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: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 2)

Defrag 2009 Liveblog

November 10, 2009 /

Defrag
Defrag: Accelerating the “aha” moment

As online data is growing and fragmenting at an exponential pace, individuals, groups and organizations are struggling to discover, assemble, organize, act on and gather feedback from that data.

Defrag is focused on the tools and technologies that accelerate the “aha” moment, and is a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, and thinkers that are building the next wave of software innovation.

Below is the liveblog I published during Defrag 2009, now archived here from beginning to end.  And my Twitterstream during the event is sprinkled in for good measure.  For more pix (about 115, some with actual captions!) here’s my complete Defrag ’09 Flickr set.

  • 9:27 AM: GraemeThickins
  • 9:29 AM: GraemeThickins It’s now early morning Wednesday. I arrived yesterday afternoon, and attended an excellent pre-conference dinner last night, sponsored by Gist. It was at Maggiano’s and attended by about 35 people, I’d say. I ended up at the table with founder T.A. McCann. I’m impressed with what they’re doing with Gist — check it out. Lots of great conversation and laughs last night. And, wow, the lobby bar was hoppin’, both before and after the dinner. I bailed about 10:00, though (11:00 Minneapolis time), to build strength for the all-out schmoozefest and blogfest starting today… 🙂
  • 11:48 AM: GraemeThickins Eric Norlin just did event intro, and now opening speaker, Andy Kessler is up… says he promises to do his entire talk without mentioning the word “Twitter” 🙂 … “Economy Sucks” – showing some funny slides… now getting to the point: “It’s all about productivity!” … “output per worker hour”
  • 11:51 AM: GraemeThickins Andy Kessler: “Are there tools we can use to defrag the economy? Hell yes!” He’s about to walk us through some…
  • 11:54 AM: GraemeThickins Kessler says there are two kinds of people: “creators” and “servers”…
  • 11:59 AM: GraemeThickins Service jobs that have been destroyed in recent years: manufacturing, DJs, supervisors, tellers, secretaries, librarians, postal workers (displaced by email and Twitter… “whoops, I said it”). A category of servers is “sloppers” – just move something from one side of the room to the other.
  • 12:01 PM: GraemeThickins Amazon is a “slopper” company… a low-end task. But they’re moving up the productivity chain.
  • 12:06 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Kessler: “There are still millions of ‘slopper’ jobs that have yet to be automated….We’re in an era of more and more government workers being added – and they don’t care about productivity.” Now he’s talking about “super sloppers”… which he says include all the marketing people that over-hype and sell stuff that isn’t worth the money.
  • 12:15 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 12:15 PM: GraemeThickins Next category of “sloppers” are “spongers”… another: “slimers” – which includes the finance guys who grease the economy with capital. “But we can’t just get rid of Wall Street – ‘slimers’ are important.”
  • 12:23 PM: GraemeThickins Kessler: “The way to defrag the economy is to eat those jobs and replace ’em with higher brain-power jobs.” Analogy he makes is to “Soylent Green” movie: eat people!
  • 12:25 PM: GraemeThickins RT @davefauth: RT @lizasperling: Can’t we just say innovation must focus on productivity – keep it short and sweet? #defragcon
  • 12:35 PM: GraemeThickins Next talk is by Lili Cheng of Microsoft on “Social Boundaries.” She works in a labs group that looks at the future of social interaction. Now showing her own social map. She’s focusing her work in “social productivity at work.”
  • 12:40 PM: GraemeThickins I’m live-blogging the Defrag ’09 conference here: bit.ly
  • 12:43 PM: GraemeThickins Lili Cheng: “When you look at it, about 70% of people’s email is stuff they really don’t need to read, but it’s still important to them.”
  • 12:45 PM: GraemeThickins RT (lol!) @nfoarbitrage: This MSFT mail “innovation” simply highlights why this kind of stuff needs to be done by start-ups #defragcon
  • 12:46 PM: GraemeThickins Cheng is now talking about what MS is doing with Bing and Twitter, which she says was presented at the recent Web 2.0 Summit.
  • 12:47 PM: GraemeThickins RT (lol!) @infoarbitrage: This MSFT mail “innovation” simply highlights why this kind of stuff needs to be done by start-ups #defragcon
  • 12:52 PM: GraemeThickins Lily Cheng: “As silly as Twitter is, it motivates you, to go in there and have fun.”
  • 12:54 PM: GraemeThickins RT @cshipley Lili Cheng: productivity projects haven’t focused on the work itself, but rather on the flow of information. #defragcon
  • 12:56 PM: GraemeThickins Lili Cheng says her labs group at MS is engaged with more than 200 universities and schools in more than 20 countries. Her Twitter handle is @lilich.
  • 1:27 PM: GraemeThickins Coffee break’s over, now my buddy Aaron Fulkerson (@roebot), cofounder of MindTouch is up as the first speaker in the session, ” Exploring Unsolved & Newly Discovered Problems.” His firm is trying to solve enterprise collaboration with essentially a “more elegant” MS Word. He says they’re well on the way there…”and MindTouch is free and open source.”
  • 1:29 PM: GraemeThickins Now Tim Young, founder of Socialcast (@timyoung), says he’s
    “got 99 problems, but funding ain’t one of ’em” – his firm just announced a round of VC. Funny slide.
  • 1:35 PM: GraemeThickins Tim Young is rolling us back to 1945, a Dr. Bush (no relation) who was the organizer of the Manhattan Project – specifically, a piece he wrote in Atlantic Monthly called “As We May Think” – about thinking machines. He likens problems he’s now trying to solve to questions raised way back them – before this kid was even born!
  • 1:38 PM: GraemeThickins Eric Marcoullier, founder of Gnip is titling his talk: “The business world doesn’t give a shit about your lifestreaming app.” Huge laughs. Of course, social media is hugely useful to the enterprise – marketing, PR, customer service. But business is way more than that.” He suggests we now need to “make a leap to business intelligence*.”
  • 1:45 PM: GraemeThickins Eric is @bpm140 in Twitter. Check out www.gnip.com … “data for the real-time web.” They’re created a filter for social media sites, esp focusing on YouTube, to find videos where people are talking about a given company. He’s closing by challenging developers to come up with solutions that “drive business decisions.”
  • 1:49 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 1:54 PM: GraemeThickins Steve Newman, CTO of Gist, is now talking about solving the problem of managing online relationships. He described Gist, but is also citing other companies “doing cool stuff” — like People Maps, ZoomInfo, Telligent, Microsoft Research (Mark Smith), Lailana.
  • 1:56 PM: GraemeThickins Another keynote now: Stowe Boyd, “Deep Structure of the Real-Time Stream: Semiotics and Microsyntax.” A future-oriented talk, looking 10 years out. “What will businesses of the future look like?”
  • 1:59 PM: GraemeThickins Stowe says he’s been blogging now for 10 years. Prior to that, he was investigating a collaboration tool, an open email model, called “Buzz Behive.” It was attempting to shape culture, he blogged at the time, and many people thought he “was going off the deep end.”
  • 2:03 PM: GraemeThickins “The individual is the new group,” says @stoweboyd. “We define ourselves through the relationships we have with other people.” Small talk is big again, he says, but real-time is where it’s at now – and Twitter search only goes back two days now. “Must keep up with the tempo; otherwise, you’re behind.”
  • 2:06 PM: GraemeThickins Stowe Boyd: “Meaning is the new search…The latter is based on scarcity… We’ll switch to having things arrive to us by way of our social networks. The important things will find you, as Eric Marcoullier said earlier.”
  • 2:08 PM: GraemeThickins “A shared thread of time is how people will get work done,” says Boyd, “shared with those most important to you.” People will continue “to trade personal productivity for connectedness.” That latter will trump our other obligations.
  • 2:10 PM: GraemeThickins “Flow will be the new center,” says Boyd, “like the bloodstream of the business.” We all will be the engines of meaning – “this is where business will get done.” He says this is very utopian – “I admit I am a hippie.” Oh?
  • 2:17 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 4:49 PM: GraemeThickins Lunch over – now “Smackdown – the 2009 Kedrosky Awards,” with moderator Paul Kedrosky (“big CNBC star,” says Eric Norlin) and panelists Guillaume Cohen (reigning champ), Aaron Levine/Box.net, Jason Lemkin/Echosign, Flip Kromer/Infochimps.
  • 4:52 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 4:58 PM: GraemeThickins Funny line from Kedrosky: “VCs are just people who wanted to be bankers but didn’t have the personality.” Good discussion now by panelists about current venture environment… sorry state of returns, reduced funding needed by today’s startups, etc. Mentioning Y combinator model, how that still works well…
  • 5:20 PM: GraemeThickins First afternoon breakout session – I’m in the “Communication Metaphors” series now – is “Activity Streams: Changing How We Forage for Information.” Discussion leader of this series is Sameer Patel, and the first speaker is Tim Young of Socialcast. He says all humans are basically informavores (our brains crave a steady supply of information). The notion of “information scent,” as sharks smell blood, he says is reflected in seeing a Twitter RT you like, and then feeling you want to follow the person who originally tweeted.
  • 5:28 PM: GraemeThickins Second speaker in this series is Alex Moore, founder of Baydin, on “Why Email’s Not Going Anywhere.” He’s making the point that email is richer and more flexible than other (esp social-media) methods. For example: 87% of emails are longer than 140 characters! See Baydin blog for more fascinating info from Alex’s research. Follow him on Twitter at @awmoore.
  • 5:32 PM: GraemeThickins Third speaker in this series is Michael Cerda (@mcerda99), CEO of cc:Betty. “Email will be around for a long time.” He says that email’s final frontier will be making it smart, engaging, organized, live, sharing, and more…
  • 5:41 PM: GraemeThickins Fourth speaker in series is Matt Brezina (@brezina), one of the founders of Xobni, on the topic of “Email Happiness.” People hate changing workflows. What his firm did is create a social profile of each user that appears in Outlook, used today by a vast majority of the Fortune 500. All an individual’s social media links, photo, etc, appear in their profile.
  • 5:51 PM: GraemeThickins Discussion after the email session. Xobni: “Innovation of consumer web is finally happening in the enterprise. Three million people are now using it.” Baydin: “That success comes from getting people emotionally connected with a tool like this.” Socialcast: “We’re not trying to force another Facebook or Twitter into the enterprise – we’re trying to help them get business done.” cc; Betty: “I used to wish I could tweet more like Scoble or Stowe, but then I realized, hey, that’s their job. I have to push two releases out per week – I don’t have time for this shit!”
  • 5:54 PM: GraemeThickins Sameer patel asks: “Is Google Wave an incremental improvement, or what?” cc:Betty: “It will take a decade to play out. People are trying to figure out use-cases.”
  • 5:56 PM: GraemeThickins Xobni: “Eventually, people will like having Waves in their email.” Socialcast: “There are places where Wave makes sense.” He sees “atomizing discussions onto content. The conversation lives on the content.”
  • 6:01 PM: GraemeThickins “What’s going to keep email alive is long-form ideas,” says Alex Moore of Baydin. Regarding the preference for younger kids to text, cc: Betty’s Michael Cerda says, “When they get a job, they’re gonna have to learn out how to email like the rest of us!”
  • 7:08 PM: GraemeThickins I’m back, after break, ready to do more live-blogging of #defragcon…right here: bit.ly
  • 7:10 PM: GraemeThickins Wow, the hallway conversation with @sether and others kept me out of the “Social Media & Community” breakout session… (Associated Content, Social Media Group, NavStar, Open Text)… with my buddy Steve Larsen as discussion leader. But I made it into the final discussion/Q&A….
  • 7:18 PM: GraemeThickins I asked question about social media policies for employees – should companies even have them? How are companies going about this? Andrea Baker, NavStar, says the US Army is — put they put it out for comment first to the “troops.” She says they also are looking at potentially outlawing iPods and iPod Touches from Army facilities, and seeking feedback on that. She also said that the YouTube channel for the Iraq forces is one of the most popular channels on YouTube.
  • 7:33 PM: GraemeThickins Kevin Marks of Google talking about OpenID, which now has over a billion users… he showed a logo slide that looked like a Nascar page. He’s calling his talk “The Flow-Past Web.” Talking about “empirical standards” like Oauth, Microformats.
  • 7:43 PM: GraemeThickins Next up: Bill Arconati of Atlassian, speaking on “Innovation Culture – Studying the Effects of 20% Time.” His firm is 8 yrs old, about 200 employees. Few yrs ago, they wanted to implement something like Google’s 20% time. They implemented a “FedEx Day” – 24-hr coding exercise. They’re now on their 12th or 13th. Lessons include “one day isn’t enough”… “it takes a long time to ship code”… putting all their developers onto a 20% time program is a $1M gamble, they figured. Results: 48 projects, 248 days of effort, 1.1% time (not everybody wanted to do 20% time), 34 people participated, and they got 8 external blog posts about it. “Filling gaps as much as finding the next big thing”… chance to do “random wacky shit.” Follow bill @barconati.
  • 7:48 PM: GraemeThickins Final “Fragment” talk is Danny Kolke, founder of Etelos, on “The Rise of the Application Marketplace.” He’s in the business of distributing apps, primarily for large institutions. Describes himself as a “cloud geek”… “finally, our day has come.”
  • 7:54 PM: GraemeThickins RT @Scobleizer Do you need web hosting? Looking to go cheap? Read this success story: tumblr.com #rackspace
  • 7:59 PM: GraemeThickins Danny Kolke of Etelos says he’s a cloud geek, and “our time has finally come”..he’s all about web app distribution & marketplaces #defragcon
  • 8:01 PM: GraemeThickins RT@sether: apparently i don’t know as much about startrek as i thought. tweet “@zingstring know ur trek” and see how you do…
  • 8:01 PM: GraemeThickins RT @sether: apparently i don’t know as much about startrek as i thought. tweet “@zingstring know ur trek” and see how you do…
  • 8:04 PM: GraemeThickins Danny Kolke, Etelos: “The best web app hasn’t been been invented yet, and you may be working on it tomorrow. Users expect it.” He says web app marketplaces are a game changer, just like iTunes was a game-changer.
  • 8:11 PM: GraemeThickins Final keynote of the day: “A Discussion Between Chris Shipley (Guidewire Group) and Chris Sacca (angel investor in Twitter).” The latter just did a bike ride across the the entire country, and tweeted the whole thing. He’s doing a funny schtik on his new (fictitious) startup. The idea of this chat is to chew over what they’ve heard today…
  • 8:18 PM: GraemeThickins Chris (@cshipley) & Chris (@sacca) are talking about how earlier stages of the ‘Net were about snarkiness. “It enabled assholes,” says Chris Sacca. “We’re now moving to an era of the web that’s more civil.” Social media is making us more social?
  • 8:23 PM: GraemeThickins The ‘following’ system feeds narcissism, says Chris Shipley. But she thinks people should be thoughtful about who they follow – take the time to look at their twitterstream, just follow those that seem interesting, deserving.
  • 8:24 PM: GraemeThickins “We’re heading to community-driven authentication of voices,” says Chris Sacca.
  • 8:29 PM: GraemeThickins Final thoughts on the day…. Sacca: “I’m very optimistic about the overall state of things. Even the state of VC.” The ‘Ramen’ type of startup is bringing back the passion. “I haven’t seen a business plan pushed on me in years – now, it’s about live URLs.”
  • 8:35 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 8:36 PM: GraemeThickins Good show, Defrag – it’s a first-day wrap! Now, reception time….
  • 9:42 AM: GraemeThickins RT @defrag big day today: john winsor, jeff dachis, kim cameron, khris loux, and the cluetrain at 10 reunion. action-packed day 2 #defragcon
  • 9:56 AM: GraemeThickins RT @infoarbitrage New Post: “Social Leverage” in Venture Capital bit.ly Just stirring the pot for today’s #defragcon panel
  • 10:16 AM: GraemeThickins I would have come to #defragcon just for this panel today and nothing else: bit.ly
  • 10:18 AM: GraemeThickins RT @mrflip @defrag does it help if I wear a stealth Hawaiian shirt in honor of fake beach day at #defragcon? (darn, didn’t bring hat & lei!)
  • 10:48 AM: GraemeThickins Getting ready for Day 2 – it looks to be a great agenda. Hard to choose in the breakout sessions again! Highlight for me personally will be VC panel before lunch. I’m also going to try to post some audio interviews using this ScribbleLive tool – haven’t tried that yet. I’ll be talking with some interesting startups during breaks and lunch…
  • 11:20 AM: GraemeThickins hey, @andraz – I’d like to chat with you today to get an update on Zemanta… when’s good time for you, during breaks at @defragcon
  • 11:47 AM: GraemeThickins Let’s get this Day 2 party started! Eric Norlin kicking it off… introed first keynoter: John Winsor, author of “SPARK” and “Baked In” – talking today about “Creating Products and Businesses that Market Themselves”…
  • 11:54 AM: GraemeThickins Winsor says there are four scenarios for telling a marketing story, “baking the marketing in”…. I’ll post the slide shortly.
  • 11:57 AM: GraemeThickins Winsor now talking about Patagonia… slide is “Recognize the artificiality of the corporation.” He notes how “they invite consumers in to improve the system.” Breaking down walls, they know how to making jackets better, for example… “the power of transparency.”
  • 12:02 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 12:04 PM: GraemeThickins Crowdsourcing in advertising is not a new trend.. Winsor cites Planters Peanuts. They did a logo contest in 1919, and an 11-year old boy won. That’s still their logo today – the peanut guy with the top hat.
  • 12:08 PM: GraemeThickins Winsor is citing some recent key happenings re: crowdsourcing in advertising… including those related to USA Today, Samsung, Unilever, Victors and Spoils. I’ll post the slide.
  • 12:12 PM: GraemeThickins it’s Day 2 at #defragcon and I’m continuing to live-blog it, right here: bit.ly
  • 12:14 PM: GraemeThickins Go check out Winsor’s book project online …. www.bakedin.com …it’s a crowdsourced book, continuously being updated.
  • 12:17 PM: GraemeThickins Next talk is by @KhrisLoux, CEO of JS-Kit, filling in for Anil Dash, who’s laid up. He’s speaking about the Semantic Web.
  • 12:19 PM: GraemeThickins Make that the “Synaptic Web”… see www.synapticweb.org.
  • 12:23 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 12:24 PM: GraemeThickins Back to Synaptic Web… Khris Loux: “If the information is important to you, it will find you.”
  • 12:25 PM: GraemeThickins On “filtering,” Loux says, “You don’t have to read everything, just let it flow through you.”
  • 12:29 PM: GraemeThickins “Implicit connections (like Facebook) are a by-product of the Synaptic Web.” Loux is showing us the Twitter page @synapticweb. Talking about other companies doing stuff in this area, Apture and Zemanta.
  • 12:32 PM: GraemeThickins By the way, if Anil Dash would have made it, his talk was going to be titled “The Push Button Web.”
  • 12:34 PM: GraemeThickins Now in Q&A discussion, Stowe Boyd talking about how your connections are going to make sure the right information flows to you.
  • 12:35 PM: GraemeThickins “Applying people to information, faces next to data”… is what makes this work. I think that was Kevin Marks just talking back behind me.
  • 12:36 PM: GraemeThickins Khris Loux: “If everything you’re doing is connected on the web, for everyone to see, is there such a thing as a secret anymore?” Hmmmm….
  • 12:37 PM: GraemeThickins Next keynote should be great: Jeff Dachis and Tim Young (Socialcast) on “Social Business Design.”
  • 12:40 PM: GraemeThickins Guess Jeff Dachis is doing this alone… Tim felt he was over-exposed, so he’s deferring. Jeff is based in Austin, TX. Says he’s not as good-looking as Stowe Boyd or as funny as Chris Sacca… but he’s forging on.
  • 12:44 PM: GraemeThickins Jeff founded Razorfish, which grew to 2200 people. Now he’s launching into his case for why we’re in a shift to the social business. “New distributed, collaborative, and agile organizations”… powered by the millennial generation.
  • 12:45 PM: GraemeThickins Jeff Dachis: “Social Business Design is the *intentional* creation of socially calibrated and dynamic business systems, process, and culture.” Got that?
  • 12:47 PM: GraemeThickins What’s the purpose, the goal? Enhanced value exchange among constituents delivering improved “… blah, blah, blah
  • 12:53 PM: GraemeThickins Dachis: “We needed a vocabulary… first was ‘ecosystem’ – from disparate silos to connected nodes.” The second, “hivemind”…from hoarding to collaborating. The third: “dynamic signal”…from static to dynamic, “communication as work, not for work.” The fourth, “metafilter”…. from filter failure to clear signals, “finding meaning in all the noise.” Says he focuses on measuring patterns, not counts.
  • 12:56 PM: GraemeThickins He calls his four vocabulary terms “lenses” or “archetypes”… this guy is the buzzword king of Defrag so far, fer sure.
  • 12:58 PM: GraemeThickins RT (likewise): @SameerPatel: @maggiefox thanks so much for hosting us all last night #defragcon
  • 12:59 PM: GraemeThickins RT @tamccann: interesting home page for social business consultancy, www.dachisgroup.com – #defragcon
  • 1:32 PM: GraemeThickins Got too busy on the break, chatting with @zingstring and doing an interview with Jeff Dachis, then catching up with Eric Norlin and Brad Feld. So, I’m missing most of the preso by Chris Finn of Microsoft on “Adventures in Community Learning with Podcasting”…. will post a link later.
  • 1:46 PM: GraemeThickins Here’s an interview I found online of the last presenter: www.fastforwardblog.com
  • 1:50 PM: GraemeThickins Next up is “A Discussion of Discovery vs. Search”… Buzz Bruggeman moderating, with Robert Scoble, Scott Beaudreau/Microsoft, Robert Reich/OneRiot.
  • 1:54 PM: GraemeThickins Scoble’s now showing live his “river” of information on Friendfeed… says “I just try to pick things out that add value to my life.” About 3-4 posts per second going by…. whoooosh 🙂
  • 1:56 PM: GraemeThickins watching Scoble’s live Friendfeed “river” is a wild experience… here at #defragcon
  • 1:59 PM: GraemeThickins MS guy cites example of Hudson River plane crash… Scoble points out it’s really hard to go back now and find that original TwitPic photo – he spent a half hour trying to do that (finally did). The other Robert of OneRiot says real-time events are important to people – like the families of the people that were shot at Ft. Hood.
  • 2:03 PM: GraemeThickins Why is Foursquare important? Scoble says “it’s a cool location thing, and it’s a game… but that gets old after a while.” But people (your friends) will give you “great information about experiences to have nearby.”
  • 2:07 PM: GraemeThickins Buzz asks, why are new things on Twitter so important? Re: “Lists” feature – Scoble showing his now…anyone can go to his Twitter page and look at what’s going on in them – “don’t have to follow any of these people”… “Twitter has fundamentally changed!” He says he’s spent hundreds of hours on his lists. He even says he has a Defrag attendees list! We’re all on it… “Listoria” is a site he’s showing… lets you find whatever list you want.
  • 2:11 PM: GraemeThickins Robert Reich of OneRiot is showing a “Defrag” search at his site… says it’s real-time ranking. Also has a feature calls “RiotWise,” which is about real-time advertising.
  • 2:18 PM: GraemeThickins Final exchange here is on Scoble asking: “Which search is right for ‘defrag’ right at this moment? The one on Bing (about hard drive stuff), or the one on OneRiot (about the conference)?”
  • 2:18 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 2:21 PM: GraemeThickins Now, we’re hearing Kim Cameron, Chief Architect of Identity at Microsoft, on “Identity as a Collaboratrive Foundation.” He says “we don’t have a mouse for determining who we’re dealing with online.”
  • 2:22 PM: GraemeThickins Kim Cameron: “Everyone has a mosaic of identity, and we need to be able to present that mosaic.” He says we need an “identity metasystem.”
  • 2:26 PM: GraemeThickins RT @krishnan: Kim Cameron of Microsoft talking about Identity. Relief. Some geeky stuff. #defragcon
  • 2:30 PM: GraemeThickins Kim Cameron showing his “AD Federation Service”… which he points out is not an MS framework. (I’m shooting pix of his slides.) Now talking about OpenID in the consumer space. Showing an OpenID Identity Selector in Plaxo as an example.
  • 2:34 PM: GraemeThickins RT @ekolsky: this stuff is so cool i am almost drooling @kim_cameron #identity #defragcon
  • 2:38 PM: GraemeThickins Next up is the VC panel: “Is ‘Social Leverage’ the Next Big Thing for VCs?” Panelsist: Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, Howard Lindzon, Jim Tybur, and Roger Ehrenberg. Lindzon says “social leverage” is his term. He became friends with Fred and Brad through their blogs, and Fred later invested in his startup, Wallstrip.
  • 2:40 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson: “The search-driven web is quickly becoming the socially drive web.” Brad Feld thinks “it’s a total joke how we use the web right now”…we’ll look back in ten years and thinks it’s crazy.
  • 2:44 PM: GraemeThickins Lindzon asks how do we deal with inboxes? Roger Ehrenberg: “I spend way more time on Twitter via Tweetdeck than I do on email anymore.” Brad Feld: “I’m not overwhelmed by the amount of data.” Problem, he says, is people aren’t “rigid or disciplined” about how they deal with it, with tools we now have.
  • 2:48 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson now talking about how the business of building relationships has changed so drastically for VCs, over the ’80s (bus cards and calls), ’90s (email), and now online. He does everything now, quickly and efficiently, with online tools, “and I don’t even use the phone anymore.” Lindzon: “And I do everything Fred does, so don’t call me.” 🙂
  • 2:55 PM: GraemeThickins Lindzon says he’s running a business, but came to the online world late, from the financial business. His next question: are we heading for some kind of a crash because of the lack of innovation in online advertising? Brad Feld: that has nothing to do with monetization of social web. Fred Wilson: “Time to call bullshit” on the ad model – look at revenue models like virtual goods! That’s where the action is. “Who cares about the 5 or 10%! Look at the other 90-95%!”
  • 2:57 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson: “We’re going to see some amazing monetization models outside of social gaming.” Jim Tybur says brands have opportunities to make money off virtual goods.
  • 2:58 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson: “We’ll see some amazing monetization models outside of social gaming.” Jim Tybur: brands have big opportunities. #defragcon
  • 2:59 PM: GraemeThickins thanks for the RT! @jeneane: @GraemeThickins live blog #defrag bit.ly
  • 3:02 PM: GraemeThickins Brad Feld now talking about fascinating concept of how we can all be “friends” with Fred (most of room feels they are, by show of hands), but very few have ever met him… or been at his house for dinner.
  • 3:03 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson: “Trouble with online video is it looks a shitload like TV. People always want to go to models they know.”
  • 3:06 PM: GraemeThickins Brad Feld: we’re witnessing a lot of VC firms dying off. Takes a while, but it’s happening. Fred asking Roger to explain his blog post of today: “mix of angels w/domain expertise and VCs” – it takes a combination of investors today.
  • 3:10 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 3:11 PM: GraemeThickins Lunchtime! Back soon….
  • 4:29 PM: GraemeThickins Back after lunch and checking out of my room. Now joining “Listening, Learning & Emergence” in progress….
  • 4:34 PM: GraemeThickins Rypple is a tool to ask your colleagues work-related questions… get fast, anonymous answers. How to get people to listen? Brevity, honesty, and engagement. How they designed it for learning: continuous, action, and sharing. See more at www.rypple.com “Rypple is to feedback surveys what Twitter is to email.” For performance reviews, surveys, more…
  • 4:38 PM: GraemeThickins “How Heavy is the Internet?” Next up is Dan Neely, Networked Insights (the guys with their logo on our fleece!)… Great slide, the “Life of Social Media Analysis” (I shot a pic).
  • 4:44 PM: GraemeThickins Dan Neely: “huge difference between monitoring and social media analytics… the latter helps deal with the river of information.” He says there are 1.5 billion online conversations a day… “best focus group that ever existed.”
  • 4:48 PM: GraemeThickins Discussion after this session: moderator asks, “People don’t like feedback – how do we make it fun?” One panelist says depends on def of fun… engagement factor is the key, we engage online, play games, cuz it’s fun. Our brains like that stimulation. Key is to bring that into the learning environment.
  • 4:55 PM: GraemeThickins Rypple founder says most learning is in small chunks. Andrew Lewis, Smart.fm: “We sit and look at our Twitterstream and email inbox because we want those little microbursts of dopamine.” Humans seem to be programmed this way, he says. Good question from audience: is there way to enable group, remote learning for, say, sixth graders who want to learn about the same thing. Lewis: “Smart.fm!”
  • 5:00 PM: GraemeThickins Rypple co-CEO Daniel Debow: “When kids are playing World of Warcraft, are they just playing a game or are they learning how to collaborate?”
  • 5:21 PM: GraemeThickins Next session is “Context & Analytics.” Discussion leader is Ian Glazer, Burton Group. Panelists are from Collibra, Radiant Logic, Kynetx, Kognito.
  • 5:29 PM: GraemeThickins Collibra is an enterprise software company integrating with and adding Business Semantics to all major SOA, EAI, and data integration vendors. RadiantLogic is a provider of virtual directory solutions for identity management and enterprise information integration. Its platform provides unified, secure access to identity and contextual views built out of heterogeneous applications and data sources.
  • 5:31 PM: GraemeThickins Phil Windley of Kynetx is up now talking about the location metaphor (the web site), and suggests the metaphor of purpose is a better one.
  • 5:37 PM: GraemeThickins Focusing on purpose requires a client perspective. We need intelligent, adaptive browsers to deal with purpose… and he cites companies that are doing things in this area, like Gist, AdaptiveBlue, in addition to his own (which is a builder of tools). His thesis is really interesting… will post slide of his contact info.
  • 5:40 PM: GraemeThickins John Thompson of Kognitio is now talking about “Turning Data Into Money Intelligently – Fast, Easy, Flexible.” Bring it on, baby….
  • 5:44 PM: GraemeThickins Kognitio provides solutions to business problems that require the acquisition, rationalization, and analysis of large or complex data, giving firms the ability to turn their raw data into valuable business insight fast.
  • 5:48 PM: GraemeThickins does the moderator of this session look like Frank Zappa, or is it just me? #defragcon
  • 5:51 PM: GraemeThickins I put up a bunch more #defragcon pix on my Flickr set: bit.ly
  • 5:57 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 7:10 PM: GraemeThickins Missed the “Sharing, Markets & People” session (just dropped back into the big room in time for the discussion/Q&A). I was out in the hallway sitting around a table with Steve Larsen, Chris Locke, Rick Levine, JP Rangaswami, and Doc Searls – recording kind of an ad-hoc, free-association conversation about Cluetrain and the whole history of these guys working together, going back to the early ’90s. (I met most of these guys back around ’97 or ’98, and have followed their amazing careers ever since.) OMG, it was fun! Before I knew it, I’d captured 43 minutes worth of this crazy gab-fest – which I’ll definitely post to my blog. Serendipity!
  • 7:15 PM: GraemeThickins wait till you see the slide deck Doc Searls put together for the closing Cluetrain keynote here at #defragcon got an early peek – too good
  • 7:19 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 7:20 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 7:21 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 7:23 PM: GraemeThickins The “Cluetrain at 10” panel is beginning! This is gonna be fun….
  • 7:31 PM: GraemeThickins 46 billion results on Google now for “Cluetrain”!
  • 7:33 PM: GraemeThickins The slides Doc showed were funny…I shot pics and will post to my Flickr set.
  • 7:43 PM: GraemeThickins Doc Searls cited the great line of Chris Locke’s that “we’re not just customers, we’re humans, and our reach exceeds your grasp.” Rick Levine says it’s a shame companies are still treating people as masses, not individuals – trying to aggregate them, segment them. JP says a statement from Cluetrain that really struck him was “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy” – and he says it’s really come true.
  • 7:48 PM: GraemeThickins Question: any opinion on where we’re headed with OpenID? Rick Levine is now channeling the one Cluetrain author that couldn’t make it (David Weinberger)… he says anonymity still has its place on the web, for those who are afraid they will be attacked if they speak out, and JP cites those in the third world who also may need anonymity. Doc: “I don’t want more identity on the web. I want less.” He thinks it will be a long time before OpenID really catches on.
  • 7:57 PM: GraemeThickins JP says Cluetrain was about human beings. Eric Norlin: “Isn’t it crazy that the US government is talking about regulating the ‘Net?” All agree. Now Eric’s telling the story of how Chris Locke called him in 1999 out of the blue and said he’d found something that was gonna change the world: Blogger. Eric says that was literally when Ev Williams had the server in his bedroom.
  • 8:01 PM: GraemeThickins Chris Locke misses the days when bloggers were really a tight knit group, “discovering all this new stuff.” He says kids today didn’t get to experience that – “I hope that spirit can live on.”
  • 8:03 PM: GraemeThickins Defrag ’09 is a wrap! Thanks Eric and team – it was awesome…

DEMO 2009 Liveblog

September 16, 2009 /

DemoThe feeling you get when you enter the ballroom at DEMO is unlike any other conference. Each company is given just six minutes on the DEMO stage to truly demonstrate how their product will change the world. No PowerPoint or flashy corporate presentations allowed. Just the founders and the technologies many are staking their careers on… it doesn’t get any more straightforward and fast paced than that.

Below is the archive of the liveblog I created while at DEMOfall 2009, direct from San Diego.

  • 1:55 PM: GraemeThickins Starting to set up for my on-site coverage of DEMOfall next week….
  • 3:55 PM: GraemeThickins Tech~Surf~Blog: DEMO 2009 Liveblog post.ly
  • 4:30 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 4:30 PM: GraemeThickins I’m at the Sheraton Marina in San Diego, ready to get registered and then stop into the reception for press…
  • 5:28 PM: GraemeThickins Chris Shipley just gave her good-bye speech to the press… 13 years she produced DEMO, 20-some events. Amazing. Will miss her.
  • 9:09 PM: GraemeThickins At the bar with Aaron Fulkerson, cofounder of Mindtouch, and Andie Rhyins, SVP/publisher of VentureBeat (who I haven’t seen in like 10 years)… amazing conversation.
  • 10:15 PM: GraemeThickins Coolest buzz I picked up on tonight at the opening reception was what DEMO presenter CallSpark has goin’ on … met cofounders Wendell Brown and Adrian Vanzyl
  • 11:19 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 11:19 PM: GraemeThickins Pic I took earlier at the reception of Steve Larsen, serial entrepreneur and DEMO 4-timer, with Liza Sperling, event producer and all-around livewire….
  • 11:20 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 11:21 PM: GraemeThickins I’m live-blogging #DEMOfall09 over here: bit.ly …except now I’m stopping, till morning
  • 11:24 PM: GraemeThickins The sun started going down as I shot Aaron Fulkerson of Mindtouch, with Kim King of the King Group…
  • 6:34 AM: GraemeThickins
  • 6:34 AM: GraemeThickins CallSpark, a startup I met at the reception last night, has officially announced. It
    provides real-time interactive content streams before, during, and after each call, “creating dynamic new mobile call experiences.” Like, get this, you can see a person’s latest tweets as you call them, or during. It will be available as an iPhone app (and may be in the App Store by today, they say), and via the mobile Web for Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre at m.callspark.com. I saw it demoed on an iPhone, and it’s very impressive, pulling from 12 databases. I want it.
  • 7:01 AM: GraemeThickins I’m at #DEMOfall09 today & tomorrow, live-blogging a lot (not tweeting)..it’s all at this page updating in real time: bit.ly
  • 7:10 AM: GraemeThickins Had a great time last night chatting at the bar with Andie Rhyins, SVP/publisher of VentureBeat, and Aaron Fulkerson, cofounder of MindTouch, based here in San Diego… now it’s time for breakfast!
  • 7:10 AM: GraemeThickins
  • 8:04 AM: GraemeThickins breakfast at #demofall09 yfrog.com
  • 8:04 AM: GraemeThickins
  • 8:36 AM: GraemeThickins The hush, the lights lower… we’re ready to get this party started!
  • 8:36 AM: GraemeThickins
  • 8:44 AM: GraemeThickins Chris Shipley out first, talking about live stream at www.DEMO.com by Bit Gravity (sitting next to Mari from there), also telling the story about how she originally took the producer job 13+ yrs ago. he says 56 companies will be presenting new products. Matt Marshall, co-producer, just came out and talked about a new feature he’s introduced to DEMO, the “Alpha Pitch” companies. He also announced a new site at VentureBeat: www.DEMObeat.com
  • 8:52 AM: GraemeThickins First presenter is HP, launching “Skyroom” — HD-quality videoconferencing software with full collaboration for instant face-to-face meetings… up to three other video connections. Uses a buddy-list approach. Nice interface. Showing live connection now with an off-site demonstrator. Will run on any HP or Vista machine, but best on a quad-sore system.
  • 8:57 AM: GraemeThickins Micello (Sunnyvale) is all about “Google maps inside of buildings”… for malls, conventions centers, college campuses, airports, theme parks, stadiums, etc… “where there’s lots of stuff happening inside.” Now demoing how it works with their own fav shopping center, Stanford Shopping Mall. They
  • 9:00 AM: GraemeThickins They’re creating 10 maps a day now, using an efficient technique they developed… it’s the new “indoor location-based world”… now raising institutional round, want to get to 100 maps a day soon.
  • 9:06 AM: GraemeThickins VIAAS (from Third Iris, Campbell, CA) is SaaS-based video surveillance. Showing intelligent camera, plugged it in and it works… you can annotate events, access them by text, tag, event, for later investigation… now logging in with new camera he just installed — worked! Takes away all the complexities of video surveillance. Available online now – camera about $300, monthly service about $30.
  • 9:10 AM: GraemeThickins Fuze Box now introing “Fuze Meeting” … so easy, a 5-yr old can do it. High-def content with social integration and mobile technology. Now showing demo on iPhone with vid of five-yr old twins of the company’s CMO… very cute!
  • 9:12 AM: GraemeThickins No software to download with Fuze Meeting.. it’s all in the cloud. One click to fetch attendees into a meeting. Pretty cool. Can post link to meeting via Twitter in one click…yo! Only $29 per mo based in annual subscription.
  • 9:19 AM: GraemeThickins TravelTrac (Irvine, CA) offers a way to share your trips and adventures online… CEO says market wide open — even on TripAdvisor, only 1% of users share their stuff. Lets you share you experiences as they happen. Nice site — three current interest areas: road-based, trekking, sailing. TravelTrac iPhone app now in the AppStore… looks pretty cool, and also lets you post to Facebook and Twitter.
  • 9:24 AM: GraemeThickins Next up is MyRealEstate.com (San Jose), first of its kind property-management service web site. Lets tenants and landlords get real-time info. Since property mgrs are always on the go — you got it, it’s mobile enabled! They also offer property surveillance. The server ain’t working, so they’re trying to talk their way through the demo… welcome to the world of demoing live.
  • 9:34 AM: GraemeThickins WhoDoYouKnowAt.com (Dallas) is all about “relationships, relationships, relationships!” A private networking app…notifies you when other members have your outdated contact info. Gives you reciprocal access to all your trusted colleagues’ contacts. You can grant various levels of access, even staying 100% anonymous if you like. Free to join… and now three months of free Gold access with code “DEMOfall09.”
  • 9:40 AM: GraemeThickins Oh, this next name is good: Lunchster (San Francisco). It simplifies staying in touch with your closest contacts — yep, doin’ lunches. Now in private beta. Seamlessly integrates with Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar. The app coordinates all the details of your lunch dates… think how much time you spend doing that! Just put lunch@lunchster.com in the cc: field of your email… how simple is that?
  • 9:48 AM: GraemeThickins Tungle (Montreal) is a DEMO returnee, now launching Tungle for iPhone. Works in synch w/ Outlook, iCal, Google Cal, and more. Use app on iPhone, or go to web site and do it all for free… “the power of a worldwide Exchange server.” CEO says you’ll never get double booked! Share calendars with anyone, no matter what cal they use, and whether or not they have an iPhone. It’s been made available to all Ning users, others… free, and app in now in the App Store.
  • 10:03 AM: GraemeThickins Rseven (Dublin, CA) is a life-caching service. Records all your daily activities… just synch to Rseven, its website will show you everything you did chronologically in a timeline format, and also displays the strength of your relationships with the people you communicate with.
  • 10:05 AM: GraemeThickins dotSyntax (Rochester, NY) showed Digsby, a desktop app for managing all your IM, email, and social network accounts — one buddy list, one newsfeed of all your social stuff. Let professionals manage mutiple brands (like on Twitter) without browsers or multiple apps.
  • 10:08 AM: GraemeThickins Traackr (Boston, MA) is now demoing A-List — an authority list that identifies the most influential people online in a given market segment or topic. Gives PR people profiles of these top influencers… yeah, baby!
  • 10:15 AM: GraemeThickins Waze (from Israel) is a free mobile traffic app that uses live maps and has real-time traffic updates, and can even re-route you when necessary. Has social features to update others — with speed traps, construction, etc. App is available for all four major mobile platforms. They already have 180k users in Israel – “completely crowdsourced by users.”
  • 10:17 AM: GraemeThickins First “Alpha Pitch” now – 90 seconds, no visuals, didn’t even catch the guy’s company name…. this is a fail. Bad one to kick it off.
  • 10:20 AM: GraemeThickins Keen (SF) is next Alpha Pitch — much better. Commercial printing is $162B market, 80% small biz. This is an ecommerce platform just for printers, really lets them run their whole business, too. Great 90-second pitch — proving it can be done!
  • 10:27 AM: GraemeThickins Now back to 6-minute pitches…MyVocal (Paris) is showing a mobile app to play all your fav audio files. You can even send it text files that convert to audio minutes later. Browser plug-in lets you convert any web page, article, etc, to audio and sedn to the MyVocal app. Good pitch.
  • 10:32 AM: GraemeThickins TuneWiki (Milpitas, CA) has “Lyrics Legend” app for many mobile platforms. New CEO on stage says it’s his seventh day on the job! Now introing their social media player. Showing on brand new Nokia music phone just out in Germany — U2 song lyrics, as song plays, are being displayed in your choice of languages. Will even email the lyrics to you, share on your social networks. “Discover music like never before.”
  • 10:39 AM: GraemeThickins YiqYaq (Redwood City, CA) is showing RadioWeave is a (cool!) iPhone app that doesn’t just stream radio, but traffic and weather reports, etc, too, weaving multiple stations for you… and advertisers can micro-target the listeners. Users create channels, like whale sounds (!) or whatever. Your friends can listen to your “micro channels” and vidce versa… and you can even now listen to your friends’ tweets! (converted to audio), for those long, boring drives…. no more having to read on your iPhone while you drive. Oh, happy day 🙂
  • 10:46 AM: GraemeThickins Enthusem (Tampa, FL) lets you send personalized printed greeting cards that are based on online content such as video, audio, or any web content. Can do it with any site that has their widget installed. The site has a nice interface to create your card. Mail to just about any part of the world for $2-4 .. they’re “reinventing the printed greeting card.” (Great! I hate the lame online cards.) They have a public API. You can send a card from any site, even from within LinkedIn, for example. Now showing an iPhone app — isn’t just about every company here? Great for non-profits.
  • 10:53 AM: GraemeThickins Twirl TV (Los Altos Hills, CA) is about “social TV for the YouTube generation,” which the CEO says is growing at a rate of 85%. Users can create their own networks and share episodes, see what friends are watching, or watch together. “Online TV is the only media growing at double-digit rates.” These guys seem to have a model that stands a chance of working…
  • 11:00 AM: GraemeThickins Emo Labs (Waltham, MA) is an already VC-funded startup, one of only a few so far, that is introducing its “invisible speaker system” with its own sound technology that overcomes limitations and bulkiness of physical speakers. “Zero footprint ” that literally disappears when embedded into a device that is space-constrained — like plat-panels TVs. Tiny speakers they have just will never cut it. “First fundamentally new sound technology in decades.” Showing large screen TV — sounds literally comes from the screen! “A TV that sounds a s good as it looks.” Wow, this is killer.
  • 11:07 AM: GraemeThickins Hand Eye Technologies (San Francisco) is now showing “HIT” — which enables smart phones to see what a viewer is watching on broadcast TV. Lets you point, click, and interact with digital content you’re watching. You can purchase, vote via your phone. Yep, it’s the long promised “interactive TV” nirvana, still being pursued by a startup…
  • 11:20 AM: GraemeThickins Matt Marshall now up talking about the DEMO judges, a new feature started with this event, and he’s inviting two up on stage… they’re sitting on stools and chatting about the morning’s presenters. Shervin Pishevar of SGN is cautioning about too much focus on features and not on the problem being solved. He’s wondering, with all the entertainment oriented presenters, can we really do that on a mobile phone? Nirav Tolia of Fanbase says Emo Labs is “amazingly innovative stuff” and really likes TuneWiki. Pishevar says game devs could look at TuneWiki for new app ideas. Tolia thought Third Iris had a great value proposition.
  • 11:22 AM: GraemeThickins Lunch break – to the Pavilion floor!
  • 11:22 AM: GraemeThickins
  • 11:49 AM: GraemeThickins we get to walk the red carpet to the Pavilion this year at #demofall09 … nice touch yfrog.com
  • 1:48 PM: GraemeThickins sitting in row 2 (moved up one) with Keith Shaw of NetworkWorld… getting ready for afternoon session at #demofall09
  • 1:56 PM: GraemeThickins again, I’m not live-tweeting #demofall09 this time (just an occasional tweet)..instead, I’m live-blogging it like mad at bit.ly
  • 2:13 PM: GraemeThickins Starting off afternoon session with an “Alpha Pitcher”… Pinyadda, an alternative to your RSS reader (a well-done 90-sec pitch).
  • 2:15 PM: GraemeThickins Second alpha pitcher was Ringful… see preventivecare.mobi.
  • 2:22 PM: GraemeThickins First 6-min presenter in this afternoon session is Armorize Technologies (Santa Clara, CA), showing its HackAlert malware monitoring and detection SaaS offering. Prevents “driveby downloads”..24/7 monitoring for corporate customers…sends alerts when malware detected, tells you exactly what line the bad code in on, removes it, and prevents that hacker from doing it again.
  • 2:28 PM: GraemeThickins Webroot (Boulder, CO) up next , introducing “Internet Security Complete.” Hybrid desktop/web-based approach. Also has a new web portal, “to move security off the desktop and onto the web where it belongs.” Has a nice “identity manager” screen for managing all your passwords. Lots of features. Demoing here, launching in 2010.
  • 2:35 PM: GraemeThickins Intelius (Bellevue, WA) is showing DateCheck, which is a free mobile app to check out people before you date them! Has buttons called “Sleeze Detector” (for criminal records) and “Net Worth”… and you can even check out where they live, what their house is with, etc. Love this line they used: “Records don’t lie, but people do.” The closing quip was the best, though: “Look up before you hook up!”
  • 2:40 PM: GraemeThickins MicroAssist (Austin, TX) is presenting “EthicsEd,” an e-learning solution to prevent sexual misconduct in schools. The Dept of Ed says nearly 10% of school children are abused. The online course, for continuing education credits, is $8 per teacher.
  • 2:43 PM: GraemeThickins Cardagin Technologies (an alpha pitcher) allows local businesses to do promotions via mobile phone … they digitize their promotions.
  • 2:46 PM: GraemeThickins Another alpha pitcher, Gelato Dating, is launching a new breed of online dating site. Says this category is the third biggest online content money-maker.
  • 2:51 PM: GraemeThickins Back to 6-min pitches: Freeddom Technologies (San Paulo, Brazil) has a mobile payment platform that lets retailers, telcoms, or banks set up their own white-label credit cards. Transactions are started at the merchant’s cell phone or current POS terminal, and are PIN-authorized at the customer’s cell phone. No new hardware needed!
  • 2:57 PM: GraemeThickins MoLo Rewards (Sanford, FL) lets you immediately redeem loyalty rewards or coupons using “near field communication (NFC)” RFID. Its patented technology allows the user to redeem every valid coupon in his/her phone’s “mobile wallet” with a single wave of the device at a POS terminal.
  • 3:05 PM: GraemeThickins Next up: Point of Wealth Systems (Portland, OR) is trying to bring technology to the estimated 47 million people in the U.S. who are unbanked or under-banked, via a kiosk that provides financial services to these cash-compensated employees. They don’t need no stinking bank! No more losing money, having it stolen, etc… see www.thepower.com. Allocating space on each machine, too, for giving to a charity of your choice.
  • 3:12 PM: GraemeThickins The next presenting company I did an audio interview with at the last DEMO, when they were an attendee: Cazoodle (Champaign, IL), which is showing their new shopping search site. Advanced semantic search technology, which they learned from apartment search. “Starting today, search becomes automatic… turns the Internet into a giant shopping center.” These guys were pumped up!
  • 3:20 PM: GraemeThickins Piryx (Austin, TX) has a new payment system — they’re wearing t-shirts that say “I’m not your Pal” (!) They call it a social commerce platform, and are out to enable nonprofits, small businesses, local governments, political candidates, etc with “real branded social commerce.” Rock on, I say!
  • 3:26 PM: GraemeThickins Cortera (Boca Raton, FL) is bringing better credit reporting and better cash flow to small businesses, which have been horribly under-served in this area. Taking a online community approach.
  • 3:31 PM: GraemeThickins Hevva (Madison, WI) is showing Local Dirt, the first nationally integrated platform for buying, selling, and finding local food. Creates efficient local markets in one transactional platform — for individuals, businesses, and distributors. “Think global, eat local.”
  • 3:37 PM: GraemeThickins TotalTrainer (Laguna Niguel, CA) has an on-demand personalized training and nutrition platform, for gyms and health clubs to maximize fitness results. If the two presenters use it, then you’re guaranteed to look good — they’re, like, perfect. I’m sure the majority of the audience feels totally inadequate… 🙂 But if you run a health club, it sounds like a no-brainer to use this platform.
  • 3:39 PM: GraemeThickins Now, for another alpha pitcher… 90 seconds for fame for Diditz. It’s a site that lets you “convert your Facebook photo albums into web pages and promote the things you are passionate about.”
  • 3:42 PM: GraemeThickins This alpha pitcher was smooth… InfoChimps.org — the world’s largest open platform for data. Lets you discover, share, and sell data of any size, topic, or format.
  • 3:51 PM: GraemeThickins Now, the DEMO judges come up on stage… Anu Shukla, CEO, Offerpal Media: thinks huge opportunity for unique payment systems (referring to Piryx), but it’s all in the distribution and ability to build a large brand. Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob, says the mobile ad market has been historically hard to crack. Satish Dharmaraj of Redpoint Ventures: again, for payment systems, distibution is the key. He likes the idea of Local Dirt, bringing the farmer’s markets online.
  • 4:17 PM: GraemeThickins Ford marcomm guy now telling the story of how the “Microsoft Tag” is used in the launch of the new Taurus… printed in the brochures and ads. You use your cell phone to read the tag, and up comes a landing page with all the info — in this case about the Taurus. He says his engagement numbers are way up, and people can share videos much easier, etc. Ford is very happy with the results.
  • 4:36 PM: GraemeThickins Break time now! Back to the Pavilion to check out the presenting companies’ displays… and, you got it, more eating and drinking. They treat us well that way.
  • 4:52 PM: GraemeThickins at #demofall09 the Porter-Novelli/Austin folks even had a chance to sit down… but only for a few minutes
  • 4:56 PM: GraemeThickins pic.gd whoops, forgot to attach that photo of the Porter Novelli folks lunching…
  • 5:13 PM: GraemeThickins my #demofall09 Flickr set so far is here: bit.ly
  • 6:39 PM: GraemeThickins having a ball at the closing reception, chatting w/Steve Larsen, Andie Rhyins, and Steve Tingiris of #demofall09 presenter Enthusem…
  • 8:34 PM: GraemeThickins The “DEMO After Dark” party starts in about a half hour. The volunteer band, made up of DEMO press and other regulars, has been practicing for while, and they sound pretty darn good…
  • 8:42 PM: GraemeThickins DEMOfall09 – San Diego post.ly
  • 10:13 PM: GraemeThickins #demofall09 band is great (Don Clark/ WSJ on lead guitar)..they’re taking volunteers..I could do cowbell yfrog.com
  • 10:13 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 10:24 PM: GraemeThickins awesome banjo on that last number.. I recorded it, maybe I’ll post it #demofall09
  • 8:31 AM: GraemeThickins Great breakfast chat with @lizasperling and Mark Fors of presenting company Enthusem, Tampa, FL…. opening session of this last day of DEMOfall is about to start. I’m pumped. (Nothing new.)
  • 8:33 AM: GraemeThickins Decided to tweet some of my ScribbleLive posts here today (the short ones!).. since so many people said they were wondering why I wasn’t tweetin’ #DEMOfall09
  • 8:42 AM: GraemeThickins Funny opening – Chris Shipley introed, but didn’t come out – announcer came on saying, “we gotta go, cue Matt”…then Matt same out and said he was getting the hang of this thing, and he whips off his suit coat and throws it back! (big laughs)
  • 8:43 AM: GraemeThickins First alpha pitcher was Nubli, an email management tool – 90 seconds is not enough to say much about what it does, so we’re encouraged to get to their booth later.
  • 8:45 AM: GraemeThickins Next alpha pitch was from TrafficTalk – mobile traffic crowd-sourcing app. Go check out their site.
  • 8:52 AM: GraemeThickins First 6-min presenter today is Answers.com (NYC) – integrating a global wiki community as one place for all your answers, about anything. Thousands of categories, fact-finder’s gold mine. Tweet your questions to answers.com. Some 250 data sources, with more than 5 million answers currently. Lots of big backers behind this company, like Ron Conway, Redpoint, Garage Ventures, Highland, others. “Try us out, ask us anything.”
  • 8:59 AM: GraemeThickins Next up, Weels (Milton, MA) showing “Web on Weels” – see www.weelscorp.com. One-click, drag-and-drop interface for web browsing and sharing any page element with your friends. Runs on top of browser, no plug-in – opening up API, looking to attract developers. Looks pretty impressive, and a really great pitch for such young kids — two in college, one in high school!
  • 9:07 AM: GraemeThickins Article One Partners (NYC) is coming out of beta with its service that uses crowdsourcing to reasrch patent validity. They were the Silicon Alley Insider Startup-of-the-Year. Company has more than 3 million contributors already. It says it has no competition doing online crowdsourcing to uncover prior art. Many large clients, esp pharmaceutical firms.
  • 9:12 AM: GraemeThickins Kryon Systems (Tel Aviv) is showing “Leo,” a next-generation help and execution tool. Works on any application running on Windows — executes tasks automatically (guy at the laptop raises his hands). They showed it creating a pie chart in Excel, and a purchase order in SAP. “Just ask, Leo does.”
  • 9:18 AM: GraemeThickins Next up is LeapFILE (Newark, CA), which is demonstrating “LeapFILE Folder,” a private file system that lets users create, open, edit, and manage files in the cloud right from their desktop file explorer. Does away with having to upload and download files from web portals. Enables instant collaboration, and also gives IT better control over corporate content. “The end of file sharing.”
  • 9:25 AM: GraemeThickins Symform (Seattle, WA) is showing its “Cooperative Storage Cloud,” which is a service that provides unlimited online storage in exchange for an equal amount of local storage on the company’s premises. Low fixed-monthly rate, no per Gig fees. Targeting small business, to deliver enterprise-class disaster recovery at a price any firm can afford — and will also market its service through MSPs, who will offer virtual cloud services to their small business customers. Raised $1.5M in VC in May 2009.
  • 9:32 AM: GraemeThickins Anaplan (Redwood City, CA) is an on-demand suite of SaaS business apps to plan and manage any business — powerful software for modeling, etc, spreadsheets on steroids, etc, that any business can use for $49 per month for three users — “not hundreds of thousands of dollars” to buy traditional software. Pretty impressive, where SaasS is going, to power even the smallest of businesses…
  • 9:40 AM: GraemeThickins Liaise (Sunnyvale, CA) has an online service, now in private beta, that captures and manages key points (tasks, issues, dates, priorities) in emails and IMs. As you type, Liaise automatically and intelligently captures these key points and providers summaries, calendar integration, and reports. Doesn’t matter if those you’re communicating with have Liaise or not – communications will look like regular emails or IMs. This was an impressive demo…a very helpful tool to bring more efficiency to business communications.
  • 9:44 AM: GraemeThickins I.ndigo (San Paulo, Brazil) is demoing a tool called “Dekks,” which captures the informal knowledge within a business. Helps employees learn who knows what in an organization, and also gives management insight into the pulse of the enterprise.
  • 9:47 AM: GraemeThickins wow, more impressive presentations today at #demofall09 ..can hardly keep up blogging about ’em – it’s a firehose!
  • 9:54 AM: GraemeThickins Now, Hashwork (NYC) is a Twitter-like tool for work. Let’s you post work-related tweets internally, just to coworkers, or externally to customers or others. If you’re a Twitter user, Hashwork rolls up your #work tweets. There are other internal-only, Twitter-like services, but this one brings an outside service in. “We’re live now, open for business.” Impressive demo. Special offer for DEMOfall attendees: free upgrade to premium service. And, as a blogger, I’ll get a special code for my readers – watch for that! I defnly want to try this out, and think you will, too…
  • 10:01 AM: GraemeThickins Gogrok (Alhambra, CA) is a secure, high-performance P2P platform for real-time Internet collaboration. Integrates with major IM and VOIP platforms. Lets you communicate face-to-face over the net. Real-time coediting feature. Integrates desktop sharing and voice functionality.
  • 10:07 AM: GraemeThickins Zorap (Falmouth, ME) showed its app for Facebook and also is available on Ning – live social interaction around content. Pretty cool demo. Founders were DEMOgod award winners in 1998 for a video technology they developed, so you should check out this next-gen consumer chat service.
  • 10:17 AM: GraemeThickins Next up: Faculte (San Bruno, CA) is showing its “Broadcast Studio,” to let business professionals easily produce and securely distribute lively video presentations. They’re mashups of videos, images, audio, and other content with narration, annotation, webcam recordings, etc – viewable with an embedded universal media player. “We want to make producing quality videos as easy as preparing a presentation.”
  • 10:22 AM: GraemeThickins Panel discussion now… Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga really like Laisie: “Speaking on a macro level, email is an unmined opportunity.” Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM, says he liked the presenters who showed the most enthusiasm: “This is DEMO, that’s what it’s about!” Russel Fradin, CEO of Adify, says startups must look early-on for revenue opportunities – advertising not enough!
  • 10:23 AM: GraemeThickins break time at #DEMOfall09 … let the schmoozin’ begin!
  • 11:12 AM: GraemeThickins It’s 11:00 am at #DEMOfall09 …next session is a panel called “Innovation ocn the Horizon: A Look Into R&D Labs – Search.” First panelist is Donna Dubinsky, founder/CEO of Numenta, “a four-year old startup” that’s developing a learning system. “We’re a platform company.” Available today as a research-only license. She has an employee here that is now showing a use of the sytem… a “Numenta vision tool kit.” The promise is allow computers, for example, to tell the difference between a sofa and a chair — a type of system that has never been done before. Can use such an image recognition system in a variety of applications, such as iPhone apps. Download beta version (has bugs) at Numenta.com.
  • 11:21 AM: GraemeThickins Next panelist is Rob Haitani, Chief Product Officer of Vitamin D, who talked about how Donna Dubinsky’s partner, Jeff Hawkins, inspired him and some other former employees of Palm, to quit their jobs and pursue his new vision for Numenta. “Computers today are blind.” Vitamin D is developing a way for computers to see, to determine who people and objects are, for video surveillance applications, for example. Showing how rules can be created – nice interface. Intelligent computing is a way to overcome information overload. See www.VitaminDinc.com.
  • 11:25 AM: GraemeThickins The final panelist in this session is Dick Lyon, a research scientist at Google. His area of research is pattern recognition. Audio content-based search is one example. Has tens of millions of hours of audio with YouTube videos.
  • 11:34 AM: GraemeThickins Back to alpha pitches… Melior Technologies. Gurus can host a brainstorm session, and monetize their expertise. Questioner gets online conversation with a guru. New global marketplace — see GuruSessions.com
  • 11:36 AM: GraemeThickins Alpha pitcher ShareGrove allows online conversations between friends — “conversation drives commerce, and we’re building a company to realize that potential.”
  • 11:43 AM: GraemeThickins Back to 6-min pitches… next up: 80Legs (Houston, TX), which allows web-scale crawling and processing of web content on-demand. Puts the power of 50,000 computers to work for you, using distributed computing. Any user can crawl and process up to 2 billion pages per day for $2 per million pages. Showing example of crawling web to find out what people think about which conference is better: DEMO or TechCrunch50. But, ya gotta go to their booth to get the answer! (Love that.) “Giving the power of Yahoo or Microsoft to all of you.” Will be launching an app store soon.
  • 11:51 AM: GraemeThickins Scientific Media (NYC) is showing DotGo – “the Internet for text messages.” Short codes don’t work for the Internet – “Today, we’re changing that.” Just text a company’s real name to “DOTCOM” and get to the company’s site. See www.dotgo.com.
  • 11:57 AM: GraemeThickins Vicman Software (Alexandria, VA) is showing its “Pho.to Platform.” Lets any web site implement advanced photo editing and manipulation functionality at minimal cost. It’s a SaaS-based white-label solution that lets sites like social networks, dating sites, photo album providers, etc provide rich imaging entertainment.
  • 12:05 PM: GraemeThickins Next is a DEMO returnee: Zuora (Redwood City, CA), which is debuting “Z-Commerce for Media.” CEO Tien Tzuo says “free is killing media.” What do they do? What way do they go to try to make money with web content? Showing example of LaJolla Village News, how easy it is to monetize their content – and now showing examples of their subscriber pages, details of what content each is buying on a daily basis, etc. “We have an obligation to help save the media” – to help them monetize their content.
  • 12:09 PM: GraemeThickins NativeTung (Los Angeles, CA) is an advanced language translation platform that lets web sites easily establish multi-language content channels. Pioneering realtime, automated language translation with proprietary technology. Lets any site increase its global business.
  • 12:18 PM: GraemeThickins Digitrad (Paris) came out jumping and screaming, to demo its “OrganIP” service, which simplifies communications – no more phone numbers! Just type a person’s name into your browser, and OrganIP locates and connects you to them at any of their online communities, social networks, or by phone. Also showing their iPhone app. “Now all your contacts are in one place – one name, one click, one call.” Has potential to make Internet telephony simple and ubiquitous.
  • 12:23 PM: GraemeThickins CallSpark (San Francisco) is now on stage — this one is awesome. Remember I blogged about ’em Monday night? Saw it at the reception. It’s an iPhone app (will be on the App Store any day now) that gives you an amazing amount of info when you go to call someone — their latest tweet, their Facebok page, Saleforce.com data, etc. Pulls data from 12 databases. You can set up your own CallSpark “Ring Page” so you can customize the data other people see. Now about to sign their third carrier deal.
  • 12:26 PM: GraemeThickins Burt AB (Gothenburg, Sweden) is showing “Rich,” a metrics tool designed for creative agencies to better analyze online display and rich-media ad campaigns.
  • 12:27 PM: GraemeThickins Gotta run now to check out of my room… and try to get back before the Pavilion opens at 1:15, then it’s off to the airport about 1:40.
  • 2:15 PM: GraemeThickins leaving #demofall09 ..been great! had 3 final demos w/Faculte, Rumbafish, 80legs in the Pavilion..adios! yfrog.com
  • 2:15 PM: GraemeThickins

PR Rag Uncorks New Sin: ‘Blog Fraud’

February 12, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Only in SF do the scandals just keep on coming. Now the mayor’s communications chief is added to the list. He used a false identity online(!) No matter the recent study that found more than half of online users sometimes or always do that. He attacked his boss’ critics. Shocking. So, now politicians are supposed to have morals? Excuse me — in SF?

read more | digg story

Newer posts »

© 2026 Graeme Thickins on Tech

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑