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.

Tag: Defrag (Page 1 of 2)

Startups: Apply for Your Free #Gluecon Demo Pod (Deadline March 24)

March 19, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Can the Glue Conference get any better? This will be the third annual, and I can honestly say this year's event will blow the roof off. Listen: if you're a developer or tech startup founder, get your ass to Denver, May 24-26. You will kick yourself over and over in said ass if you don't! The quality of the programming and attendees is the best of any cloud/developer/big data/mobile conference out there. Trust me — I go to a lot of conferences. I know these things. And the #Gluecon crew is making it even easier for a bunch of startups to get visibility there this year…

Glue-DemoPavilion-banner How? Thanks to the main event underwriter, Alcatel-Lucent (and its OpenAPIservice), the Glue Conference is awarding 15 startups with a free demo pod at the event. Here's the post on the great Gluecon Blog that will tell you all about this oportunity.  You have till March 24th to apply, so go for it!

What will the conference program offer?  Well, that's taking even more shape as we speak, but check out this post on the Gluecon blog for juicy details about just some of the Gluecon sessions.

A quote from event organizer Eric Norlin: "We're working our butts off to make sure that Gluecon is the single most impact-filled conference for cloud/API developers this year. I hope you'll choose to join us."

[UPDATE: In a previous post, I wrote this: 'Glue' is a Cloud Conference That's Different – It's for *Developers* (and some interesting new twists on the next one)]

For basic details on this year's event, hit this register page and read the summary. Omni-BroomfieldThen register while the price is the lowest! (Try this code and see if it still gets you an even lower discount: alu12.)  And make your hotel reservation. The venue is a very cool place called the Omni Resort in Broomfield, and the rate is quite reasonable. Gonna be tons of great learning, killer networking, and it's always lots of fun, too!  See you there.

 

Defrag 2010: A Chat With Atlassian

November 19, 2010 / / 2 Comments

On day two of the Defrag conference, I wanted to stop by the booth of Atlassian, a Gold Sponsor of Defrag. I was anxious to learn more about what I was hearing is a pretty freaking amazing company. Atlassian-logo You have to love the story: a couple of 22-year-old university dropouts in Sydney decide to start a company together, because they see problems with the state of enterprise software — it's expensive, difficult to configure, and requires huge investments in consulting to implement and years to deploy. So, they launch Atlassian in 2002, ship their first product, JIRA, and become profitable that first year. Fast forward to today: Atlassian has more than 20,000 customers and some 250 employees, on three continents. A few months ago, the company raised its first outside funding, to fuel even more growth: a $60-million investment from Accel Partners. You just don't hear too many stories of such rapid software startup success as this, certainly not coming out of Australia. (My own home country, I'm proud to say!) The company does so much to give back to the community, too, which is touched on in my interview, linked below. Atlassian-products Atlassian is really a different kind of software company, one that's rewritten the rules of enterprise software development and sales. Its bug tracking, collaboration and software development tools allow companies to work smarter and faster — and these tools are especially attractive for startups and small teams. Altassian offers a special package of six of its products, generally for up to 10 users each, for just $10. It's called the Starter program. But, get this: at Defrag 2010, I picked up on an even better offer for cash-strapped startups: how's free? Yes, lucky readers, it's the Free Starter program, which gets you fully functional licenses to all six products, including 12 months of support and updates. The promo code is ATLDEFR10 (and note the offer expires April 1, 2011). Now, let's get right to my interview so you can hear more about this amazing new breed of sofware company: Atlassian….

• Download or listen to my interview with Matt Hodges, a Product Marketing Manager for Atlassian who is now based in San Francisco… (MP3)

(UPDATE: For more on what Atlassian is doing to give back, I meant to inlude this link to a post on one of their blogs: Freemium is Dead…Long Live Causium.)

 

Defrag 2010: A Chat About Yolink

November 19, 2010 / / 0 Comments

On the first day of Defrag, I stopped by to chat with Brian Cheek, Director of Business Development for TigerLogic, about his firm's product Yolink, which is a next-generation technology that enhances search by extracting information from behind links and inside of documents.  Yolink-graphic I was amazed I hadn't heard about Yolink until a few days prior to Defrag, and found it pretty amazing as I started to play with it.  See the following coverage for more about this technology: Yolink Helps Web Researchers Search Behind Links (Mashable) … Yolink's Next Step Search Pulls Info from Behind Links and Inside Docs (ReadWriteWeb) … and Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (MakeUseOf.com).

It's available as a plugin for all the major browsers. It's also available as a desktop app for Windows PC users. You can even get a Yolink widget for your site or blog (again, all the major platforms). Also be sure to look at some cool lab experiments created by Yolink engineers that showcase the use of the Yolink API. The API allows integrating Yolink into any web service. It can be used to enhance existing search engine results, or to provide site or app search functionality outright. The API is simple to implement and completely customizable.

• Download or listen to my interview with Brian Cheek of TigerLogic about Yolink… (MP3)

My Live Blog: Defrag 2010

November 16, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Defrag-StageSign I'm in Denver for my fourth consecutive Defrag conference, which is every one since it started in 2007.  This time, it's actually in Broomfield, CO, a suburb, at a nice place called the OMNI Interlocken Resort. I'm starting the live blog on Tuesday evening, as we're gathering in the hotel lobby to go to some sponsored dinners. (I'm headed to Boulder with Gist.)  The conference fires up in the morning, when my live-blogging will begin in earnest.  Check out the agenda.  In the meantime, I have my twitter stream appearing in the live blog, and that of the conference organizer (@defrag), Eric Norlin.  I also have it set up so that any tweets with the hashtag #defragcon will appear in the live blog window, at least for now. (I'll probably shut that off starting in the morning, or it would get to be too much.)  [UPDATE: Decided on the morning of day one to leave it all in! Makes for a more interesting live-blog, and archiving the whole conversation, in proper chronologial order, is pretty cool for anyone who may want to refer back. There were so many *great* Twitter exchanges going on during the event!  I know I made a whole bunch of new Twitter friends… 🙂 ]

I'm looking forward to a great conference!  When the event is completed, I'll archive this live-blog, which switches it around to proper chronological order. And the link for this blog post will remain pemanent 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. Hope you like it!

Gist Gives You the Context You Need for Meaningful Engagements

May 13, 2010 / / 0 Comments


Gist-diagram Today, I had an opportunity to meet with a couple of the good folks
from Gist, a startup based in Seattle that helps you "Know More about
Who You Know."  It's a neat app that I've been using for some time, and
that includes their native iPhone app — which is a great way
to stay in touch when I'm on the go with what my network is up to.  I
also love the daily email updates I get from Gist that give me all the
latest content from my most important contacts. 

I sat down for breakfast with Robert Pease, VP of Marketing, and Jenn Pitts, Marketing Operations Manager, who were in town for a conference. My friend Buzz Bruggeman in Seattle was nice enough to give me a heads-up that Robert and Jenn were coming to Minneapolis, and I thought it would be a great
Jenn+Robert-Gist opportunity to get an update on the company.  I had previously met the CEO, T.A. McCann, last year at a couple of conferences I attend in Denver, Defrag and Glue, where I had first learned about the company's app.

Here's the audio interview I recorded of our conversation, which is about 22 minutes long. Excuse the sound quality, because we were in the very large lobby restaurant in the Hyatt downtown, and there was a fair amount of background noise. At one point, there was even a loud clap of thunder outside that interrupted our chat! But it was good to hear about how this startup is doing in advancing its mission of helping people improve their relationships with the people and companies that matter most to them.

• Download or listen to Graeme's interview with Gist (MP3)"

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