This past year I have attended several demo days and covered Launched Box Digital in DC and Dream It Ventures in Philly among others. Yesterday was the demo day for another local incubator, this time it's in Pittsburgh. Yes the "Steel City" has more than just steel these days, as six new start-up companies showed off their stuff as part of the Alpha Labextensive six-month start-up business incubator program. AlphaLab provides funding, free office space, expert business advisors and services during its biannual program in Pittsburgh. Alpha Lab was created by Innovation Works a seed stage investment firm.
Today is the big day for my friend Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV, or GaryVee as many of you know him on Twitter, as he published his first business book Crush It: Why NOW Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion. This is Gary's second book overall, as his first book was about wine. I look forward to reading it. While Gary was writing it I sent him examples to use for various sections and feedback so I am interested to see how it turned out. Congrats and best of luck to Gary, I hope he sells lots of books! I bought it today.
It's great to see Gary come so far so quickly. I first met Gary via email when he wanted to send wine and sponsor our first TECH cocktail DC event, which we are very thankful for. Then we spoke together on a panel discussing social media at the New New Internet Conference in DC. We shared good times and joy by pulling together a flash mob wine party at SXSW in a matter of minutes. I even had Gary visit my hometown to speak in Woodstock, Illinois at the historic Opera House last year. There are many additional memories over the last few years but I don't want to bore you. All I can say is, It's been fun.
At this particular brunch they shared their photography application called Photomarkr. The Photomarkr application offers users the ability to put a custom watermark on any photo on the iPhone. The video above shares a quick demo that I shot with my iPhone (so bear with the less than perfect audio and video quality). The application is available for $2.99 in the apps store. Happy watermarking.
During my Purdue University a few weeks ago that I previously mentioned, I was interviewed by Purdue's student run news network Fast Track News. Check out the well done video interview by Bram Wahl where I share social media insight and explain the new AIM product. This is just the minute and a half story that will air soon.
I just spent three and half days last week at my undergrad alma mater, Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. It was my first trip back to Purdue since October of 2005 and I was pleasantly surprised at the positive updates on campus since my last visit.
Since joining AOL in 2006, I have worked on the product direction and strategy of two AOL products. The first of these was the myAOL personalized start page, which I covered previously when it launched in 2007 and was rolled out to 78 countries. The other product I have worked on is AIM.
AIM has been around a very long time - launched in the 1990’s it assembled the first viable social graph with the AOL buddy list. So I was excited to jump on board with a team of internal AOL thought-leaders in January 2008 to map out the future of myAOL and determine how it could interact with AIM to offer users a streamlined social utility. During this process we identified that real-time data or the “lifestream”, is a necessity to any social experience on the Web. AIM had a similar "lifestream" concept since 2005 called AIM Buddy Updates which I covered previously, as we relaunched it on the Web in the summer 2008. We concluded our work and learnings from the project and proposed a direction and then went on to acquire SocialThing, which I connected with AOL via TECH cocktail Boulder 1 to join the AIM team and contributed to the effort. Being involved from its original ideation till now, I am pleased to see the new AIM with lifestream come to fruition.
It has been a busy last 30 days as we hosted three TECH cocktail events in Chicago, DC and Boston respectively. Starting in Chicago in early August we drew a humongous crowd and showed off 9 new Chicago area start-ups as I previously explained. We did not stop with just Chicago, we continued to plan and host TECH cocktail events the past two weeks in DC and Boston. Both events were very well attended and showcased 17 more start-ups. The events attracted over 1400 guests and showcased 26 startups in 30 days. Not bad as we roll into our fourth year, with the same mission as when we started of "amplifying the local technology signal in local tech communities" while "having fun doing it."
I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for coming out to support the last three events in Chicago, DC and Boston. We couldn’t do the events without the support of the local technology community and our fabulous sponsors which included AOL’s AIM & Going.com, BOALT, Saper Law, Jess3, Shiny Heart Ventures, TransFS, SproutBox, Total Attorneys, Chicago Micro, OVAL Vodka and iStrategyLabs. We also had 26 great start-ups demoing at the events.
Philadelphia is known for it's fine dining, cheese steaks and the Liberty Bell but recently has been developing start-ups through the support of DreamIt Ventures, a local summer incubator program. DreamIt Ventures had their second demo day on August 14th and ten new start-ups were unveiled. Like many incubators the second year's class of startups seems to be slightly improved than the previous year.
On Thursday night, Eric Olson and I hosted our 11th TECH cocktail in Chicago. Since we started in Chicago we have seen the event grow from the simple idea of hosting an event to bring together the community and showcase the local start-ups into a premiere event where we can't even find a big enough venue anymore. TECH cocktail 11 had close to 700 paid attendees. We were rather surprised as this is the first event we charged attendees $10 to attend so we thought the event numbers might see a slight dip in attendance. But, this doesn't seem to be the case at all, in fact the stellar attendance further validates what we are doing.
Check out this quick video that gives a (12 second) look at what it was like at the event.
Today I attended the Washington, D.C. start-up incubator Launch Box Digital, where I saw eight new start-ups show off their stuff to a crowd of local investors and media outlets. I attended the event last year and shared my thoughts. No disrespect to last year's class but this year the pitches seemed to be more polished and offered better business models overall.
Here is the full list of the start-ups that launched:
Social Collective - a browser-based service targeted at event marketing and the enhancement of the event experience for both attendees and sponsors.
KeepFu - a simple note-taking and organization tool to help manage consumer-defined “projects” like trip planning, event planning, and important purchases.
SECWatch - offers investors, bloggers, journalists a platform and tool set for digging deeper into SEC filings.
unblab - attack the email overload problem by answering the question “What emails should I be reading”?
Keen Guides - platform for delivering download-able audio short-format, video and audio tours.
BandsInTown - automatically plugs into music players such as iTunes, last.fm, Pandora and other sites to learn your artist preferences, and then lets you track your favorite artists (and related ones) and receive alerts when events of interest are coming to your area. Also looking to sweeten the relationship between ticket buyers and sellers.
TapMetrics - a tool that brings together sales data, user feedback, software metrics, and other information into a consolidated dashboard for mobile apps to allow developers to manage a portfolio of applications quickly and easily.
LegalRiver - offers a free platform to help connect lawyers with clients and clients with lawyers.
Who was my favorite? I don't have one but I do have a little to say about each of them. I like Social Collective since it made SXSW a breeze last year and should help again this year. I also have been using BandsInTown since meeting them a few years ago in Boston at a TECH cocktail event. They have helped me to not miss my favorite bands when they come to town. I think SECWatch and LegalRiver are going to do great since they both seem to be fixing a problem that has not seen a lot of love from consumer facing apps in the past, so they have a pretty open field to grab online real-estate and mindshare. TapMetrics is going to help LOTS of iPhone app developers better understand the metrics side of the game, which will prove to be very important. KeepFu could be interesting if it helps to organize the apps I already use but I will have to test it out further to better understand the power of it. unblab is looking to help fix your email inbox and could be very popular especially if they are able to break into the enterprise space. I am looking forward to testing out the unblab iTriage iPhone application. Keen Guides has a very intriguing business around distributing audio and video tour guides which taps into the travel category and has a very passionate vision focused on helping those with disabilities.
For another take check out what TechCrunch had to say. Finally, it takes a lot courage, determination and drive to start and run your own business so congrats to all the startups and LaunchBox Digital on another great year!
Zappos has been setting an example for companies to follow by putting customers first and embracing social media religiously to do so. CEO Tony Hsieh is a big Twitter user and you can follow him at @Zappos. This past year Zappos has also been on a mainstream media tear, sharing its culture and views on happiness along with selling LOTS of shoes and gear along the way.
Over the past year, I have worked with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh on a few occasions, co-hosting a CES Kickoff party in Vegas and I even got a suitcase from Zappos at SXSW. Not to mention, seeing him speak at SXSW and Startup2Startup among other industry events.
Showing our phones at CES Kickoff event. Photo by BrianSolis.com
Yesterday, I attended the first NASA Tweetup at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The NASA Tweetup was not like other Tweetups that I have hosted or been to but was run in a more official capacity. There was a registration process and only confirmed guests were accepted and given access to the event. This process was probably done for security reasons and it contributed to a private event feel. The event was run during business hours from 3 to 5 p.m. EST which is a little early for most but the event was still packed with over 200 attendees. The program schedule showcased the STS-125 astronauts who recently returned from Hubble telescope repair mission and they shared their experiences on the mission. For anyone unable to attend, the event was streamed live on the Web via UStream.
I think NASA accomplished the following key things with this first Tweetup event:
Connected astronauts with fans and enthusiasts in real life in an open and transparent manner
Enabled social media by allowing hundreds to take videos, photos and twitter about the event real-time
Inspired by having real astronauts in attendee to share their perspective and stories
NASA provided gift bags to all attendees which included some very nice freebies like a 3 DVD set about NASA, mission patches, pins and stickers and more. Also I posted some photos:
In an effort to help increase transparency and communication in the Nation's Capital, the National Journal Group is launching 3121, a social network and directory for people that work on Capitol Hill. If you have a valid Senate or House Committee email you can request a beta invite. The site was designed by DC interactive agency Jess3.
Social Times just called 3121, "LinkedIn for Congress Members" and I think they nailed it. This could become a very useful tool for anyone working on the Hill. The hope is that it helps communication and collaborative efforts between congressional
members and staff. The official launch will be in September, but until then you can follow the 3121 blog for updates.
I do a lot of multimedia work on my Mac Book Pro and with all the videos, photos and other content I am constantly trying to shuffle content to backup storage drives to keep from filling up my hard drive. I back up my computer via a portable drive which I carry with me as well as with the an Apple Time Machine. But I recently was concerned with the overall wear and tear and dependency on other hard drive devices. To help minimize the risk of data loss I decided to seek out a solution that uses the Web to back up my files. In doing some research and asking around a bit I found JungleDisk which I initially tested. JungleDisk is only $2 month and can hook to Amazon S3 to store all your data. It even encrypts your data if you so desire.
I also looked at Mozy, Box.net, Chronosync and a few others but I since I was looking for a simple interface for connecting to an Amazon S3 account these solutions were a little too feature rich and heavy for what I was looking to do. I wanted a little more control similar to an FTP client.
While I was testing out JungleDisk, my friend Jimmy Gardner suggested I giving, Transmit 3 by Panic for Mac OS X, a try. In doing so I found just what I was looking for. Transmit 3 allows a simple FTP interface for connecting to Amazon S3 storage. It allowed me to connect and drop 22 gigabytes of .AVI video files over in a matter of hours. The cost was only $29 for the software and then you pay Amazon directly for transfer and storage. My first bill was $2.31 for 22 GBs. Not too bad at all. So I think I found a solution that I will be able to use for clearing up my hard drive space from anywhere I can access an Internet connection. If you are in the same situtation I was in you might want to give Transmit 3 a try. This cloud solution works better with my on-the-go digital nomadic lifestyle than carrying a hard drive at all times.
I am curious, what products or services do you use for online storage?
Last week I traveled to the Midwest to Champaign, Illinois to speak to a group of entrepreneurs about building brands and social media as covered by the Champaign News Gazette and to host another TECH cocktail. The event was sponsored by Wolfram Research which is based in Champaign and has been creating products like Mathematica for over 20 years.
Wolfram Research recently received quite a bit of buzz on TechCrunch, GigaOm Network, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable among others for the launch of the consumer facing product called Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is a the computational research engine that helps to find anwsers to questions that don't exist on the Web.
