1000 Flowers Bloom

University of Missouri Journalism School Centennial

I had the honor of speaking at the University of Missouri Journalism School Centennial on Friday September 12. The journalism school is the oldest in the world and they were bringing together people from the journalism side as well as the technology side to talk about where things were going with the industry.

I had a great time talking about Aggregate Knowledge and learning about other cool companies like Texterity, Newsy, Daylife and SpinSpotter.

The new Reynolds Institute that they launched is a gorgeous new building devoted to the study of how media is evolving.

As the centennial was underway there were students running around with cellphone cameras interviewing people and putting it up on Youtube and blogging about the event. The idea was to give them a real taste of how new media was evolving.

It was terrific to see this actually being taught in school and to be a part of it.

Open Data Conference

I'm here in NYC at the Open Data Conference that Seth Goldstein is organizing.

Some really interesting information being shared and I think a central tension between wanting to be Open and embracing of Attention Trust principles and the realities of operating commercially.

Henry Blodget is blogging about it.

Press Pass for Scott Beale at Web 2.0

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid isn't being given a press pass to the Web 2.0 conference this week. (photo courtesy of quasistoic on Flickr).

 

Scott adds a ton to events by capturing moments that are not just about the celebrities but regular attendees as well. He does a fantastic job of capturing the essence of an event that a regular print journalist can't always do with just words.

Personally I think that's really dumb on O'Reilly and Battelle's part.

If anyone knows anyone - please see if we can help the man out and get him in! I promise we'll have wonderful photos if he's there.

SFWIN 1.10- Thursday Nov. 2 at 6 PM - Orrick

We liked the venue at Orrick so much that we are going to throw our future events there as well. We hope you'll join us!

Next Event - Thursday Nov. 2 at 6 PM - Orrick
Location: 405 Howard Street - the Orrick Building

TICKETS
Advanced Tickets - $10
Door Tickets - $20

RSVP Here

SPONSORS

Orrick - Orrick is a leading law firm that has created a new Emerging Companies Group for entrepreneurs, start-ups and their investors.

ATTENDEE LIST

You can get more information about the event here:

http://sfwin.wufoo.com/forms/sfwin-november-2nd-2006-sign-up

DEMOS
mPulse Media
mPulse grows mobile communities — think: mySpace + delicious + craigslist on tiny screens. Our own community, wapTAGS, receives thousands of daily visitors from around the world. Other sites use our community tools to increase page views and ad revenue, as well as drive more purchases in mobile stores.

Yuku
Yuku is profiles, image sharing, blogs and discussion boards all in one place. Your Yuku account has up to five different profiles - because you don't always want to use the same profile, but you do only want one account. At Yuku our purpose is to help people like you connect and communicate online as easily and safely as possible.

MemoryMiner
Winner of a Macworld 2006 Best of Show award, MemoryMiner is a digital storytelling application that lets you zero in on the stories depicted in your photos by linking them to each other based on people, places and time. These stories can be uploaded to popular web destinations. A Windows version is coming in 2006.

Great time at TechCrunch party

I had a great time at the TechCrunch party last Friday.

I do tend to agree wtih Donna Bogatin at ZDNet that there's a little too much negativity around these types of events.

She also quoted this from Scoble's blog:

You know, what’s the deal with these parties? They are getting to be media events, that’s all. Be seen, and see. Take photos or videos, get videoed or photoed. Talk about tech? I tried. But it was just too noisy to have a decent conversation on video.

In my humble opinion I think that Scoble as a media star may have a slightly skewed take on the event. He was out there trying to interview people on video in the middle of a party. Umm... yeah it's pretty hard to that!

My own experience was that I had a great time there meeting people and talking shop. It was a great chance to catch up with folks I hadn't seen in a while and to meet some interesting people there as well.

Why is it that if there is a day full of boring lectures and a party afterwards that everyone calls it a conference and if there's just the party (where you learn way more) people think it's a sign of apocalypse and call it a bubble?

Special shout out to Thor Muller from Ruby Red Labs whom I keep running into at conferences like Etech and having awesome conversations with but never manage to catch up with even though we live in the same city.

SFWIN 1.8 - Thanks for coming out!

Thank you to everyone who came out to SFWIN 1.8. It was a terrific time.

I thought  all the demos were pretty cool.
Atlassian – creators of JIRA and Confluence
People Aggregator - social network web service
Live Books – editable website presentation & marketing software for creative professionals
Picture Cloud - create 360 degree pictures with a few clicks.

Congratulations to Scott Beale for winning the grand prize video iPod from Apple.

Special thanks to our sponsor & host Atlassian.
Their products are more well known than the company, hopefully we've done a little to change that.

Also thanks to Metromint for donating water to the event and for the case they gave away.
I have to admit I was really skeptical when I first heard about it, but then I tried it and it was really tasty! I think that other folks at SFWIN felt the same way because we ran out of the 100 bottles we got halfway through the night!

You can see photos from Kris Tate here:
http://beta.zooomr.com/smartsets/kristopher/769

If you upload your photos to Zooomr and tag them with SFWIN1.8 you can see them all in one spot.

SFWIN - Demos, Giveaways and Discounts

Here’s some info about demos that we have coming up at the next SFWIN as well as some cool giveaways and discounts!

DEMOS

Atlassian – creators of JIRA and Confluence
People Aggregator - social network web service
Live Books – editable website presentation & marketing software for creative professionals

GIVEAWAYS

Be sure to bring your business card!

• 30 GB video iPod
• Case of Metromint 

In addition to the open bar we’ll also have free Metromint for you to try as well.

DISCOUNTS

Atlassian is offering 10% off of JIRA and Confluence. Considering that a JIRA license costs about $5000 that’s pretty cool. 

I will be picking up a copy myself!

NEXT EVENT: TUESDAY JULY 25, 6 PM - ATLASSIAN

Location: 375 Alabama Street, Suite 400

Get Advance Tickets - $15
Door Tickets - $20

SPONSOR

Atlassian is an Australian software company with a new office in San Francisco. Over 4,000 customers in more than 60 countries rely on Atlassian JIRA, a professional issue tracker, and Atlassian Confluence, the enterprise wiki, to help them share knowledge, collaborate, and manage their projects.

ATTENDEE LIST

You can sign up as an attendee and see who else is coming here:
http://wsfinder.jot.com/WikiHome/SF+Web+Innovators 

Details through SMS

Manish from 411sync just set this up for us:

When using SMS from your phone, simply SMS “sfwin” to 415-676-8397. In return, you will get the following details:

“SFWIN Tuesday July 25 at 6PM. Atlassian 375 Alabama Street,Suite 400,SF. From 101,POTRERO AVENUE exit,left on 17th, right on ALABAMA”

Mashup Camp Pre-Party

For those of you going to Mashup Camp be sure to check out the Mashup Camp Pre-Party being hosted by Strike Iron on July 11. Be sure to register if you are interested.

SFWIN 1.7 - Thank you for coming to the May Event

Thank you to everyone who came out to the event at the Adaptive Path Offices last night.

We changed up the demo format a little with everyone having demo stations and we think it worked a lot better. Lots of good feedback from folks about that. If you would like to demo at the next event please email me. 

411Sync –  Mobilize any site via SMS

InFreeDA – Free 411  service

Feedlinx - Multiple reader/email feed synching

Servoy - Easily Create GUIs for SQL Databases

We also wanted to give special thanks to our sponsors Fish & Richardson and Adaptive Path. We can’t make these events happen without support from our sponsors.

Our next event is still in the planning stages and we’ll have that worked out soon.

If you’re on the mailing list we’ll drop you a line about it.

Shannon Whitley blogs about his experience at the event.

Thank you to everyone who came out to the event at the Adaptive Path Offices last night.

We changed up the demo format a little with everyone having demo stations and we think it worked a lot better. Lots of good feedback from folks about that. If you would like to demo at the next event please email me. 

411Sync –  Mobilize any site via SMS

InFreeDA – Free 411  service

Feedlinx - Multiple reader/email feed synching

Servoy - Easily Create GUIs for SQL Databases

We also wanted to give special thanks to our sponsors Fish & Richardson and Adaptive Path. We can’t make these events happen without support from our sponsors.

Our next event is still in the planning stages and we’ll have that worked out soon.

If you’re on the mailing list we’ll drop you a line about it.

Shannon Whitley blogs about his experience at the event.

SFWIN Join the Organizing Committee

We have a great time putting together SFWIN but we could really use some help. We’ve heard tons of great ideas for making SFWIN better but the three of us have a really hard time making them happen because we’ve all got day jobs.

We’d like to reach out to our members and see who would like to become active in organizing and making the organization better. We have a variety of roles for different skill sets. I’ve included descriptions of who we think we need at the bottom of this email. Each of these roles takes about half a day to a day of work each month.

You’ll get a ton of exposure, it looks wonderful on a resume, you get in free and of course you get a warm fuzzy feeling for putting together an event that’s valuable to the community.

POSITIONS 

Sponsorship Director

We need someone to find sponsors to get venues and money to help subsidize the event. We have existing sponsors so you won’t be starting from scratch!

Marketing Director

Every time new people come to the event they tell us they wish that they had heard about it sooner. We need someone to get the word out about SFWIN, this includes everything from putting us in places like Zvents and upcoming.org to working with other people throwing events to co-ordinate promotion.

Demo Director

We have been doing demos for the last few SFWIN events and we really need someone to own this area of the event and get it organized, from talking to and getting people in, to running the demo logistics the day of.

Webmaster

Let’s face it, our site (www.sfwin.org) could use some help. We need someone to make the SFWIN site great and to keep it that way. 

Door Volunteers (1 hour)

We now have enough people coming in that we’d like to get some more people helping out at the door. If you’re a door volunteer you get in free and get to meet a whole lot of interesting people!

If you have any interest or questions please drop me an email!