This one rocked! Wake up, everybody….
Category: Entrepreneurship (Page 5 of 59)
Wow, time flies. Seems like only yesterday we gathered in downtown Denver for the first Defrag conference in the fall of 2007. Now I'm about to experience my fifth, and each has been better than the one before. A couple years ago, the venue was switched to the OMNI Interlocken Resort in nearby Broomfield, where I arrived today about noon.
Why is Defrag special? Here's how conference organizer Eric Norlin (Twitter name: @defrag) explained it in a recent blog post:
"It’s about being passionate about the learning process… that turns out to be what is different about Defrag."
Eric pointed out that there are all kinds of conferences about cloud computing, or social business, or enterprise 2.0, or mobile, or whatever. At these, "you’ll hear about benefits and case studies and tactics and feature sets. If that’s what you need for some project, great. But that’s not what you’ll get at Defrag… We’re really down to wanting to find amazing people that are passionate about something that they’re learning, and then giving them the room to tell everyone about their passion."
So that's it in a nutshell. As Eric says, "amazing ideas, amazing people, amazing conversations — and a ton of passionate obsessions around what people are pursuing. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that. It’s just different. You just won’t find it many other places (PopTech, TED, etc)." Well said, Eric, and it's been my privilege to blog or live-tweet every single Defrag event, and meet many of those amazing people.
It's Tuesday afternoon now, and I'll be starting my live blog of "Defrag 5" soon, as we begin gathering in the hotel lobby (yes, including in the famous Tap Room!). Soon after that, many attendees, myself included, will be going off to offsite dinners put on by certain sponsors. My "Cover It Live" live-blog window (below) will contain all my tweets and those of others' containing the hashtag #defragcon. The volume of tweets in the live-blog will of course greatly increase when the conference itself fires up in the morning. (Here's the entire agenda.) In addition, I'll be doing other live-blog updates that will appear within the Cover It Live window, interspersed with the entire #defragcon Twitter stream.
Allowing the entire tweet stream of the event to appear in the live-blog makes it much more interesting, I think. And, once the event closes, the whole "conversation" will then be flipped around and archived in proper chronological order, which is pretty cool for anyone who may want to refer back. There are always so many great Twitter exchanges going on during Defrag.
The link for this blog post will remain permanent for the live-blog archive. That's the big advantage for me to document a conference with this live-blogging tool, compared to just tweeting the event. (Have you tried going back to get an archive of your tweetstream for a certain day or event? Good luck.) Plus the fact that I can do posts longer than 140 characters. If you like it, let me know!
You've likely heard of the "SXSW Accelerator," which has been a feature for several years at the huge, annual South By Southwest festival, held every March in Austin, Texas. Well, here's something new for 2012: SXSW has announced the creation of a home base for startups, VCs/investors, media, and other entrepreneurial-minded attendees to gather, mix, and mingle during the Interactive portion of the event. It's called SXSW Startup Village.
The 19th annual SXSW Interactive Festival takes place March 9-13, 2012. Startup Village will include the Accelerator program, targeted panels, meetups, lounges, and mentoring/coaching sessions, and will primarily be located on the fourth floor of the Austin Downtown Hilton, making it easy for the startup crowd to find the programming and networking opportunities most important to them.
Want to hang out with startups of the quality of Siri (which won the Accelerator's web category in 2010, then was acquired by Apple) and Hipmunk (the 2011 winner)? Then this is the place for you! I'm sure planning to attend.
I spoke recently via Skype with Chris Valentine (photo), coordinator of the SXSW Startup Village, and asked him some questions. 
How big is SXSW Interactive? He told me about 10,000 people attended the last one. And he noted it has an "international scope." How many startups applied to last year's SXSW Accelerator? About 400 in various categories, and that was narrowed down to 40 who were invited to present at the event. Who were the winners last year? Here's a link announcing the seven winners in 2011, which includes two that were music-related (there's also an Accelerator program for the music portion of the festival, which follows the interactive event). For the 2012 Accelerator, Valentine said 56 companies will get to present, due the the fact that new categories have been added, including Mobile and Health.
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[Timeout for a Minnesota Connection: At last year's SXSW Accelerator, Minnesota gaming startup OONQR was a finalist in the Entertainment category. Cofounder and CEO Justin Peck told me that his company's SXSW experience "exceeded our expectations." He was impressed that the Accelerator program "made room for a tiny midwestern startup in their lineup of successful, well-established companies." He said their trip to Austin wouldn't have been possible without the two free tickets they got to SXSW as a result of being accepted to present at the Accelerator. "I'm glad to see they're expanding it. Startup Village sounds like promising addition to the program."]
UPDATE: Chris of course remembered the QONQR guys and spoke highly of their startup. Then I brought up how many Minnesotans have been attending SXSW Interactive for years — hundreds went last year. Many gang up in cars and drive down, and some even rent houses to save on accommodation expenses! Chris seemed surprised when I told him we have one of the largest interactive marketing communities in the entire country. The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) has more than 1300 members and holds the largest annual event of its kind, right here in MInneapolis: the "MIMA Summit." It attracts more than 1000 attendees every fall. My coverage of the recent event, with my colleagues at Minnov8.com, is here, here, and here.
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The SXSW people define the purpose of the new Startup Village as "uniting the startup, entrepreneur, and investor communities under one roof for focused programming and networking opportunities during SXSW Interactive."
Valentine explained: “Over the last few years, startups and the entrepreneurs who nurture them have become a vital part of the SXSW Interactive festival." He said SXSW wants these attendees to learn, network, and share their experiences, and to foster an environment of innovation and collaboration. "We’re magnifying that atmosphere by converging startup-specific programming, events, and the SXSW Accelerator program in one dedicated location.”
Startup Village panel programming will consist of discussions and workshops specifically designed to educate budding and current entrepreneurs on best practices and lessons learned. Startup Village will also feature mentoring/coaching sessions, lounge areas, and designated meetups for attendees to network with some of today’s up-and-coming startups, seasoned entrepreneurs, and investors.
The 2012 SXSW Accelerator competition kicks off its two-day Interactive showcase on Monday, March 12, while the SXSW Music Accelerator, which spotlights the latest in music technologies, takes place on Wednesday, March 14. For companies wishing to participate in the Accelerator program, applications are being accepted through November 18. To apply for the Interactive Accelerator, visit http://sxsw.com/interactive/accelerator/enter, and to apply for the Music Accelerator, visit http://sxsw.com/music/accelerator/enter.
Startup Village programming will be open to SXSW Interactive, Gold, and Platinum registrants. SXSW music registrants will be admitted to Startup Village programming and events on Tuesday, March 13, 2012. For more information, visit www.sxsw.com/interactive.
Several hundred tech lovers crammed into Schulze Hall at the University of St. Thomas in downtown Minneapolis last night and challenged the air conditioning on another day of near-record highs in the state, for the latest edition of the quasi-quarterly Minnedemo event. Luckily, there was plenty of cold beer — thank you, sponsors — and a damn nice appetizer buffet as well. 
Nothing brings out a crowd more than free beer and food… oh, and a chance to sit in a large, crowded auditorium and listen to startup pitches for half the evening, while you overhear others in the lobby having fun and drinking beer. I decided to join the outliers after only one demo, exiting the auditorium for what I thought would be a just a while — but then I never made it back in. Oh, well, I’d heard enough startup pitches in recent days and weeks to make my head explode, anyway (including some of those on the evening’s agenda), so opting for schmoozing in the lobby seemed like the sane thing to do.
And it did prove to be a better bet for me, and for several of the folks I did that schmoozing with. Wow, there were so many great conversations and introductions brokered, my head was spinning. Or was that the beer? No matter, a good tech time was had by all. And you can read all about those startups that pitched in the auditorium here. A brief stop at the after-party (on the outdoor patio on the second-floor of nearby Brit’s Pub) put a nice capper for me on a very pleasant — warm! — evening, blabbing with so many of the key players in our awesome Minnesota startup community. Thank you, Minnedemo organizers and sponsors, for another great get-together!
Minnedemo 2011 via steve borsch on Vimeo.
Yesterday, I stopped into the EduTech Minnesota conference at the U of M. I wanted to catch up with my friends Matt Hardy and Dan Flies, cofounders of Kidblog.org, and hear about the latest with their startup.
It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced at the event: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!
Here's my interview:
The founders describe their creation this way: Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It's designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students' blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses.
Matt likes to say it's "built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process." He also points out that teachers who've tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress.com, "will notice the Kidblog difference immediately."
Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!
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