digital Strategy Manager, Weber Shandwick Digital Communications.
•  "Incorporating Podcasts and Video Into Your Marketing and PR Mix" - Albert Maruggi, founder of Provident Partners and Producer of the Marketing Edge podcast.
•  "Self Publishing for PR" - Arik Hanson, ACH Communications/Chief Blogger, Communications Conversations.
•  "How to Monitor Your Brand Through Social Media Channels" - Connie Benson, Chief Community Officer, Techrigy.
•  "Optimizing Content of Press Releases and Beyond" - Jolina Pettice, Senior Account Manager, TopRank Online Marketing.
•  "Small Brands. Big Results" - Blois Olson, Executive Vice President, Tunheim Partners.

In addition, there will be open lab periods where attendees can network with others and explore new online PR and marketing tools and applications.

The organizers tell me that remaining space is limited, but registration may still be available as you read this.  To register and see the list of those attending to date, here's the PR 2.0 event registration page. You can also see the press release for the event here: a PitchEngine release, of course!

Can't make the event but still want to schmooze?

You're in luck. Kane Consulting also announced they're holding a "TweetUp" after the conference from 6:00 to 9:00 pm at Tavern on France!  You may have seen some buzz about this on our local Social Media Breakfast (SMBmsp) site -- well, now it’s official.  It's your chance to meet Jason Kintzler of PitchEngine and hob-nob with the local PR digerati.  But you must RSVP here for the TweetUp.  It's open to all.  There’s no cost to attend this evening gathering, and you can simpy order food and drinks off the menu.

See ya there!

GlueCon 09: My Interviews with VCs Brad Feld and Seth Levine

While I was reporting from the first-year Glue Conference the past few days in Denver, I had the opportunity to interview two of the guys behind the scenes in launching and planning this great event: Brad Feld and Seth Levine, partners in VC firm Foundry Group, which is based in nearby Boulder, CO. (Actually, of the two, Seth was more involved in Glue, while Brad was the main guy behind launching a sister event called Defrag, which is held in the fall in Denver, the first one being in November 2007.) 

I had noticed in the days leading up to Glue that Foundry Group had announced a new investment (Gist, whose founder was at Glue), then I saw two more investments they announced on their blogs while the event was going on (Medialets and CloudEngines). So, I decided to see if I could interview both Brad and Seth during breaks on Day 2 of Glue to learn about these latest new portfolio companies of theirs.

Brad (left photo) and Seth typify what I've called before The New Face of Venture Investing -- a post I actually did in December 2007, which specifically called out Brad.   I've also written previously about Seth, in a post from June 2008 called The Best Advice I've Seen Lately on Using Startup Advisors. They are both really nice guys, wicked smart, and doing great work helping many entrepreneurs build successful startups in a place that...well, is not Silicon Valley.  Yes, they've proved in spades that it can be done.  And, unlike your typical VCs, they do believe in investing outside their own backyard -- as is the case with all three of their latest investments.  Sure, many of their portfolio companies are in Colorado, where a lot of innovation is going on (which they're involved in on a day-to-day basis -- including the TechStars program, which they helped launch).  But they're also smart enough to know great ideas and great teams can live anywhere. I love the way they get involved in these events of theirs -- they're right in the middle of it all, very much a part of the "community" that each of these events they've launched really has become. It doesn't take long to realize that both these guys are "people persons" through and through.

I spoke with Brad first, about the Gist investment, which had been announced the week before, and in particular about the investment they had just announced early that morning, on Day 2 of Glue: CloudEngines.

• Download the MP3 of my interview with Brad Feld.

Later the same morning, I spoke at greater length with Seth, primarily about Foundry Group leading a $4M Series A investment in Medialets, which had been announced on Day 1 of Glue.  We also spoke a bit about an earlier investment of Seth's in the advertising space, AdMeld.

• Download the MP3 of my interview with Seth Levine.

For more about the Glue Conference, see my Twitterstream for the past three days.  I must have tweeted darn-near a couple hundred times!  And I saw this morning after I was back in Minneapolis that conference organizer Eric Norlin said he'd just read through all the tweets on the event -- 62 pages total!  You can find the whole shebang by going to search.twitter.com and entering "gluecon" in the search box. It was a very successful event by all accounts.  I'm really happy I was part of it, and have already said I'll sign up for next year! 

Upcoming Event to Focus on the ROI of Digital Marketing

A Twin Cities event for senior executives and marketing professionals has been announced by long-standing Minneapolis web marketing firm Ciceron.  Entitled Radical ROI: Seizing the Potential of the Digital Marketplace, the half-day panel will be held Monday, May 11, 2009, from 8:00 to 11:00 am at the Midland Hills Country Club in St. Paul.

The event offers attendees a chance to hear how a panel of local business leaders have transformed their organizations to thrive in the digital marketplace -- and I am privileged to be one of those panelists:

• Paul Douglas: CEO, Weather Nation (and former chief meteorologist, WCCO TV)

• Jan McDaniel: CEO, JTM Vision (and former CEO, American Red Cross Twin Cities)

• Phil Hotchkiss: Founder, BigCharts.com

• Joel Kramer: Founder, MinnPost.com (and former Publisher, Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

• Graeme Thickins: Founder, GT&A Strategic Marketing

• Andrew Eklund: CEO, Ciceron Digital Marketing

A special reduced rate of $195 per person is available till May 3 at this registration page, with a group rate of only $395 for up to five people from the same organization.

Ciceron is a web marketing and consulting agency based in Minneapolis. It offers full-service solutions from professional search engine optimization and email marketing programs to in-depth metrics and performance tracking.  Its clients have included such major brands as Home Depot, Nascar, USBank, Andersen Windows, Best Buy, Target, and Pepsi.  For more about Cicero, check out their about page, their full client list, and here are their management bios.

I hope to see you at "Radical ROI: Seizing the Potential of the Digital Marketplace" on May 11. Again, use this registration page before May 3 to get those preferential rates.

DEMO 09 - A Closing Conversation With Some Buddies...

Talk about an impromptu podcast!  This is kind of a "DEMOgang" thing, as it were...with my longtime buddy Steve Larsen, a serial starup founder and former CEO of Krugle Inc. (just acquired), which he debuted at DEMO '06 ... Eric Haus, a product manager at Zuora ... and another buddy, Chris Gammill, who's a startup advisor in LA and had previously been with a DEMO presenting company, in '07; he was attending DEMO this time with TechZulu.com, which did video coverage.  The four of us just happened to converge to the same table in the midst of some of the Pavilion stations to unwind with a glass of wine -- and we ended up having a very fun, weird, rambling bull session on everything from startups, to chemistry experiments, to motorcycles -- totally ad hoc stuff, and the discussion ended up being my longest podcast recording of the whole event!  Yikes -- a 10-meg MP3!  At one point, one of the guys asked if I was going to edit it, and I said, hell no, I don't have time for that.  So, here, friends, the full, uncut version...  (In the photo, left to right: Chris Gammill, Erik Haus, and Steve Larsen.)  What a way to end another great DEMO!

Download the MP3

DEMO 09 - Closing Interview With Chris Shipley

Before I called it another DEMO, I just had to grab a moment with longtime executive producer Chris Shipley. Chris had been struggling with a bit of hoarse voice for most of the event, but held up remarkably well through till the end, when she introduced the seven "DEMOgod Award" winners (Coveroo, Silverstone, PureWire, Gwabbit, Ontier/Pixetell, Skout, and Avaak/Vue), and the People's Choice award winner (SmartyCard). I wanted to get her take as she wrapped up this second-to-the-last DEMO of her marvelous 13-year career with this event (she's co-producing the DEMOfall '09 event with Matt Marshall).

Download the MP3

DEMO 09 - Interview With DEMO Presenter Xmarks

The very last presenter interview I did was one I didn't want to miss, so I huffed and puffed and made it to their booth just before closing.  Xmarks has a free bookmark sync utility that my friends at DEMO say enables it to offer "an unparalleled recommendation system."  As I was hurriedly tweeting while they were on stage, I mistyped the number of bookmarks they manage: I had said 6 million (duh), and in fact it's six hundred million. Almost 10 million people have downloaded the company's Firefox add-on, and they'll soon have add-ons for other browsers as well. I caught up with James Joaquin, who was recruited last year to lead this startup by Mitch Kapor, chairman and founder. And the company christened itself with its new name just prior to DEMO. Listen up...

Download the MP3

DEMO 09 - Interview With DEMO Presenter Primal Fusion

Time was growing short, and I still wanted to interview a couple more presenting companies before DEMO '09 was history...so, I pointed myself toward Primal Fusion's booth. This company piqued my interest with its talk on stage about "Thought Networking."  They describe their solution as a "brainstorming partner."  I got CEO Peter Sweeney going here with a major, detailed pitch...probably more than you bargained for! (he's showing me stuff on screen that you can't see) ... but hopefully you'll get the gist of this very fascinating semantic solution. Peter is pictured below at left, with Robert Barlow-Busch, director of product design.

Download the MP3

DEMO 09 - Interview With DEMO Presenter AppZero

As the last session in the DEMO Pavilion was quickly winding down (it was also the closing reception), I finally got a chance to get up to the AppZero booth. This startup was one of the few enterprise-IT related presenters at this event, and it was all about -- you guessed it, cloud computing! (Buzzword of the year.) The AppZero guys did one heck of an impressive stage demonstration, showing how enterprise apps -- even real mission-critical ones -- can be provisioned instantly and moved with a mouse click to run anywhere, from data center to cloud, or to another cloud service. I spoke with Greg O'Connor, who's pictured below at left with Ed Johns, senior system engineer.

Download the MP3

DEMO 09 - Interview With DEMO Presenter Skout

One of the most talked about presenters this year was a location-based online dating service called Skout. It used to be just another dating site till the founders came up with a new wrinkle that uses large touch-screen plasma displays in bars and night clubs -- so you can find and flirt with other singles in the immediate vicinity, meaning in that bar or anywhere within about a mile and a half radius. The CEO, Christian Wiklund, and VP of bus dev, Redg Snodgrass, did a high-energy stage pitch, which included the unveiling of one of their new kiosks that will soon be in 10,000 night spots all over the country in a town near you -- in various sizes, some freestanding, some wall-mounted. I spoke with Ben Pollack, director of products, who's pictured at right (that's CEO Christian Wiklund at left). Note: Skout was one of seven "DEMOgod Award" winners announced as the final conference session wrapped up  Tuesday afternoon. Yes, it's true: it seems the judges are really into flirting.... :-)

Download the MP3

DEMO 09 - Interview With DEMO Presenter BitGravity

This interview was with a company that both presented on stage (for a second year running), and provided technology for the event -- specifically, the video streaming technology behind the "DEMO Live" broadcast, which was enjoyed by a worldwide audience over the past two days. I managed to run down BitGravity's CEO, Perry Wu, to tell us more about his growing content distribution startup.

Download the MP3