SOMEWHAT FRANK

First Quarter Full TECH cocktail Schedule

I cannot believe we have been at TECH cocktail for going on three years now. It has been a pleasure to see so many great people, startups and products rally around TECH cocktail in their local community and we hope to continue that in 2009 with a full schedule of events. We also have some other things on the docket for 2009 and will be happy to share them soon. In the meantime, check out the four events we have planned in the first quarter:

2/19 - TECH cocktail Chicago 10
2/26 - TECH cocktail DC 4
3/12 - TECH cocktail Champaign 2 (more details coming soon...)
3/26 - TECH cocktail Ann Arbor 1 (more details coming soon...)

So I look forward to seeing you all soon. If you would like to be a sponsor for an upcoming event please feel free to contact me as we are always looking for additional support to keep our events free and accessible to all the community. Check out the TECH cocktail song, it is a catchy little jingle if I don't say so myself. :)

BuzzGain To Help Companies With Online PR

If you are a bootstrapping company or brand looking for ways to join various online conversation and promote your product you might want to look at BuzzGain. BuzzGain is a do-it-yourself PR and marketing solution that just launched into public beta today. It empowers businesses to identify online communities such as blogs, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, and also traditional media so that companies can then reach out and share their story. BuzzGain prices range from $99 to $999 per month depending on the revenue of the company. BuzzGain was co-founded by my friend, Brian Solis and Mukund Mohan. Check out TechCrunch's further analysis of BuzzGain.

AllFacebook Launches Facebook Page Stats Tool

It appears that people will no longer be in the dark as to how well fan pages are doing on Facebook as AllFacebook has launched Facebook stat pages. Nick O'Neill, a DC blogger, friend and closet programmer, has been working furiously the last month or so to roll out the page tracker system that keeps track of over 620,000 Facebook Fan pages. The tracking pages offer charts like the one to the left that upon hover offers users to pinpoint specific cross sections on the chart.

Plinky Through Those Personal Blogging Lulls

Plinky launched this past week to offer a microblogging platform for your personal blog. Plinky was founded by Jason Shellen, a former engineer of blog platform Blogger, to help "cure writer's block" Plinky prompts its users to answer a question a day to keep the personal blog content flowing.

Experiencing History In DC

Today in Washington, DC, I was able to attend the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Though the festivities were streamed live via CNN and Facebook with commentary from my friends I decided I needed to experience this historic event in person. So I jumped on the Metro and made my way to the National Mall. In doing so I captured a number of images and videos which will serve as lasting memories of this historic day. The Internet connections via the wireless towers in the DC area were brought to a crawl so it was tough to stream videos from the Mall but I captured what I could with both Flixwagon and Qik. I also posted my Inauguration photos on Flickr.

Enjoy the videos below from my Inauguration experience:

Walking down 18th Street to the National Mall for the Inauguration

Watching the Inauguration from the National Mall

Obama Speaks

NYC Breakfast: Social Web Tech Discussions

I was in the Big Apple today so I decided to do a little breakfast meetup/tweetup event this morning. The event was open to anyone and we had a handful of folks brave the blizzard-like snow storm this morning to meetup. Aside from Comfort Diner in Chelsea having some very sturdy coffee mugs and solid waffles, bacon and eggs the breakfast discussions were very thoughtful and interesting.

The breakfast was made up of the following @innonate, @ceonyc, @noreaster, @msg, Ian Costello and myself (@somewhatfrank) and we did a couple of live streamed videos (via Flixwagon) about lifestreaming, backup, chat and other products and services. Oh we also explained how awesome Mom's are! If you were unable to attend please check out the two videos (below).

NYC Breakfast Intros & Shoutouts

NYC Breakfast Lifestreaming, Backup & Chat Discussion

Thank you to everyone that came out to have some breakfast and give their somewhat frank opinions about social media and technology while I was in NYC!

My CES 2009 Experience Recap

Last week, I previewed my trip to the Consumer Electronics Show as I had just touched down and was getting ready to experience my first CES. Well, I am back from CES and to be totally frank, all I can say is "Wow, that was a good time!" Unfortunately, it took me until today to decompress and get enough sleep to be able to spill details about all that I experienced last week at CES. First things first, a big thank you Intel for sponsoring my trip out to CES as an Intel Insider. It was an unbelievable experience.

So how did the party I co-hosted at CES on Thursday night go? I would have to say it was a success but you can see for yourself by checking out some of the photos taken by Brian Solis (this set of photos & photo below)

Wm. Marc Salsberry also took some super pictures (this set of photos & photo below).

We had the entire Sportsbook Bar & Grill at the Palazzo which was formerly the 40/40 Club owned by hip hop star Jay Z, so as you can imagine we felt like kings in the palace of a hip hop legend. It was pretty amazing and the attendees were top-notch. I never thought as a corn-fed Northern Illinois sixth grader attending a junior high sock hop wearing what I equated to MC Hammer "hammer pants" (which are rather baggy pants) that I would years later host a CES kickoff party in Vegas that MC Hammer would attend. I guess you just don't think about stuff like that as a 6th grader growing up in a small town. Oh and we both wore regular pants to the event.

 

CES 2009 Here I Am!

I packed my bag last night and took the first flight possible this morning to Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronic Show. While packing last night, I felt very much like aschek on Twitter (left) as I packed a lot more technology gadgets than the normal traveler. I packed my work Blackberry, Nokia N95 to stream videos updates live via Flixwagon, my Canon Powershot SD850 to capture snag shots and the occasional video, my Canon VIXIA HF100 HD camcorder to record SOMEWHAT FRANK video episodes and my iPhone which can take and edit photos with a number of Apps including (PanoLab, CameraBag and PhotoGenie, among others) and stream live video to the Web via Qik (thank you Qik). That is a lot of equipment and I have only covered my phone/cameras. Aside from that I have my laptop and a number of other gadgets. For the 20 percent of clothing, I threw in a couple fine Taylorbyrd button down shirts to choose from. This is my first time attending CES and I want to thank Intel and the Intel Insider program for making it possible. So what do I have on tap?

Tonight (Thursday), I am co-hosting the Intel CES09 Kickoff hosted by @briansolis @sarahcuda @zappos @somewhatfrank and @intelinsiders at the The Sportsbook Bar & Grill in the Palazzo. In case you are not familiar with the venue, it was formerly the 40/40 Club, which was owned by hip hop star Jay Z, so it is sure to offer plush furnishings, lots of technology and bling. I hope to see you there as it should be a great event. Intel will show off some of the latest Netbooks which sport the new Intel Atom processor (a very tiny but powerful processor) and if you visit the Intel booth on Friday at CES you might even be able to win one. Also be sure to tag your Twitter tweets, Flickr photos and YouTube videos CES09 so they get added to the ultimate destination for tracking all the CES social media action at ConsumerElectronicsInsider.com.

2009 Social Media & Web/Tech Conference Cal

The past few years I have posted a comprehensive list (here and here) of all the social media, web/tech, design and marketing conferences in an effort to help my readers better determine just which events to attend. I have decided that due to all the events that a single blog post is not the ideal format for displaying them all. So I have been keeping track of upcoming events and adding them as I find out about them to this event calendar (in the top navigation). You can view the upcoming conference schedule and bookmark it by going here:

Web/Tech, Social Media & Marketing Conference Calendar

If you have any specific questions about a conference please let me know by sending me an @ reply on twitter: @somewhatfrank

Finally, if you are interested in having SOMEWHAT FRANK cover your conference or event or to submit a conference or event please contact us.

Happy Conferencing in 2009!

SOMEWHAT FRANK in 2008 ... Onward to 2009!

SOMEWHAT FRANK 2008 In Review from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

I just wanted to take one more moment to look back at 2008 in pictures (above) as we look forward to more adventures in 2009. From DEMO08 to FOWA Miami to rockin' SXSW to TechCrunch50 and more, 2008 was super. Thanks to everyone that made 2008 so great (you know who you are). Happy New Year!