Tech~Surf~Blog

Minnebar '08 Rocked the Mouse, the House, the State, and the Twitterverse

The third annual Minnebar unconference, Minnesota's own Barcamp event, definitely was the place to be for the local Internet developer/entrepreneur community yesterday. (That was an understatement.) The t-shirt we all got, below, says it all. More than 430 stormed the Coffman Union at the University of Minnesota, record attendance for the event (and likely for any Barcamp to date in the U.S.). It was pre-Twittered like mad in the days leading up, but the volume of tweets during the day itself -- the real-time conversation -- was nothing less than awesome. I think we even surprised ourselves. Check it out: just go to Summize and type "Minnebar" in the search window at the top. You're looking at a lot of energy, folks! You can scroll through pages and pages of conversations -- who knows how many! At one point yesterday, Minnebar was in the top four or five largest collective conversations going on in the whole, freaking Twitterverse! Pretty cool. (My own coverage is at www.Twitter.com/GraemeThickins, and four of us were also tweeting all day at www.Twitter.com/Minnov8.)

The event drew techies from not just the Twin Cities, but throughout the state, and even from places like Madison, Des Moines, and South Dakota, to name a few locales I heard in passing. And I know people as far away as Florida and Colorado who were really wishing they could be there. But, you know what?  Thanks to the magic of the Internet and this little thing we call Twitter, there were a whole lot of people on both coasts who were noticing and wishing, too.

Something very cool was happening on the campus of the U of MN yesterday. And everyone who was there can be damn proud. Minnesota Tech, you rock! Huuge thanks to the organizers, the awesome  sponsors (I've never even seen so much pizza in my life!), and to everyone that showed up -- who all contributed and benefited. And, doggone if the whole world wasn't noticing while we were at it...

Minnebar '08 Schedule Announced - It's Hot!

The program for our annual Minnesota Barcamp -- Minnebar -- was just released late yesterday. The event is being held Saturday, May 10, at the Coffman Union on the U of MN campus. Here's a look at where things are so far, and note that it's subject to change.

Don't miss the panel at 12:00 noon: "State of the State: Technology in Minnesota" in the theater on the first floor. Panelists include:
• Doug Olson, who heads a Microsoft developer team in MN
• Jamie Thinglestad, Mpls-based CTO of Dow Jones Online 
• Michael Gorman, Partner at VC firm Split Rock Partners
• Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad (a unit of Best Buy)
• And Dan Grigsby, our infamous local rabble rouser at Unpossible.com :-) and original lead organizer of Minnebar/Minnedemo.

Note the "Lightning Demos" at 4:00 and 5:00 -- which I think will be especially good!  These are five-minute presentations available to new or existing startups, or anyone who has a new idea or favorite topic to talk about. If you want to add yours to the list (which is not yet published), just send an email to event co-orgnanizer Luke Francl at look (at) recursion (dot) org -- telling him your name, company name, and what you'll be talking about.

See you Saturday! This will be fun -- how could it not be, with a frenzied crowd of some 400 of your fellow MN tech enthusiasts? :-)

I'll be there Twittering and shootin' pix all over. And I'm also part of the Minnov8 team, who'll be Twittering as well. But, trust me, there'll be plenty of hot networking in between!

Geeks, Entrepreneurs, Designers, Angels, VCs, and Marketeers ..... Let's Mix It Up!

Minnebar is Saturday, May 10!  MInnesota's all-day annual Barcamp event is not to be missed.  New venue this year (bigger and better): the gloriously redone Coffman Union at the U of MN (cool place if you haven't checked it out yet). To sign up, just go the event site (a wiki page), hit Edit Page, and add your name and links. (Minnebar is held once a year, while evening "Minnedemo" sessions are held in each of the other three quarters.) Already, almost 300 of your compatriots have signed up for this year's edition of Minnebar, and many more will be as the week progresses. It's free! That's right -- the whole damn thing! (thanks to the sponsors) ... including breakfast, lunch, reception and beers following. You even get a free event t-shirt! And you can come and go as you please, choosing just the sessions that interest you -- though I would highly recommend hanging out all day for the networking, which is really the biggest benefit. You can do your own session if you and/or some colleagues have something to say (and if there's still room). Hit the link that says MinneBarSessions, click Edit Page, and add your title and session description while you still can. In the coming days, the organizers will be cutting off new entries and publishing a full schedule with all the breakout sessions. That should then be available at the event site, or you can pick up a hard copy on your arrival. Come early -- the event kicks off at 8:30 am.

Attention Startups and Angels: Note the "Lightning Talks" Session
On the MInneBarSessions page, scroll down and look for a link to apply to give a five-minute pitch.  Ideal if you're a startup, whether just forming or further along. An entire hour is being devoted to these rapid-fire presentations. This is a great way to see what's going on out there in our state, hear the latest business concepts and startup ideas, or get updates on the progress of local startups you may have already heard about. [This will be like the DEMO conferences I know so well. My advice: hone the message hard, and practice well!]

This event is gonna be killer, I promise you. If you want to know what's really goin' on in tech in Minnesota, you have to be here. Bring lots of business cards, a camera, your laptop (we'll have mondo wi-fi!), wear your favorite tee, and get ready to learn, share, network, gab, blog and Twitter your brains out, and meet tons of fun, like-minded people.

Hey, in my book, it definitely beats sittin' on some cold lake fishing!  :-)

For Innovation in Minnesota, Check Out 'Minnov8'

Here's the first part of another post I did over at our new multi-author blog called Minnov8:

The University of Minnesota is among the top patent producers in the world, ranking #4 on Scientist Magazine’s list of “Patent Powerhouses,” behind only three other major American universities. Yet, quantity of patents hardly paints the entire picture. What about helping to start up companies to commercialize those patents?

According to the U’s own business development people (see link to Powerpoint presentation at bottom), the 20-year success record of the U’s technology company spinoffs is only half the university average nationally — and less than one-fourth the success record of the nation’s premier schools. What’s more, in one recent year (2004), for example, the U of MN spun off only one company compared to 14 at the University of Michigan and 16 at the University of Illinois. Why I am focusing here on spinoffs? Well, because, according the U’s own business development people, creating university spinoffs is “much more profitable than licensing (revenues)” to the school.

And, besides, the largest source of the U’s licensing revenues will run out soon .... post continued here.

Angels and VCs Working More Closely? Signs of Hope...

In the technology startup world, angels and VCs have at best been seen as different camps, with separate perspectives, and even being at odds with each other many times. One is from Venus, the other's from Mars. One tends to be a cocky MBA, the other's an entrepreneur with real operational experience. One pounds spreadsheets all day, the other's a cowboy. As a minimum, they certainly don't have a record of working closely together. They can compete for deal flow, they often distrust each another, and it's frequently heard that angel investments can foul up the chance for later VC rounds because of unrealistic valuations or poor cap structure, or whatever.

There was a time when "venture capital" was synonymous with seed-stage investing. But, with the trend in recent years toward larger and larger funds, some approaching $1 billion, "You don't have to do much math to realize that such firms are forced to make bigger and bigger investments to generate adequate returns for their limited partners," says Sramana Mitra in her recent column in Forbes: The Real VCs of Silicon Valley. (Mitra is an experienced technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley.) An excerpt from the column:

"...if you are an entrepreneur, especially a first-time entrepreneur, you need to look for the 'real' VCs who are willing to take risks and invest their time in mentoring you, not those big names that the term venture capital normally conjures."

And who does Mitra say those real VCs are?

"So-called 'angels.' While VCs primarily invest other people's money, angels invest their own. An entrepreneur working on a fledgling idea needs investors who not only provide valuable business advice but also connect the dots to make business development partnerships happen, help recruit key team members and help move the venture from concept to a fundable company. Angels tend to have the operational background necessary to play such a role."

Angels investing is no small phenomenon. One study found that that angels invested $25.6 billion in 2006 in the U.S. in 251,000 mostly early-stage deals (for an average investment of about $100,000).

In her piece, Mitra seriously questions whether and how the gap created by VCs moving to larger and larger investments is being filled. Her closing line: "In capitalism, gaps generally get spotted and filled. This one--and the entrepreneurs in it--is still waiting."

Clarion Call
Mitra's point comes early in her column: "we need to create a sort of microequity program for start-ups." It's getting to be a common refrain; angels are clearly being expected to pick up more of the slack, as VCs leave early-stage investing behind and entrepreneurs get increasingly frustrated. Yet positive things are starting to happen, with more and more sophisticated, managed angel groups forming (or becoming more formalized), all across the country.

Note: this is not just a Silicon Valley phenomenon. That may be the epicenter of the VC industry, and where most of their money is invested, but not so for angel investors. Their is no epicenter. Sure, there are some notable angel groups in the Valley. But the distribution of these groups is much more even across the country. If anything, the Midwest rules. The Angel Capital Association is located in, are you ready? ...Kansas. Of the organization's approximately 150 member groups (see their directory), it's the Midwest region that has the largest number of such groups (40), by a wide margin. So, yes, it's fair to say that angel investing is more a heartland thing.

Reactions from Both Sides
Seeing the column in Forbes inspired me to do another blog post on angel investing. (See this category of my blog for lots more I've written on the topic; I also did a recent post on the new blog Minnov8.) After reading the Forbes piece, I reached out to three of my contacts whom I thought would have something to say in reaction.  First, from the angel side:

"I really think that linking the angel and VC markets really hurts both models," said Pete Birkeland, CFO of angel network management firm RAIN Source Capital, St. Paul. "The VCs get hammered for not investing early enough, and the angels get hammered for scattershot investing. These are two complementary but distinct activities. They're both needed to continue to grow companies and innovate. As we run our angel groups, we want to be able to look at opportunities that are early and risky, and invest in those that have a potential for a return.  That return may be 3-5x, and we may be able to live on a seven-year horizon --  that (scenario) wouldn't even get past a first screen by a VC. We need an 'angel manifesto' that breaks us away from VCs, and the mindset that we have to all become VCs.  However, with the view of limited partners and the dollars involved, it's tough to escape the gravitational pull of the VC model."

And from an individual angel: "Founders, especially those without prior startup experience, need strong advisors, even operational advisors," said Doug Henrich, a former Microsoft executive and angel investor now living in the Twin Cities. "For an angel to be successful, I feel he or she needs to be active in the startup. The money of course is needed, but the experience and counsel are more valuable in successful startups. The experience has to come from somewhere...I wonder how large VCs can make money in the software space these days."  I read that last comment of Henrich's to mean that, for software startups, angel investors are naturally a better fit -- that such firms need the type of mentoring that comes from angels in their early stages. In other words, VCs' big money isn't the answer; it doesn't tend to produce the desired result.

One Big Sign of Hope
From the VC side, I very much wanted to get a comment from a firm I know well -- one that started in Minneapolis, still has close ties here, but has been headquartered in Palo Alto for several years: Crescendo Ventures. David Spreng is the Managing General Partner of the firm, and has been on the board of the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) since 2005. He recently launched a great blog called "Lightbulb," and here's his About page there. But the most interesting thing is that David was recently tapped by the NVCA board to be the organization's liaison to the angel community. That, to me, is very cool -- a sure sign the two sides will be coming closer together in the future.

David was jumping on a plane when he I caught him, but pointed me to a recent blog post of his titled Angels and VCs Find Common Ground. In it, he reprints an article he co-wrote a couple of months ago with a board member of the Angel Capital Association. I had heard wind of this article before, and told him I bet I could get some good insights of his from it. I was right. I encourage you to read the full article, but here's an excerpt:

While both angel groups and VCs have issues to improve in our relationships and processes, establishing strong relationships with quality angel groups can be extremely valuable to a venture firm’s deal flow and ultimate returns.

At $250,000 to $1 million, the average size round for an angel group is often below what most venture capitalists would consider investing in a Series A round. However, respected angel groups may well have the next generation of promising early stage companies that a venture capitalist is not ready to invest in but also doesn’t want to lose track of.

The ACA and the NVCA are both committed to working together to improve the relationships between angel groups and venture capitalists by sharing best practices and enhancing communications between the two associations.

Transitions from angel groups to venture capitalists should be seamless and considered a valued relationship for all the stakeholders, including entrepreneurs, co-investors and limited partners.

As I said, signs of hope. And it can all only be good for you entrepreneurs out there.

UPDATE (4/11/08): Well, maybe not as much hope as I thought. Just saw Sramana Mitra's new column this morning in Forbes:  Fund Envy: Venture funds are getting bigger all the time. This is bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs. Yes, she says, taking a poke at the name of a well-known VC's blog, "Greed, indeed, is infectious."

More on Best Buy VC News: Geek Squad Founder Speaks

As a followup to my previous post about Best Buy planning to step up its corporate VC activity, I thought it would be good to get some additional perspective on this news. So, I sought out a couple of my contacts inside the company. I couldn't think of anyone better than Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad, which was acquired by Best Buy about five years ago. (He was out on vacation last week when the news broke.) Robert still heads the Geek Squad -- in an environment much different from his early days, but one he says he very much enjoys. And the business has expanded significantly. Robert's a great guy, an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. In fact, he was named the University of Minnesota's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007, and I blogged about the event where that was announced (the Minnesota Cup Awards), and about Robert's excellent talk there.

I asked Robert two questions about the recent development at Best Buy:

Tech-Surf-Blog: What's your take on the news about the formation of "Best Buy Capital"?   

Robert Stephens: This is just the most recent example of a trend that other companies like Intel, Google, and Yahoo have championed.  I think it offers another choice for the entrepreneur.  I chose not to take VC money or other investors because I did not want to see The Geek Squad bought and sold by people just looking for a financial transaction.  The Geek Squad chose to acquire Best Buy because we really help each other in a permanent way.  We help differentiate Best Buy, and we are able to use their size and resources in our quest for World Domination.

With all of the new web technologies and speed of software development, there are some hardware and software products that might be a better fit through partnership with a Best Buy rather than a traditional VC path. Choice is always good.

Tech-Surf-Blog: What does the new Best Buy Capital say about the importance of startup innovation to the company?

Robert Stephens: Well, either you drive innovation inside your company, or it will get driven for you by external market forces.  This new arrangement gives all of us inside the company more choices in how we develop ideas.  Coming from a startup of one person to a 140,000-person strong global company, change never seems as fast as it used to.  I'm all for this if it helps us try more ideas. 

Best Buy is kind of like Madonna.  You may not like her music, but you have to respect the fact that she knows her business, and rarely do pop stars stay on top as long as she has.  It's the same in retail.  You must constantly re-invent yourself.  I don't think people realize how dynamic Best buy is.  It's why I chose them.

They were the first major retailer to pioneer the "grab and go".  First major retailer to develop the gift card.  First major retailer to go commission-free.  On and on.  Best Buy is also smart enough to know that they have to re-invent faster and faster.  You have a lot of choices on where you buy your stuff.  Sure, you might think, "I'll just buy everything online".  That's fine, but it's not that simple.  Some of those new flat screens have to be seen when choosing.  You buy laptops now based on "look and feel".  Did you ever think that Dell would allow themselves to be sold inside a Best Buy?  This means that there are always going to be choices on how you innovate. It also means that trying to predict the future in a linear fashion is futile.  The key to is try a lot of things and fail as fast as possible.

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For more on Robert, see this recent interview in Fortune Small Business: Geek Squad's Second Act.  And, for insight into the latest with the VC business, check out this article published last week in Wired: VCs Adjust to Facing More Competitors for Fewer Companies. In addition, I recapped recent VC industry developments in this post about a series of Forbes articles back in late January. Finally, I wrote a post a while back about the New Face of Venture Investing.

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I also got this reaction on the Best Buy Capital news from a source within Best Buy who would prefer to remain anonymous: "I'm not surprised. I think it's a natural outgrowth of Best Buy's internal environment of encouraging innovation through this kind of de facto process of allowing people to move ideas as long as they can prove their idea's worth along the way. Cultivating new ideas, iterating them, and learning fast is one of the things that Best Buy excels at, actually. So, it just makes sense they would take this outside the walls of the company to do it for direct profit."

Thanks to both contacts, and I hope their comments provide further perspective for you on this story.

(Postcsript: I mentioned the Minnesota Cup above. This is an annual competition for entrepreneurs throughout the state, and the organization just announced its 2008 program. Details are at www.MinnesotaCup.org.)

Bloggers Break 'Best Buy Capital' Story; Company Goes Mum

In yet another example of how blogging is changing the news business and the PR business, it's interesting to go back and look at what happened over the past 10 days or so with a story relating to Best Buy -- a company I know well, headquartered right here in suburban Minneapolis. This little tale is instructive to those involved in communications and journalism.

First of all, I think the underlying news story here is a positive one for Best Buy, and for its employees and shareholders. (Full disclosure: I like the company, I have friends there, and I did a little interim gig there myself back in 1999/2000. It is an amazing outfit.) But it's still interesting to watch big companies like this try to deal (or fail to deal) with the realities of new media.

Here's the story as it broke locally here in the Twin Cities yesterday (Friday), by our very good Business Journal: Best Buy builds VC unit to find next big things. (More disclosure: I was contacted early in the week by one of the writers of this story to provide reaction to the news, and was quoted in it.) But what's more interesting to me, even than the news itself, is the fact that it wasn't first discovered by a traditional media outlet: a blogger had actually broken this story the week before. If you're in the journalism or PR business and have any sense of the changes being wrought by new media, you of course know such occurrences are becoming more and more common.

The Fuse Is Lit
A consumer electronics blogger by the name of Lee Distad in Edmonton blogged this piece of news first on March 18 with this post: Best Buy Capital to Invest in Tech Innovations. He had more to say about it on a weekly recap he did the same day on another blog: Best Buy Opens Their Own Venture Fund. Soon, another blogger, who happens to be a VC (and also a Canuck) -- that being Paul Kedrosky of the blog Infectious Greed -- had picked up on Distad's breaking news and posted a link in his own post: Return of Corporate Venture Investors. (A little aside: what he fails to realize, and the others as well, is that Best Buy is not a new corporate venture investor; they've been at this game for many years. The new entity appears to signal simply an expansion or formalization of their practice of making minority investments in promising new companies from time to time that are strategic to their business.  The name Best Buy Capital just appears to perhaps be a new name for this entity -- though it should not be confused with an old entity called "Best Buy Capital LP," which the company formed in 1994 to raise expansion capital, as this old SEC filing details.)

Then (within minutes, I suspect), the blog TechConfidential (from TheDeal.com) was running a post with an even better headline -- With Best Buy Capital, corporate VC goes big box. (Disclosure: I have been invited to be a member of the TechConfidential blogger network, though I did not see their story on Best Buy till this week.) You can see in their post that they included, like good little bloggers, links to the earlier posters, dutifully paying them homage. TheDeal.com exists to serve investors, so you can be sure plenty of people who follow BBY stock got early wind of this story, actually well ahead of the general market. (Did it cause a blip in the share price?  Maybe not all by itself, but I see the stock did trade up that day.  Investors hunger for every little piece of news about the companies whose stocks they hold.)

Okay, so what's so interesting about a bunch of bloggers who sniff out a story for their relatively small audiences, which is then broken as a piece of hard news later in Best Buy's hometown by a large, traditional media weekly that reaches many tens of thousands more people? Nothing so much, since it's happening a lot these days. What's interesting to me is that, as Distad reports in his original post, not only could he not get any information or a comment from the company's PR people -- they didn't even seem to _know_ anything about this particular development within their company! And, as you can see, our local Business Journal was also unable to get a comment from a Best Buy source for their story, a full 11 days after the original blog post.

The Disconnect
If you haven't picked up yet from one of the links above, here's how the original blogger discovered the story...are you ready?  From a job posting. That's right, a little known but valuable source of news that smart people looking for insights about a particular company can often find -- right on the company's own web site! (Or on any of a number of other job boards.) This isn't news about what's happening now, mind you. It's better than that: it's about what's coming. Hiring plans definitely qualify as a bellweather of things to come.

So then, what does Best Buy do (ostensibly on a call from the PR people to the HR people) -- they take the job posting down! There, that will fix those pesky, nosey outsiders!  Now, those links in the above original blog posts go to a dead page. Not to worry, however -- it took me less than a minute to find the job description had been copied and posted to another job listing site here. That's the thing about the web: once something's out there, it's impossible to fully take it back. (This is the posting for a "Principal," whereas another job had been originally posted by Best Buy for the position of "Associate," which I did not search further for. A source of mine within Best Buy told me this week that three people would be hired for Best Buy Capital; I would guess that to be one Principal and two Associates.)

Now, it could be said that this was just a coincidence -- that the job postings were removed because the company had suddenly filled all three positions. Hardly likely, since the original posting appears to have only gone up on March 11. (And I know how long things take at Best Buy.) It seems much more likely the company was spooked by a blogger breaking a story that, for some strange reason, they did not want known. Or did not go through "normal channels." (Hint to Best Buy: the world is changing, and, like it or not...channels aren't normal anymore.)

But what I find the most interesting of all is that the HR people, through their job-posting system (they use the very common Taleo platform), are putting out news that they apparently don't realize. That is, no one seems to have explained this to them. I'm surmising they don't tell the PR people when they do post something like this -- witness the original blogger running into complete ignorance of the news when he called PR. By the same token, the PR people aren't trolling the postings regularly themselves, either, it would seem, to become aware of "news" the company may be putting out in ways other than the limited supply they dish out themselves. And limited it is. They, like most big companies of old (and so many overly regulated public firms, I suppose), seem to spend more time keeping the news in than letting it out.

Two things I would ask: (1) Shouldn't Best Buy (and other companies of their size) start figuring out how to deal with the notion of transparency in our new world of New Media?  And, (2) Doesn't it seem to you that somebody should get the HR people and the PR talking?

 

 

Alltop Coverage Misses the Point

Guy Kawasaki's latest startup, Alltop, launched officially yesterday, and -- not unsurprisingly -- got a lot of play on the strength of Guy's (insane) popularity. But a dirty little question still needs to be asked. More on that later.... 

[Photo of Guy taken by me at last year's National Pond Hockey Championships in Minneapolis.]

All the usual suspects covered the Alltop launch, right on cue: Arrington peed all over it at TechCrunch, while Mashable gave it a breathless blurb and did a video interview of Guy from SXSW, and my friend Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb gave it a very fair and complete analysis.  Another person I respect, Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMO, even weighed in favorably at her Guidewire blog. They all, in varying degrees, got the point that this news & blog aggregation site is aimed at the non-RSS literate web population, which is huge. 

However, it seems TechCrunch and its commenters, as geeky and early adopter as they are, don't seem to want to recognize that anyone could possibly ever need such a site. It's obvious they don't grasp how large the non-RSS population is. They use RSS readers all day long and therefore the whole world must?  Chris Shipley, on the other hand, certainly does get the point about the market Alltop is aiming for with this new site. (And she has something to say to TechCrunch in a later post on her blog.)

I agree with Chris. Alltop is undoubtedly a useful site for mainstream web users, those who do not use RSS readers and are not likely to ever do so because the technology is just too darn geeky. Might some of them adopt reader "start pages" like iGoogle, NetVibes, and PageFlakes?  Sure, those are pretty simple, and many mainstream web users could set up their own customized news readers (have already) -- but they do in fact have go to that trouble. I think it's a sure bet that the majority of mainstream web users won't.  And, for this large population, an aggregator of many sites -- a destination site with a single-page view of a whole lot of stuff, from a trusted source, with a very clean, simple UI -- definitely has value.

I find it useful myself, and will recommend it. I especially like the "bird's-eye view" of an entire category on a single page (and there are an impressive 40 categories), and the way you can hover over any headline to see the first part of the story is a real convenience and timesaver.  Is it rocket-science web technology?  No, but mainstream users don't care about that, either. They just want something that's fast, easy, and useful... for them.

So, what's the big question that still needs to be asked about Alltop, which none of the coverage I've seen so far gets to?  It's this: how does Kawasaki intend to make money with the site?  After all, he's a startup expert, and a VC in his own right as a founder of Garage Technology Ventures. Or is this not a business, just an experiment of some sort?  Does Alltop even have a business plan yet, a business model?  One assumes that this is more than a hobby with Kawasaki -- proving he can launch consumer Web 2.0 sites with little money. His previous attempt, some months ago, was Truemors (still going and growing) -- a site he later boasted cost him less than $13,000 to develop and launch. But the same question could be applied to that site as well: so what?  He's now proved that popular authors/pundits/speakers can launch web sites that can get some attention. So, the point then is...?

[By the way, for those of my readers in the Upper Midwest, in case you don't know: Kawasaki's developers for both sites are the folks at Electric Pulp in Sioux Falls, SD, one of the perennial sponsors of our great local BarCamp events here in Minnesota, Minnebar and Minnedemo. Hey, Pulpers, way to go! We all now know you aren't getting paid much :-) ...but we assume you're having fun?]

Some of the Great People I Met at GSP and ETech

As a followup to my previous blog posts and innumerable Twitters (starting on March3) about the Graphing Social Patterns and ETech conferences this past week, I just wanted to say-hey to all those I met or ran into -- at least those I got cards from. It was fun chatting with all of you, and I look forward to staying in touch! After all, we're supposed to be "social" at these things, right?  In fact, please Facebook me and/or hook up with me on LinkedIn (see links just to the right in my sidebar), if we aren't already connected (or I will do that from my end).

Hello again to the following folks I already knew and ran into at GSP or ETech (listed alphabetically):
•Sean Ammirati, VP at mSpoke and ReadWriteWeb contributor (PA)
•Dan Carroll, CEO, Intelligent Media Platform and Somr.org (formerly Minneapolis, now Mountain View)
•Rick Enrico, CEO, JuiceMedia (San Diego)
•Aaron Fulkerson, Cofounder, Mindtouch (San Diego)
•Chris Gammill, Web Product Marketing Consultant (LA)
•Dan Grigsby, uber-developer, Unpossible.com (MN)
•Alex Iskold, CEO of AdaptiveBlue and ReadWriteWeb contributor (NJ)
•Jeremiah Owyang, new Forrester Research analyst rockstar (SF)

And it was great meeting all these new people (listed alphabetically); apologies to those I may have missed because I didn't get a card:
•Bill Binning, CMO, Jaduka (TX)
•Ben Benner, CTO, Jaduka (TX)
•Derek Dukes, Founder, Dipity (SF)
•Pete Forde, Partner, Unspace (Toronto)
•Chris Hendricks, VP Bus Dev, Travature (San Diego)
•Kristofer Layon, Web Project Coord, U of MN (Go, Gophers!)
•Ian Kennedy, Product Mgr, MyBlogLog/Yahoo (SF)
•Sanyu Kirulata, Queen's School of Business MBA candidate (Canada)
•Vince Kohli, CEO, BizInnovativ (NJ)
•Chris Messina, Citizen Agency/DISO-project.org (SF)
•David Recordon, Open Platforms Technical Lead, SixApart (SF)
•Jodee Rich, CEO, PeopleBrowsr.com (Sydney)
•Jeff Roberto, Marketing/PR Director, Friendster (SF)
•Jason Rubenstein, Cofounder, Just Three Words (LA)
•Todd Sampson, Cofounder and Dir-Tech Mktg, MyBlogLog/Yahoo (SF)
•Maria Sipka, CEO, Linqia (Spain via Sydney)...and she surfs, too!

I hope those of you who read this will let me know what you thought of the events (just email me at graeme at thickins dot com). Best of luck to all of you in your current endeavors! And I certainly hope our respective social graphs continue to intersect in good ways....

[By the way, if you'd like to get access to any speaker presentation files from either event, they're being posted on the following pages, which the O'Reilly people said are being updated as speakers choose to add their slides:
- GSP speaker presentations (this is the specific page at Slideshare.net where speakers were asked to post their slides)
- ETech speaker presentations (a page on the O'Reilly site that has several postings already, and I assume more will be added ongoing).
Keep checking these links if you don't see what you want.]

UPDATE 3/10/08: To update link for GSP speaker presentations.

UPDATE 3/17/08: To give you yet another link to the GSP presentations, this one the official O'Reilly page, which recently went live: Graphing Social Patterns West 2008 - Presentation Files.

GSP+ETech=A Damn Good Week in San Diego

Despite the fact that I lost my voice halfway through my three days in San Diego (some weird cold thing I picked up), the two O'Reilly events this week were definitely worth attending. I say that even though I wasn't able to participate as much as I would have liked. Certainly, the networking suffered. I haven't figured out how to do that without talking yet... :-)

I did live-Twitter the sessions I sat in on, capturing all the nuggets you can likely handle. If you'd like to see those, just go to my Twitter page. For Graphing Social Patterns, scroll back to March 3 and 4. For ETech, scroll to the March 5 tweets.  I must have written 150 or more total for both events. And there were some darn good speakers and panels, which I captured as best I could (in the requisite sound-bite form).

GSP was Monday and Tuesday, while ETech was Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But I only covered ETech on Wednesday, which I had previously determined was the most interesting day from my perspective.  I definitely wanted to be at GSP on Tuesday, and I skipped ETech on Thursday for a couple of reasons: to go back home to San Clemente so my voice could recover, and to avoid another expensive hotel night.

I also posted some 118 photos to Flickr in two sets: GSP pix here and ETech pix here. Note that I mostly shot what I thought would be interesting to you: speaker slides, as well as shots of the speakers and panelists themselves, plus other general scenes -- as opposed to posed/cutsie shots of my friends, etc... :-)

Anyway, I found the programming at both events to be very good, and I learned a lot. Plus, I made a bunch of great contacts. (Look for that list in my next post.)  I hope you found my live-Twittering and Flickr pix interesting, at least, and (even better) useful.