adtech

Around the Moscone Center in San Francisco where the Web 2.0 Expo is being held are numerous great spots to help the conference attendee. However there are also even more spots which cater to tourists and convention attendees, that alas do not have great food or service.

So a few suggestions and a local, foodies, guide to SOMA near the Moscone Center.

Spots for Coffee or Tea (not Starbucks)

Samovar Tea - located above the Moscone North is a spot most convention attendees miss. Somovar is a serious tea shop offering a peaceful (if slow - in a good way) alternative to Starbucks. A great place to meet someone for a light, flavorful lunch or an afternoon meeting over tea. The foods and teas are first rate. Food and a pot of tea will run you about $20 a person and is well worth it.

Blue Bottle Cafe - my personal vote for quite possibly the best coffee in the country, not just in San Francisco. Located at 66 Mint St which is just two blocks from the Moscone West, Blue Bottle Cafe offers more than six different ways to have coffee, all amazing and flavorful. From some of the best espresso drinks anywhere (including single origin coffee) to an imported from Japan Siphon Bar the coffee, all of which they roast themselves in Oakland, are prepared with great care and attention to detail. To compliment the coffee they serve a small selection of great foods and desserts and also have a small selection of fine wines and beers. They close relatively early in the evening, but for coffee either in the morning or the afternoon they can't be beat. I suggest that everyone in town for Web 2.0 Expo get at least one coffee from Blue Bottle while they are here, walk over with a new business contact and impress them with your local knowledge (and if they are not a coffee drinker they have many great alternatives to choose from). One note, taste you drinks before you assume you need either milk or sugar in them - the coffee here is not like anything you have likely had before, the cappuccinos and lattes in particular don't need anything)

Great places for working dinners

Canton Seafood and Dim Sum - located at the corner of Folsom and Hawthorne, just a few blocks from the Moscone, Canton is one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. I had a great dinner there last night in fact, and while there another group of Web 2.0 Expo attendees came in and following my advice had a fantastic 7+ course feast for $22.50 a person complete with salt & pepper crab, Peking Duck and many other dishes. This is Chinese food prepared with great care and attention, with friendly service and great flavors. As usefully for conference attendees Canton is a venue where any size group (and I do mean any size - up to a few hundred though I'd call ahead in that case) can be handled with aplomb and ease. For any group larger than 5 I would suggest getting a fixed price meal which would result in likely more food than you need for a price anyone's budget (even a bootstrapping entrepreneur) can handle.

Tara - located on 2nd St just below Market Tara is the less well known Thai restaurant on the same block as the more well known Osha (which is also a good option but likely crowded and for San Francisco tech folks a place we end up eating at a bit too often). The food at Tara is good and most of the time it is a bit less crowded and less noisy than the more well known Osha just down the street. If you want to do Osha I suggest their second downtown location on the Embarcadero (4 Embarcadero Center) which is a bit longer of a walk from the Moscone Center but I think offers a slightly nicer space and slightly better food than their 2nd street location.

Straits - and more broadly the restaurants of the Westfield Center. Straits is located on the 4th floor of the Westfield center and is part of the "restaurant collection". The food at Straits is Singaporan which is one of the great, if not well known cuisines of the world. A combination of Asian flavors it has similarities and dishes in common with Indian, Indonesian, Thai, Chinese and many other cuisines of the Asian region. Straits is not a discount restaurant, expect to spend around $20-25 a person for lunch here and more for dinner, but the food is worth it and they can accommodate a large party with ease. For a fast meal, I suggest Out the Door in the basement of the Westfield center which offers Vietnamese food from the same folks who run the world famous Slanted Door restaurant (which I highly recommend but can have a many week wait for a reservation - though worth calling and checking especially for their private room if you have a group). For lunch or dinner however Out the Door offers a great alternative with great food served quickly. The other options at the food court in the basement of the Westfield Center are also great, not typical food court options in the least.

Last minute tech supplies

Apple Store - the San Francisco Apple store is just blocks from the Moscone Center at the corner of Stockton and Market. If you need a power adapter or your Macbook stops working this is where to go.

Central Computer - located at 837 Howard St, just down the block from the Moscone West Central Computer is a great place to know about for the non-Mac attendees. Not the cheapest spot, but if you need a last minute PC part they are just down the street and can solve nearly any PC related computer need.

Hope these help guide you to a few of my favorites in San Francisco. Please add your own suggestions in the comments. There are hundreds of other great options throughout San Francisco and nearby, if you see me at the show feel free to ask for additional suggestions. And watch for my twittered spur of the moment dinners or lunches and feel free to join me!

Yesterday we took a look at why booth babes are a bad decision for technology companies at a trade show. So what advice would I give to a company which is considering having a booth at a trade show? MORE »

At ad:tech San Francisco many of the exhibitors hired "Booth Babes" to promote their products and services to attendees. In most cases these "booth babes" not only worked the booth but also walked the exhibit hall and outside of the hall to promote the company. And to watch the crowds to an extent this form of promotion did work on the largely - but not no means at all only - male crowd.

However I think in all cases the use of booth babes hurt the companies who used them more than it helped. Certainly in one high profile case at ad:tech I found the company's use of booth babes (who were wearing very skimpy and quite tight fitting white dresses) to lower, considerably, my opinion of the company. A company, I should note, who launched their product and company at ad:tech and are taking on some very large, established companies with a product that could add value to the marketplace (but how well they can compete remains to be seen). MORE »

ad:tech San Francisco has started, the booth babes are here in more than full force and the buzzwords are flying fast and furious. As I twittered at one point in the show earlier today, it seems a requirement that at least three buzzwords be used in any sentence, especially in answer to a question by a member of the press. Apparently this year's ad:tech in San Francisco has record attendance and clearly from the twitter traffic there are more twitter users here than were active at ad:tech NYC. Today has seen a few announcements (more on those in later posts) and a variety of panelists, keynotes and lots of rather overly similar exhibitors.

But scattered amongst the affiliate networks, pay-per-click networks, SEO/SEM firms, and many others there are a few interesting companies and organizations here - and there is also most definitely a lot of networking occurring (indeed I overheard two women talking to each other about how great the networking was as they were apparently debating about heading back to their offices earlier this afternoon, I think decided to stay). MORE »

Allen's note: A big thank you to Shannon Clark for covering FOWD. Awesome coverage of the event!

All ad:tech NYC posts:

• Wednesday Morning Keynotes
• Walking the Halls, Lobby Lurking or the Best Meals are the Most Random
• Opening keynote on Brands by Nick Brien, CEO of Universal McCann
• first impressions three floors, 300+ exhibitors
• Ad:Tech NYC Overview

AdTech NYC was a great event for me, in four busy days I had the opportunity to get a good sense of the current state of the online, digital advertising industry. The combination of the overly packed exhibit halls, the standing room only lobbies, and after Monday they almost always full keynotes and panel discussions offered a great mix of opportunities to hear from both small, newly launched firms and some of the leaders of the largest digital agencies and advertising firms.

As I learned from talking with people over the course of the event in addition to the discussions in the public spaces of the sessions, exhibition hall, and lobbies, countless other meetings took place over the past week. In fact most of the CEO's and senior salespeople I spoke with talked of having 6 or more meetings every day while at the show. Little time for much else besides meetings which would start with early breakfast and end late into the evening.

Official numbers will likely be available early next week but here are a few early numbers from the last conversations I had with the AdTech staff:

• pre-registrations (mostly for free expo pass) - ~13,800+ people
• full conference registrations - ~1300 people
• media - more than expected, likely over 100 press passes issued
• speakers - over 100 different speakers during the course of the conference
• actual attendees vs. registrations - estimated between 9000-10,000 for exhibition days (Mon & Tues) and about 1500 (including media, speakers and event staff) for the full conference
• as many as 10 or more parties on any given night, with at least 4-6 parties most evenings

Stories from AdTech NYC 2007 made the NY Times and many other major newspapers and the media coverage both old and new was extensive. One thing I have to applaud AdTech for they supported the media extremely well. The press room was conveniently located was also the speakers lounge and included beyond computers, dedicated wifi, coffee, and ample piles of press materials from exhibiting firms, free massages for speakers and the press (which after picking up materials from over 100 of the exhibiting firms was sorely needed the next day).

Combining the speakers and press rooms worked extremely well, while sitting in the press room I was often able to get a few minutes (or in some cases much more than a few minutes) conversation with speakers. The AdTech staff also arranged for speakers to be available to the press before or after some of their sessions, though I was too busy at other sessions to take full advantage of these more formal opportunities.

Continue reading the Ad:Tech recap

Part one - The State of the Industry, presented by the IAB

Moderated by Randall Rothenberg president and CEO of the IAB the panel was Suzie Reider, head of advertising sales for YouTube.com; Michael Barrett, executive VP Chief Revenue Officer Fox Interactive Media; Arianna Huffington - Co founder and Editor in Chief Huffington Post; Matt Freeman CEO Tribal DDB Worldwide.

Great conversation though I entered in the middle so missed some of their introductory remarks and discussions.

In the Q&A a lot of discussion about pre-roll (and how bad it can be). Including from the CEO of Tribal DDB Worldwide. Fox brought up 24. "Pre-roll is a clumsy way to get the sponsorship money" - "Ultimately we are not serving our clients well if we are irritating consumers"

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This is my first full breakfast to late night parties Ad:Tech. While my startup is in the ad industry, my background is very much on the technology side of the internet, more so than the online marketing/advertising side or the traditional agency part of the ad industry. As a result here are a few observations I have made of the show, a few minor corrections to my previous posts, and an exploration of what this blogger/entrepreneur did on Tuesday other than walk the exhibit hall and catch the keynote presentations.

Before the first keynote I arrived a bit on the late side to Ad:Tech this morning, the exhibit hall had been open for about an hour and I had yet to have any coffee. Instead I stood, waiting, in the middle of the large Hilton lobby. After a little while of standing, catching up on emails, twitters and blog posts, I sat down. Had this been San Francisco or a "web 2.0" tech industry conference, in the ten minutes or so I stood there in the lobby I would have seen and greated dozens if not hundreds of friends - people I have seen dozens of times at industry events, parties, and previous conferences.

However though Ad:Tech is a tech related event, it is a very different audience and attendee demographic than say O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit or the TechCrunch 40 conference.

My meeting, however, was with two fellow tech entrepreneurs also attending the show. We ducked across the street to the Starbucks hidden under scaffolding across 6th Ave from the Hilton (much shorter lines there than at the Starbucks right in the Hilton). We then went up to the press room and talked. Unlike myself, their experience of the show has and will be very different, they have full days of meetings scheduled - indeed the CEO noted that had he not had full days of meetings scheduled but had had just a few (or no) meetings he would have canceled his reservations and stayed in SF.

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The presentations started this afternoon at Ad:Tech NYC with opening remarks by Drew Ianni the chairman of AdTech Expositions. After his remarks, he introduced Nick Brien, the worldwide CEO of Universal McCann.

A few highlights from the opening remarks. Over 13,000 pre-registrations this year for Ad:Tech NYC (most I imagine though the breakdown was not mentioned were expo only). Over 350 exhibitors. All sessions will be made available as podcasts from Ad:Tech. From starting with one event in 1996, Ad:Tech has now grown to a global series of events, most recently adding Sydney to the roster of cities where they hold events.

In Drew's view the direction of the ad agency industry will be shifting yet again, away from the unbundled model of the past decade and slowly back to a more bundled model, though with many new players - such as PR firms, CAA, and McKinsey Corporation also entering the industry.

A side note, one of many small signs that though technical the ad industry is not entirely up to speed with the tech industry, in Drew's slides he used the term "opensource" as a single, compound word. More accurate is the phrase "open source".

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A quick update on this week's conference coverage. I am here in Las Vegas covering Blog World Expo and PostieCon or IzraCon or WhateverItsCalledNowCon. I've got a headcam so you never know what might show up on tape!

Shannon Clark has been reporting on ad:tech in NYC and will continue through the balance of the week.

Rachel Clarke will be covering the Future of Web Design in NYC beginning tomorrow.

Till Klampaeckel is covering the NY Tech Meetup this evening which includes a presentation on Vimeo and Drop.io, two companies we covered in the past week.

Grab the RSS feed and be notified as soon as one of us posts new updates.

There are
There are ad:tech exhibitors spread across three floors worth of ballrooms at the Hilton New York. Seriously three floors worth of people handing out paper, lots and lots of paper, plus the de rigueur tchokes. Small, cheap, foam footballs. Many types and sizes of balls, Frisbees, pens, mints and more. Advertising folks don't seem to be, for the most part, all that creative when it comes to promoting themselves. Some firm is handing out cell phone cozies that look like a lounge chair - not so effective as the product, not the company was what was being talked about in the hallways.

And one of the most elaborate booths is, seriously, giving away air. Microsoft Atlas has a full blown, flavored, oxygen bar.

But that is the surface layer, the pile of papers rarely viewed and the toys given away to children, nieces and nephews.

So some observations about who is here at Ad:Tech exhibiting. This is just based on impressions, on the less than 50% of the firms that made enough of an impression that I stopped, looked at their literature, learned a bit more about what they do and who they are.

I have been told that the NYC show is intended to target an audience of mostly advertising industry folks (hence the NYC location). The interesting thing is that I don't really get a sense that there are a lot of people here who are actually in the advertising industry. Perhaps I'm stereotyping to a degree - but also looking at badges, overhearing conversations, and watching booth discussions - I haven't met many actual media buyers or ad agency types. My guess is mostly they are downstairs, not up here in the exhibit hall.

Mostly online marketers so far, a lot of booth folks (many of whom appear to be hired, though some - generally I think the more interesting firms have actual employees working the booths).

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