Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Innovation (Page 39 of 77)

GSP West 08: Hot and Cold

March 4, 2008 / / 0 Comments

It’s a hot conference, and what do I get?  A damn cold!  And I just had a doozer back in January, too.  Is this the worst, hellish year for colds and flu that you can remember, or what?  It sure is for a lot of people I know….

Anyway, I’m sucking it up (oh, god, that’s bad), tryin’ to keep up…. I did my live-Twittering thing yesterday, after getting well practiced at DEMO. Gspopeningscene
See my 40 or 50 something tweets (I lost count) here.  Then chatted over wine with Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch), Dan Carroll (Somr.org, former Twin Citian, now Mountain View), Chris Messina (DISO guy), Maria Sipka (Linquia, a fellow Aussie and surfer), Chris Gammill (a buddy from LA), and others — all while uploading my pix on Flickr. Gspplatformwars

Afterwards, attended part of AppNite (couple of cool ones!), then managed to hear most of Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at 8:00 — it was good, very inspired. Tim is amazing. Took a lot of notes, but was all out of Twitter juice by that time. So, dragged myself back to my hotel (a very cool little boutique place called the Sophia). Now it’s Tuesday morning, and I’m seriously looking for a Walgreens so I can load up on cold medicine…  🙁

Headed to “Graphing Social Patterns” and ETech ’08

March 2, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Tomorrow morning early, I’m jumping on the 5 here in San Clemente and driving south an hour to downtown San Diego for O’Reilly’s Graphing Social Patterns conference. I’m looking forward to a great two-day program. Gspwestlogo
Here’s the main page for the Facebook Group, which 200 people for far have joined saying they’re attending, and 81 more are "maybes." The event is being held in conjunction with O’Reilly’s ETech conference, which draws an even larger crowd. It also starts tomorrow (Monday, March 3), but it goes through Thursday. This will be about the third or fourth ETech I’ve atended, including the 2007 edition, for which I wrote this Conferenza review.  It’s a geekfest of the highest order, and I’ll be attending through end of day Wednesday. So, two days GSP and one day ETech, and the evening events are common for both conferences. If you’re attending either one, I look forward to meeting.

Feeding Frenzy’s Started on FriendFeed

February 26, 2008 / / 4 Comments

Or so declares Fred Wilson. And I see Josh Kopelman’s on it, too. (Wonder which guy funded it, or both?) Friendfeedlogo_4
A buddy of mine gave me the heads-up in a comment a couple hours ago, to my previous post (see below), saying this could be the next big thing at SXSW. 

What is it about this time of year?  The Web 2.0 crowd just needs something new to get ’em talking?  Okay, I’m tryin’ it — gotta see what this is about.  Only took me a minute or two to set up my FriendFeed account. Looks kinda like a Twitter that ate its Wheaties…  🙂

Except, this year, aren’t they jumping the gun a bit?  ETech and GSP come first, next week, ahead of SXSW.  Anyone know how far in advance of SXSW it was last year when Twitter went live?  Should be fun to see how long this one will take to break… 🙂

UPDATE (1:30 pm CST): Well, we now have the skinny on who’s behind this one — my friend Brian Solis just posted.

 

A Million Hooked on Twitter, But Will SXSW Mojo Return?

February 24, 2008 / / 2 Comments

Howard Reingold put up an interesting list of reasons why he’s hooked on Twitter. My friend David Weinberger, another a-lister, then added a few more. I’ll add one they forgot: because it makes people feel important, that they’re part of something cool, the latest fad.Twitterlogogt_2

Microblogging-phenom Twitter took off like a rocket last year at the SXSW conference because the a-listers grabbed onto it, and then everybody who wanted to be like the a-listers, or see what they were talking about, jumped on.

The Twitter hype resulting from last year’s SXSW was almost deafening. I know many people tried it and later dropped it — but, as that same post says, people have discovered, after all the hype, that it’s actually a pretty cool way of staying in touch with your own circle of friends. (Include me in that camp — follow me on Twitter here.) And here’s the key: you can do it without having to answer. You got it — it’s a lurker’s dream come true!

But what will happen with Twitter at this year’s SXSW?  Here’s a post that makes a case for Twitter hitting a million users by March, or possibly even sooner, before SXSW even gets underway. That’s a whole lot more than a-listers, folks. Twitter’s come a heck of a long way.

But will it still be "the thing to do" at this year’s event?  Will all the cool kids still be using it so heavily?  Or will some new, even-more-cool tool overshadow it?  The beat goes on. I’ve already gotten one email pitch from some company saying they think they can be the Twitter of this year’s SXSW.  I say good luck. 

Twitter, whether it has SXSW mojo this year or not, seems to be crossing into mainstream use.  Now if they can only figure out a way to make money, huh?

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