Last week I had the the opportunity to work with a Venafi, a high tech security company at the RSA Conference. I helped them promote and raise brand awareness with conference attendees and I had a fabulous time doing it!
I co-hosted a Jeopardy style game show booth with Venafi’s senior sales engineer, Chris Neely, from the UK. We led an audience of 25-30 people through Jeopardy questions on the management of enterprise keys and certificates (EKCM), giving away Kindle Fires to the winners of each session. We knocked about 40 sessions over four days, doing about two an hour.
The booth was awesome! It shot up about sixty feet with two large monitors for the questions and each audience member received a wireless voting device. Chris and myself added in jokes, stories and case studies to make the information engaging, memorable and fun. Lots of laughs going on! We received a ton of positive feedback from the marketing management folks, event attendees and winners!
Had some really interesting talks with customers from Home Depot and Microsoft as well as several of the sales engineers. I completely felt in my zone and at the end of the day I felt energized.
I’m glad I was able to partner up with Venafi and Eventige to successfully deliver a great experience to RSA conf attendees (and not feel like a booth babe!).
I’ll be adding in more videos and details about the event after SXSW
This weekend in San Francisco, Startup Weekend, an amazing event founded to help good technology ideas get traction, is being hosted by Women 2.0!
Registered attendees will gather tonight to meet, listen to speakers, pitch their ideas and form teams. For the next two days they will work furiously to get their ideas into working prototypes getting insight and guidance from Startup Weekend staff and mentors with the opportunity to pitch and present on Sunday for recognition, prizes and bragging rights!
Who can attend: Everyone! Women, men, programmers, non-programmers, business minded people, graphic designers, front end designers, business development, project managers and anyone interested in learning what it takes to team up and build a successful app! Read More…
In a matter of hours, a huge debate broke out on Twitter after CNN released a soundbite from an interview that occurred between Mike Arrington, Founder of TechCrunch and interviewer, Soledad O’Brian, anchor and special correspondent at CNN. Read More…
Finally! My first earthquake experience in California! Yesterday afternoon seemed like any other day here in San Francisco: sunny, clear skies and in the 60′s. That was until the earth shook!
I was recording a YouTube video on curly hair when all of a sudden it felt like a giant worm from the movie Beetlejuice or Dune went under the building. I felt a sense of vertigo while it happened. Being in San Francisco in the Mission, the earthquake felt very brief, less than 2 seconds it seemed.
In the video, you can see me retreat from the balcony and then start processing what just happened. +1 for using logic and common sense during a natural disaster!
I’m excited that later today I’ll be presenting at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo here in NYC. I posted about it earlier this week and a few months ago and the day is here!
I arrived in NYC on Sunday and will be here for an entire week!
In addition to being asked to speak at the awesome Web 2.0 conference, I’m excited to be back and this time plan to spend time connecting with people and companies I always seem to run out of time for. The weather is super warm in the 70′s and 80′s with those oh-so-warm nights one comes to miss when living in San Francisco. Read More…
This weekend marks the second ever foursquare hackathon where people with great ideas from around the world to create new and interesting apps that leverage the fourquare API. It will be, as most hackathons are, two days of working, testing, building, researching, asking questions, eating, consuming caffeine and grabbing sleep when possible.
I will be heading to the San Francisco foursquare office to team up with Hadiyah to build an app. More on that later once we get to the hackathon on Saturday morning!
From the site:
The growing foursquare community (over 10 million!) is spread out all over the world and it’s about time we had a hackathon that reflected our global nature. So, join us over the September 17-18th weekend for a round-the-clock hacking session that’s happening all around the world!
In addition to our four official sites (NYC, San Francisco, Tokyo, & Paris) we welcome developers everywhere to band together and build amazing stuff on the foursquare API. There will be prizes, swag, and featured blog posts for the best hacks, no matter where in the world they come from.
So join a foursquare hackathon Meetup in your city on 9/17-18 by signing up. If you can, suggest a venue where people can meetup and hack, or leave a comment to get suggestions going. It’s easy to get started and we’ll provide tools, resources, and high-fives every step of the way!
Foursquare will be hosting the hackathon in four locations including New York City, San Francisco, Tokyo and Paris so developers, hackers, biz dev and product people can work on their ideas but this is global so you can participate from anywhere in the world! Details here http://www.meetup.com/foursquare-API/
The Schedule
SATURDAY
9:00am Breakfast + Registration
10:00 Welcome, overview of day, API introduction, Guest API intros
11:00 Hack idea/team pitches
11:30 Hacking begins
1:00pm Lunch
7:30 Dinner
SUNDAY
2:00am Doors close: You can stay as long as you’re hacking, otherwise go home, sleep, and come back after 8!
8:00 Doors open
9:00 Breakfast + caffeine
12:30pm Lunch
4:00 Laptop screens down! Sign up to present your hack
4:15 Show us your hacks!
5:00 Voting for best hacks for the site.
5:30 Wrap-up, submitting hacks for global voting/glory, mingling, beer drinking
5:45 Site winners announced
6:00 Bye!
Additional API’s To Compliment The foursquare API
There are several APIs in addition to the foursquare API hackers can work with including:
Twillio API - Call, manage, direct, send, screen, record and more with voice while rocking sms notifications. Mobile and web.
Ordr.in API - Restaurant, order and user apis for ordering food
Venmo API - Pay your friends and social contacts. iOS, Android and web
Bing Maps API - Street view will never be the same, eh. Windows 7, web
THECALLR API - Phone IVR, dialer, track, conference, allocate numbers, electronic vm
Stupeflix API – Video, layered rich media plus social , TTS accessibility
1001Menus API – social menu sharing, restaurants, maps
Songkick API – Concerts, past and upcoming performances near you
Moodstocks API - Image recognition, scan, better than QR codes. mobile
Prizes For Awesome foursquare Hacks
You can win all sorts of cool prizes like a trip to NYC, the chance to have your app show up on the NASDQ screen in Times Square, an inflateable remote controlled shark plus bragging rights until the next hackathon!
Grand Prize
Dinner with foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai in NYC plus this amazing foursquare hackathon title belt! You’ll be in good company because Akshay Patil, foursquare’s platform evangelist and Bryce Roberts of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures will also be joining you for dinner.
Three of the most popular hacks will get a special “Platformer” badge
People’s Choice
Interesting mix here of the inflatable remote controlled shark (that you could ride on a boat), a foursquare mayor hoodie, ball to bounce around on your non mayored friends and a top secret t-shirt. Plus of course, bragging rights that you were the foursquare hackathon’s people’s choice.
NASDAQ Prize
Fly to New York City to see your hack proudly shown on the NADAQ display screen in Times Square. Plus bragging rights!
Twillio prizes
The Twillio finalist will get $500 in Twillio credit which is about 50,000 sms messages while the team with the best hack will get flown out to New York City to meet with Brad Burnham and Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures!
Local hacking prizes
New York City
Aviary
Ordr.in
Venmo
San Francisco
Bing Maps
Stupeflix
Paris
THECALLR
Stupeflix
1001Menus
Songkick
Moodstocks
Summary
So that’s it! Wish us luck and see you at a future hackathon in San Francisco!
Covering companies, startups and attendees at TechCrunch Disrupt this week with Geekazine, I interviewed Paige Craig, CEO and Founder of BetterWorks whose aim is to make it easy for companies to provide hyper local and relevant rewards to employees.
BetterWorks was started late last year to fill a growing need to administer employee perk programs. They’re focusing on the small and medium business market because companies of this size often lack the technology and staff resources to create employee reward programs that staff find relevant. Often small companies will sign staff for a “perk” only to find at the end of the year it’s gone unused and unappreciated.
Betterworks does all the heavy lifting to find local vendors, negotiate discounts and wrap it up into an easy to use web-based portal for company employees to use. They can sign in to a custom url and select the perks that fit them best including climbing walls, coffee, Subway sandwiches and more.
Customers include Nokia, Klout, FormSpring, Hulu, gettyimages, Disqus and many more.
Why should companies care about rewarding employees you ask? According to a study by Jo Ann Abe, a professor at Southern Connecticut State because there is a connection between emotional intelligence and learning on the job. Happy people are more receptive to new information which is a large component of small companies growing quickly.
Started in LA but now serving companies in San Francisco, BetterWorks has plans to continue expansion into new markets including New York. BetterWorks raised a healthy round of series A funding earlier this year.
I also met George Ishii, CPO and co-founder on Day 3 of TechCrunch Disrupt. We talked about the the planning and ideas that went into the branding of BetterWorks to clearly convey their purpose and message.
Find out how users of the new social network have been using Google+. Everything from cooking classes and group meditation to free concerts and as a family baby monitor. Plus tips and tricks on using Google+.
Last month when I attended BlogHer, I was excited to see that the BlogHer team had arranged not only for attendees to receive Google+ invites but managed to get Google community managers to come out and speak at BlogHer in the “fishbowl”, a presentation area in the expo hall. It was a great presentation and I captured it on camera to share.
Great job Natalie, Katherine and Carolyn! Thanks for a wonderful presentation and thank you to +Elisa Camahort Page +Lisa Stone +Jory Des Jardins and +Maria Niles for arranging Google to come in and present plus give conference attendees 3,000 Google+ invites!
Do you have an amazing idea for that would benefit companies, consumers or government?
Is there an existing technology you use but feel it’s a bit lacking think you could fill in the gap?
Well bring your coding, design and biz dev skills to the second annual TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon happening September 10th and 11th, 2011 in San Francisco! Unleash your creativity and collaborate with other passionate, driven developers, entrepreneurs and designers to give birth to new and disruptive technology.
What is TechCrunch Disrupt?
TechCrunch Disrupt is a twice yearly event now held in San Francisco in the Fall and NYC in the spring to showcase new startups, concepts and of course, disruptive solutions in the technology space.
There are Keynotes, fire side chats, exhibitors, sponsors and parties but the main attraction are the companies with these new ideas. Last year there was everything from guitar games to social badges to a visual encyclopedia and several medical / health related startups…plus so much more! Attendees include VC investors, business analysts, reporters, other startups, developers, bloggers and general media.
It spawned out of TechCrunch50 which was a co-branded event between TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis (Mahalo, This Week In, Launch, masterful poker player). TC50, as it was known, was created to offer an alternative to DEMO which was (and still is) a big name conference focused on helping startups launch with traction through exposure. That said, Michael and Jason had a falling out, dissolved TC50 and both launched new conferences. After watching for two years in row from Minneapolis, I knew I would attend TechCrunch Disrupt last year and made that a reality. It was amazing and I’m attending again this year!
Where are they now? GroupMe – Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon, NYC 2010
GroupMe was one of the many products created at last year’s hackathon and the founders just closed a deal and were acquired by Skype (Now owned by Microsoft). Another solution, which may have won the hackathon demo had to do with a mobile app that gave you the ability to alert people that you were in danger or trouble. As they say, it’s quite common for people to create things they need in their own lives or workplaces then they come to find out that others have the same need too!
Who can attend: programmers, coders, designers, artists, creatives, business development, marketing people and really anyone who’s passionate about creating something new, useful and of course…disruptive!
Agenda: (From the site)
Saturday, September 10th
1 pm Registration opens (come fed or bring a brown bag lunch, beverages served)
dedicated area for people to network to form hack teams
2 pm Hacking Kickoff
3 – 9 pm API workshops scheduled in 30 minute intervals
7 pm dinner
midnight food and snacks
Sunday, September 11th
7 am breakfast served
9:30 am hacking concludes and hacks submitted to wiki
10 am general public welcome to enter to attend hackathon presentations
10:30 hackathon presentations begin
approximately 2 pm hackathon will conclude with final awardsand recognitions will be provided by the judges. The final awards may be held earlier or later depending on duration of hack presentations
Is a Hackathon Right For You?
Gathering together to build something amazing and useful would be the simplest description of a hackathon. It’s actually not about hacking computer systems! Hackathons usually focus on a specific programming language or around a vertical like government but hackathons can also be used to build control interfaces to physical devices like some folks at Google did with their robot hackathon.
People usually get together on a regular basis and it seems meeting weekly is pretty popular here in San Francisco. A hackathon can also be a one time event over a weekend. Before arriving at one, you may or may not know anyone else. For the Ruby on Rails study group I’ve been attending, it will now be converted to a weekly hackathon where we come together to work on our on projects. A few benefits of participating in hackathons inlude:
Ability to connect with other people who share your interests
Learn new skills or alternate ways of completing tasks
Increased accountability for project progress
Get help for your project
Share ideas and help others and contribute to the community
What happens?
At a hackathon, you show up with your laptop, a project idea and a willingness to be flexible. From there, introductions are made, there’s usually pizza and beer involved and a meet and greet. There is usually some sort of method to help connect people and help them network because let’s be honest, most programmers and geeks are socially awkward, even I am (although many people who meet me just don’t believe the inner geek battles I have with reading social cues), and so ice breakers are a must for a hackathon. From here, there may be a relaxed or formal schedule to check in with progress, a resource area and a final presentation with or without feedback.
A hackathon, a hackerneologism, is an event when programmers meet to do collaborativecomputer programming. The spirit of a hackthon is to collaboratively build programs and applications. Hackathons are typically between several days and a week in length. A hackathon refers not simply to one time hacks, but to a specific time when many people come together to hack on what they want to, how they want to – with little to no restrictions on direction or goal of the programming.
Launch A Lean Startup.
If you live in San Francisco, chances are you’re into technology one way or another. If you’re working in the field, nursing along a side project on the weekends or find your calendar full of meetup.com events, sign up for the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon.
Attend TechCrunch Distrupt For Free
In addition to having a great time, meeting new folks and working on something cool, you’ll get a free ticket to attend the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. If you don’t know already, tickets to this event are $2,000 so participating in the hackathon is a great way to gain access to this conference without coughing up what most people would consider a few mortgage payments!
See You There!
I’ve signed up this year to take part in the hackathon as part of my ongoing quest to learn to program. After doing Startupweekend in May, I’m certainly a believer of rapid, group iteration spurring powerful new ideas that can gain traction. I’ve decided to agree the new measurement for success is rapid user adoption and saw several companies last year do just that after launching at TechCrunch Disrupt like CloudFlare, Badgeville and Storify. I’m also attending TechCrunch Disrupt with a press pass to cover emerging companies and capture great video interviews with Jeffery from Geekazine.
Been to other hackathons?
Have you been to a previous TechCrunch disrupt hackathon?
You should attend a StartupWeekend event. It will change your life.
Writing an email today, I summed up in a single sentence what I learned two weeks ago about what it meant to me to be successful in business and how I will know I’ve reached that point:
“I want a have a brilliant business model with a product people can’t stop talking about.”
Yesterday I presented at the Visual Media Alliance Expo on how the social network Twitter can help to grow your business called, “What The Heck Is Twitter?”
Are you ready to learn how to build your network using social media, connect with new customers via your blog and experience new levels of success you never dreamed possible using the cloud?
I bet you are if you’re reading this! Come and see me speak at an event. They’re spread out over the next month from San Francisco to Atlanta to halfway around the world in Malaysia but never fear! Two of them are online so you don’t have to hop a flight to grow your understanding of SEO and building a website in WordPress.
If you’re already planning to attend one of these, great! Give a shout out in the comments!
The following blog post is written by a Brown woman and is advice to be followed by Brown women who are interested in technology, starting a company, launching a startup or being more successful in business.
A few weeks ago, TechCrunch wrote what I considered to be a “dumb” and patronizing article asking why there appeared to be so few Brown women launching tech startups. I began writing an angry blog post but decided instead to lead with action instead of words.
I invited two Brown women, @drgoddess and @kiratiana, who I knew from Twitter and conferences to head out and join me for StarutpWeekend in San Francisco. We had all spent time talking together at SXSW about how to launch our ideas. Kiratiana bought her ticket, booked her flight and arrived Thursday night! You can read the pre-event blog post Startup Weekend Hits San Francisco Again For 2011 I wrote up.
It’s a 3 day event where registered attendees all meetup on a Friday evening, listen to speakers, pitch ideas, vote, form teams and then start working developing prototypes to present on Sunday!
The goal is to have a minimally viable product (MVP) ready to present. These events are held all over the world and you can find a list of upcoming StartupWeekends near you http://startupweekend.org/events/
I’ve uploaded my photos from this year’s SXSW and couldn’t stop smiling thinking back through the amazing experience I had! Make sure to check out the slideshow (which I’ve also embedded here for you) and look for blog posts and video now that I’ve recovered from the 8 day experience!
SXSW The Experience
Wow! I had such an amazing time this year thanks to the support of my friends and Twitterfam! I’ll be writing more about this but let’s move onto the photos.
This conference is a big deal. It includes music, film and interactive which means that everyone in entertainment, the creative arts and the tech space pay attention and attend.
In the last few years, there have been complaints that SXSW becoming too commercialized with ads and sponsors but I really liked how Erica Mauter put it that you have to show up to make a difference. And show up people did! I heard attendance this year was well over 15,000 with some reports putting the number near 19,000. Whatever the case, there were people everywhere, all the time but the conference was well run, well organized and extremely fun! I truly felt like I got the full “SXSW Experience” this time around.
Friends
This year, I spent more time talking to less people. There were many introductions made by friends to new people, which I liked. It completely removed the introverted discomfort I feel when looking out onto a very large room of people I don’t know. I actually can say now that I like networking!
The friends and Twitter folks I hung with this year were all about building, growing and success. They were also about having fun! While I did tweet at #SXSW, much of my time was spent using a group created in Beluga by Wayne Sutton to provide a real time discussion area for Brown people at SXSW. It was truly an amazing experience to have access to this private sort of Twitter as a backchannel to communicate with a specific group of people about a specific event who were all in Austin. No need for hashtags!
I didn’t use Foursquare very much but on my last few days in Austin, I did sign up for Gowalla and loved their hoodie t-shirt! (see shirt below). I spent a lot of time chatting, laughing and doing serious networking to get the word out on my technology training at Freshworkshops.
Parties
Normally I would say I’m not a party person but SXSW makes it all feel so different! The Mashable party this year again was at Buffalo Billiards and I had an excellent time! The TechSet party wasn’t so hot but I did meet some good people to know. I loved the WebInk party on the roof of the W hotel and afterwards went down to the lounge with @catpoetry and had more great conversations before heading to the 24 diner for delicious hamburgers!
I am coming to realize you can do dedicated networking where you’re on a “mission” to meet certain people and be at certain parties or you can go the route of serendipity. I’ve never been comfortable with the first so this time I embraced the serendipity that I would find myself in the right conversations that were aligned with my goals and dreams. If I found otherwise, I would politely excuse myself to find a more satisfying convo. And it worked!
I’ll be writing a blog post about my experience drinking at conferences, inspired by @violetblue. I had several friends at SXSW who don’t drink at all plus I had the opportunity get advice from others on how they handle drinking at events.
Tech
So the biggest tech thing to happen at SXSW this year was the announcement of the iPad2. Apple rented a local store space about half a mile away from the Austin Convention Center and opened for business. There were lines and the store quickly ran out of several of the lower capacity models. Folks I knew like Terrance Gains (@brothatech), Cheryl Contee (@ch3ryl) and Joselin Mane (@joselinmane) all bought iPad2′s at SXSW. More on this later.
The other big flavors at SXSW in tech were mobile, startups, QR codes, green technology and anything to do with gaming. Blog posts coming.
The rapid charging stations this year were amazing! My Nexus S went from 3% to 35% in just 20 minutes. Bring those back next year!
My Session: What The Government Can Learn From Amazon
I did my presentation which was part of the Future 15 and touched on the frustrations of US citizens who are asked to provided identity papers everywhere they go yet it’s a huge hassle to get said documents. I offered several solutions the government could implement to reduce waiting time at the DMV, centralize identity documents and provide tracking options to citizens. I will cover the content in separate blog post.
My slides rocked since I used Sliderocket (Thanks Tara!).
Self constructive criticism > I wasn’t happy with my style. I know now that I’m going to need to revisit the idea I tweeted about last year of going in for stand-up comedy classes. Managing my content, the slides and being in touch with a large audience throws me off a bit and my normal enthusiastic, bubbly, smiling self is replaced by a more factual, serious version. Doh!
Adria at SXSW
Oh my goodness did I have a good time! This was truly the first conference where I had to face myself head on and ask, “What do you want to get out of this?”. I fully committed to having a memorable experience, spending time with people who I felt good to be around, make solid networking contacts for my business and focus on feeling good in the moment. Because of this goal, I truly felt good and it showed! I decided before leaving I would dress in a way that I felt comfortable but also in a way that flattered my figure.
Not only did I get compliments every single day from both men and women on my hair or overall appearance, I felt radiant! So thank you my awesome friends who have encouraged me to blossom!
I have spent so many years hiding behind baggy clothes and glasses that I didn’t know how to be beautiful. Thankfully friends like Afrobella, Luvvie and Denise have helped me find that beauty and tweak it. They’ve overclocked my appearance! lol! These are a few photos where I’m having fun and enjoying how I look (even though I still feel a bit uncomfortable uploading them and posting them, I’m doing it anyway!).
Exhibitors Area
I went around to say hello to folks I knew like Techsmith and Sliderocket. Cotton candy is always high on my list now that tech companies have caught on us geeks love that stuff and I made at least 3 trips to the Animoto booth. It was across from the Automattic booth which you may know as the parent company of WordPress. I talked with a few exhibitors about their products and services. More later as this is supposed to be a photo blog post!
I love good food and there was plenty of it at SXSW. It seemed everywhere you turned there was free food or delicious food begging to be eaten. There was also the very suspect “street meat” from vendors on 6th street offering things like bacon smothered hotdogs until late into the night. I had at least 3 burgers while in Austin, sushi, apple pie, pistachio cheescake, grilled cheese with tomato & basil soup, steak (free dinner rocks!) and breakfast nearly every morning (thanks Jay!). I am a food lover to the nth power!
Travel and Hotel
I always love taking photos of this stuff.
Bluey
Bluey ended up coming along for the trip! Her heart didn’t explode from the altitude in the airplane, she didn’t get crushed in the couch and she didn’t freak out so this was a very good experience to show me how I’m going to need to accept that she’s doing okay after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure and I can return to focusing on my career and life goals. It was awesome having her along and each day I’m feeling less worried about her health. Yay Bluester!
![Image for Google+ Community Managers Share User Stories At BlogHer [VIDEO]](http://cdn.butyoureagirl.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/google-plus-natalie-villalobos-katherine-gramman-carolyn-witte-BlogHer.jpg "Visit: Google+ Community Managers Share User Stories At BlogHer [VIDEO]")
