Another year, another SXSW festival coming up in just a few weeks. What will this year’s event hold? Last year seemed like a big shift for both the event and for attendees. The event was split up into many locations (I think this was a huge mistake), more commercialization than ever and it seemed like lots of people came to Austin but didn’t buy a badge – they just surfed the hallways of the convention center and also attended lots of Sixth Street non-official events. Each year the event grows larger and hotel rooms display sold out signs earlier and earlier.

I wonder if this will be the year that the registration/check-in process will be updated similar to how Google handled the IO event registration.

The SXSW group has released demographics for all of the SXSW events: music, film and interactive. You can find all of the demographics data here (would have been great as an infographic). Remember that the numbers don’t include people who just came to town without an official badge.

Some of the interesting stats include:

• Total conference attendees across all three festivals – 50,000
• Interactive participants – 20,000
• Sessions – 935
• International attendees – 10%
• 75% of attendees have an income over $55k
• 30% of attendees are over 40

Drop me a line if you are coming to town for the annual gathering – I will be covering the event for CN.

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It seems these days hackdays, hackathons, hack this, hack that events are popular across the world. Some of these developer events have created very successful startups and some of the companies have been acquired.

Austin will be holding an API Hackday on Saturday, February 18 at the HubAustin coworking location. The event is free for everyone – just make sure to register for the right category so the organizers can make sure there is enough of each type of attendee (developer, designer, investor, etc.). The event will run from 8am-8pm with free lunch, dinner and post-event beer celebration.

Here’s the event overview, “API Hackday Austin brings developers together for an all-day coding fest focused on building apps and mashups with APIs. Developers of all experience levels can share ideas, collaborate on existing projects, start new ventures, and find out about great tools and new APIs to play with. Hackers will also hear from some of the country’s top API-focused companies on tips, tricks, and tools for building the next big app. At the end of the day, teams and/or individuals get a chance to present their work to a panel of judges and win kickass prizes.”

The event is sponsored by Twilio, Mashery, Paypal and Sendgrid – all four companies are heavy on the API.

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Here are some groovy web tech events coming up in Austin that are worth checking out:

1 Semester Startup Demo Day Fall 2011 – December 1

From the event registration, “1 Semester Startup invites you to Demo Day where we will showcase the 20 undergraduate startups from our inaugural Fall 2011 class. Undergraduate students experienced entrepreneurship first-hand, learning from some of the most successful entrepreneurs in Austin. University of Texas students from many different departments including Computer Science, Engineering and Management started companies and were assisted with a semester-long program of startup acceleration: speakers, mentors, and supervised project work. Mentors are exceptional people who have successfully started one or more companies.” register here

Austin Web Bash – December 13

Over 15 monthly web groups are coming together for the mega huge Austin Web Bash. The party is free but you need to bring at least one can of food for the Austin Area Food Bank. register here

Full-day Running Lean Workshop by Ash Maurya

If you are into the lean startup movement, the Austin Lean Startup Circle has put together a full day training session hosted by Ash Maurya. The event will be held at Tech Ranch Austin and costs $250 – looks like there are 7 tickets left.  register here

Remember to signup for Joshua Baer’s weekly Austin events mailing list on StartupDigest.

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Here are some upcoming Austin tech events worth checking out. For a regular listing of Austin tech events, Joshua Baer from OtherInbox has a weekly events newsletter that you can subscribe to here. Sadly it seems again most events are on Tuesday – so you are forced to select only one – a real shame considering that there are 4 other days in the week and the events would see more traffic if they spread out.

• Austin PHP – Tuesday – scaling PHP applications using Redis
• Your Internet Marketing Party – Tuesday – How to Use Human Psychology to Get Web Visitors and Cash (with Derek Halpern)
• Co-Founders Austin – Tuesday – held at the Microsoft office, this event is a matching event where new startups pitch to those looking to join a startup. Here’s an overview of how the meetup works. The event costs $10 to attend and free for the presenting startups. If you are interested in presenting, get in touch with the organizer (Ricardo Sanchez) asap.
• Austin Lean Startup Circle – Tuesday -October Meetup – Continuous Deployment Mechanics at IMVU – currently full
• Friday Night Hacks – Friday – “…is an opportunity to connect, share ideas, build cool stuff and launch projects into the community. We typically do this into the wee hours of the morning while indulging in delicious snacks, brewskies and copious amounts of caffeine.”
• Social Media Strategy Saturday Night @ American Bingo w/ Rachel Greenfield – Saturday – looks cool, you play bingo for an hour, meetup for an hour and then beer and bingo for another hour.

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If you are in the Austin area, there are two networking events coming up that are worth checking out.

First up is the Austin Tech Fair which will be held next Monday, September 26 from 9am-4pm at the AT&T Conference Center near downtown. Last year over 1,100 people attended the tech fair which combines an expo hall with a number of talks on a variety of tech topics including Ruby on Rails, community building strategies and project management. The tech fair is free to attend.

I will be at the tech fair in the expo hall demoing CloudContacts – if you attend, please stop by and say hi. I have some goodies to give away and we can chat.

On October 5, the ProductCamp group will hold a networking event they call ProductParty. This event will also be held at the AT&T Conference Center in the evening and is a great way to meet other locals in the tech, product and marketing space. They are going to have a karaoke competition – I will enter – the only thing I have to decide is whether I go with Kris Kross – Jump, House of Pain – Jump Around or Snow – Informer.

You should bring a big stack of business cards and a smile to both events.

Find more stories about: Austin, Conferences, Texas

The big news in the startup world is that Israeli startup Shaker won the big prize at the Techcrunch conference this week. Many, including AOL employees, wonder what it is that Shaker is “disrupting” while others are talking about the conflicts regarding the finalists and AOL/CrunchFund’s funding of 2 of the top 3 and an upcoming investment in the winner. Of course questions are nothing new with Techcrunch (now aol) conferences – heck, I wrote about MC Hammer investment questions with regards to DanceJam at the first TC40.

When I saw Shaker, the first thing that popped into my head was, “oh it’s the new version of that game!” But I couldn’t remember the name of the game until Dean Collins replied to my message on the NYTM messageboard noting that Shaker is Leisure Suit Larry! And yep that’s exactly what it looks like.

TC writer Leena Rao describes Shaker as, “…a mixture of Second Life, The Sims, and Turntable.fm all mixed together using your Facebook data and connections. Your Facebook profile becomes a walking avatar, your pictures are placed on an virtual wall, you can choose what music is playing in the room for everyone to hear and you can even buy people drinks.”

Shaker looks like a fun game but what frustrated me in the Shaker demos is that the founders kept suggesting that this virtual world was, ” just like real life”. It is absolutely nothing like real life.

Rackspace startup blogger Robert Scoble seems to love Shaker – I just don’t see it here. I mean seriously – maybe I am missing something – but it’s a virtual world where you walk around and chat – AOL 1996 called. Sure you can click on a person and get their info but otherwise what, you dance on a bar? And just wait – the minute a woman “walks in” to the virtual chatroom, you will watch all the males run over. Something tells me these “bars” will be all male. Maybe it will work for the concert concept but even that will be a stretch.

As I watched the two demos of Shaker, I could only think of one thing (which applies to more than just Shaker)…

HOW ABOUT CALLING UP A COUPLE OF YOUR REAL FUCKING FRIENDS AND GOING OUT TO A REAL FUCKING BAR AND HAVING A DRINK OR DINNER AND SOME FUCKING CONVERSATION INSTEAD OF SITTING IN SOME FUCKING VIRTUAL WORLD.

And if you don’t have local friends or are new to your town, go to Meetup.com or Plancast, find a freaking meetup and get the gosh damn fuck out of your house. Walk up to a person, shake a hand, exchange a business card (heh), and smile. Learn something in your conversation.

I know it’s not easy to go outside and it’s way easier to stay home/office and chat on a social network or, now, play some 2.0 version of Leisure Suit Larry. But trust me, the more we sit at home and live online, the less we will be able to live offline.

Ok I am done. Now get out there and do something.

Find more stories about: AOL, Conferences, Meetup, Shaker, TechCrunch

Today at the Capital Factory Demo Day, ethernet creator Bob Metcalfe provided the morning keynote. If you get a chance to hear him speak, you should go – he was a great speaker.

Bob shared 5 tips for startup success…

Tip #1 – Health

You don’t need to kill yourself to run a startup. Instead you have to take care of yourself and make sure your health is in order. You should sleep 8 hours every night.

Tip #2 – Writing

Bob suggests that you write as much as possible – what’s great is that today this is very easy to do with the available tools.

Tip #3 – Speaking

Bob talked about how great Steve Jobs is as a speaker. He suggests (which I agree with) that you speak as much as you can about your product or service.

Tip #4 – Selling

You should spend time selling – he notes people consider salespeople lower than pond scum but they are critical to a company. Even if you are a developer/engineer, you should still learn how to and sell. At a minimum you need to sell your team on why they should follow your direction.

Tip #5 – Planning

Bob explained how important it is that you have a plan. His company (3com) used the acronym MOST – mission, objectives, strategies, tactics. He noted that each year at 3com they would adjust MOST as needed.

I like Bob’s suggestions and I can confirm that health is the most important thing when it comes to the early days of a company.

Find more stories about: Austin, Conferences, startups

The first Austin Startup Week is here! Beginning tomorrow and continuing for the balance of the week, a number of startup-related events will take place around the city. I will be at most of the events representing CloudContacts and will have my camcorder so hit me up for an interview for your startup.

You can find a full list of the Austin Startup Week events on the calendar and below are some of the events to check out:

• ATX Startup Crawl – Wednesday – check out the offices of a bunch of downtown Austin startups
• Capital Factory Demo Day – Wednesday – event is sold out but you can watch a livestream, several keynotes plus launch demos from the Capital Factory incubator and a number of Austin startup demos in the afternoon
• OpenCoffee – Thursday – casual gathering of folks discussing tech topics
• StartupBazaar – Thursday – at City Hall – startups will demo their services (I am trying to get CloudContacts in to demo) and free startup coaching offered
• Austin Tech Happy Hour – Thursday evening – I attended this once before (the one day that it flurried!) and it was a great event – very casual, bar atmosphere, no demos just conversation
• I Can Haz Mobile and Gaming – Friday – half-day mini-conference with speakers on the topics of gaming and mobile
• API Hackday ATX – Saturday – all day hackathon with some groovy prizes

Find more stories about: Austin, Conferences, startup, startups, Texas

It looks like it’s not just the weather which has heated up to record levels – the Austin tech events circuit has some good looking events throughout the next couple of months. Here are some of my picks for events around the Austin, Texas area. Please leave others in the comments and I will append the post. It seems like Austin suffers from the same issue that NYC does – too many events scheduled on the same day each month – hey organizers, there’s plenty of days in the month to spread out and maximize attendance!

• August 6 – ProductCamp Unconference – free
• August 9 – Austin PHP Frameworks Series – free – covering Syfony framework
• August 9 – Austin Lean Startup Circle – free – “Customers Don’t Always Have All the Answers – Case Study”
• August 9 – Austin Internet Marketing Party – $20 – “How You Can Get FREE Web Traffic & Make Over $10k a Month! (By EX-Truck Driver)”
• August 9 – Refresh Austin – free – “Tax Tips for a New (or Growing) Business & Tool Roundup”
• August 11-13 – Lone Star Ruby Conference – starts at $400
• August 20/27 – Girl Develop It – $80 – Intro to Javascript and Jquery (I am not sure if they allow men into this event)
• September 6-10 – Austin Startup Week – variety of events around the city and it looks like the events are all free
• October 1-2 – BigAndroidBBQ – $25 – claims to be the biggest community gathering of Android users. I am hearing there will be an Apple iPhone bonfire but that’s just a rumor.

Find more stories about: Austin, Conferences, Texas

The ProductCamp “unconference” is coming back to Austin on August 6, 2011. The event will be held at the AT&T Conference Center on the University of Texas campus (the center is very well laid out for events!). ProductCamp is free to attend and registration is limited.

Unlike some unconferences where the agenda is decided on the day of the event with sticky notes, ProductCamp has a list of proposed sessions and you can suggest a session as well. Some of the proposed suggestions include: Business Dangers and Delights of Daily Deals, Let’s Play Buy a Feature, The Product Manager Pathfinder, To Be or Not Be Free and Creating Value through Product Innovation.

There will be a “Recruiting Roundup” which provides, “a dedicated time and location during ProductCamp for hiring companies to connect with the exceptional Product Management & Marketing professionals.” There is a $350 registration fee for companies that want to participate – the fee is used to support the overall event.

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I’ve been to hundreds of conferences over the past few years and I am always interested in watching how the check-in process is handled at each conference. It always seems like the check-in process at the SXSW interactive festival is the worst in terms of time and length of line. SXSW has moved the check-in location a couple of times over the past five years to allow for more volunteer positions, but the check-in process is still a pain in the butt and frankly a waste of valuable networking time.

Most recently, I suggested that SXSW setup stations along the hallway where 50+ laptops would be setup to allow for individuals to check-in to the conference. You would enter your registration ID, confirm your name and company and submit. Since SXSW has so many different types of badges, you would then have a printer location displayed on the screen and when you get to that printer, the SXSW volunteer would hand you your badge. This would nearly completely eliminate the lines and the time involved waiting on the check-in line.

Well it seems Google was reading and listening because the Google IO check-in process was the smoothest I’ve seen in a long time. When I entered the Moscone West conference center, Google had 3 check-in pods. Each one had about 15 computers (apparently they were the CR-48 netbooks), a Google employee and a badge printer. You could scan the barcode from your printed receipt, enter the code manually, or scan the barcode image directly from your smartphone. After I picked up my attendee badge (I was attending as a CloudContacts employee no press pass for CN), I stood nearby and watched how long the process took for others who wanted to check-in. The process was less than a minute for almost of the test subjects with many completing the process in about 30 seconds.

The Google IO badge included a small barcode which was used to claim the freebies (i.e. Galaxy Tab, 4G modem, etc.).

I understand that SXSW prints a photo on the badge for security and also has more types of badges than Google IO offered. This is why I suggest that the printer stations be centralized to make it easy to manage the different types of badges – the check-in program would be able to tell that I am registered as press and send me to a different printer station than a person registered for the Music portion of SXSW.

As a side note, I also like the process CES uses whereby they send your ID card in the mail.

The check-in process that Google used for the Google IO conference is exactly the process all conferences should use. Reduce the time to check-in and get conference participants to sessions and to general networking as quickly as possible.

Find more stories about: Conferences, Google, Google IO, sxsw

Today I stopped by the SXSW 2011 expo hall – it’s definitely bigger than in previous years. Rackspace had a very large booth while Google and Microsoft had smaller booths (Microsoft had an end cap). The Google booth was pretty crowded while the Microsoft booth was empty (pics below). Mapquest also had a large presence. Apple had no presence which I guess makes sense since everyone already bought an iPad 2. The British startup area was also larger than last year – there were also a number of other countries that had booths (the only one I remember was Canada).

Here are my photos – click on a photo to view the larger size:

Pretty neat idea – a wall with chalkboard paint where you could write whatever you like – of course I had to represent with the yellow CloudContacts shoutout in the bubble – BatchBook is right above:

The British are here:

It’s Twonky – no idea what they do:

Are web designers sexy? This booth shook the 8 ball and the result was “yes”


Hugh MacLeod shows off all of his illustrations (I think you could buy them too)

Rackspace was providing free water with any cloud server:

It’s neustar:

This woman is holding three huge ice cream waffle cones – you think she might be a bit happier

These people make cute usb drives – like Hello Kitty:

This is Jason Calacanis’ favorite startup (they were awarded best presentation at Launch) – DOMO:

Lots of people in the meeting area – as you notice some people are showing how people communicated in the ’80s – they are talking directly to each other – shortly after this photo the people moved back to today’s standard of always looking down

Sonicbids had the coolest chairs

Foodstream – I didn’t stop for a demo but I assume it’s a stream of food-related content?

This ship takes you to mach 4 in under 4 seconds or one retweet

Looks like some people need to stop at supercuts

Microsoft showing off the “html 5 fish test”

AOL shows off their new version of mapquest – I beat everyone in air hockey

I think Izea has a booth at every conference in the world – it seems every expo I visit they have a booth

Find more stories about: Conferences, photos, sxsw, SXSW 2011

The Interactive portion of the SXSW conference ends tomorrow and the Music portion of the conference begins. This is my first year in-town during the music festival. If you are planning to remain in Austin for the next week but don’t plan on purchasing a music badge, here are a few ways you can still get in on the action.

The Auditorium Shores Stage Concert Series will take place this weekend and will feature a variety of bands. The concerts are open to the public although badge holders receive vip seating. Saturday is made up of bands that are family friendly. Make sure you read the notes on the schedule page as there are serious restrictions about what you can bring into the arena.

If you aren’t staying in Austin for the Music portion of SXSW, you can download a large number of songs from artists playing at the various events around the city.

• XRT Radio has a list of 140 songs that can be downloaded individually or in batches
• Amazon has a 12-track Don’t Mess With Texas SXSW music sampler

While I haven’t heard of any of the bands and artists playing at the SXSW events, I am looking forward to hearing some new music around the city over the next week.

Find more stories about: Conferences, music, sxsw, SXSW 2011

Angel investor and 500Startups founder Dave McClure took to the stage during the Lean Startup Day at SXSW — his presentation centered around startup metrics for lean startups. If you know Dave, you know that typically every third word is a curse word of some sort – my counter had him at about 3.2 words/curse word across his presentation. It was three years ago at SXSW that Dave McClure introduced the world to getting booty by using his startup metrics techniques for pirates.

My favorite part of the presentation was when Dave asked the audience, “when do you stop adding features” and someone in the audience replied, “when you get acquired”. Everyone laughed and Dave quickly noted that was not the right answer – the correct answer is to stop adding features when your users are happy with what you have. I am not sure I agree – can you name one company that has actually stopped adding features?

Here are some of my notes:

• suggests you read the book Spent
• don’t bother pitching him or emailing him – if you want into his network, you better come via a referral (see slide 41)
• the important metrics aren’t uniques or cash – but visitor engagement metrics (see slide 11 below)
• disagrees with Chris Dixon and Fred Wilson around marketing and SEO (I agree with Dave)
• gathering customer data is good, email collection is great because you can “fucking spam your users” (see Dave’s comment below – just to be clear he was joking about spamming customers)
• if your customers pay for your product, you have MVP (minimum viable product)
• hate is more gooder than love (that was my Fake Grimlock impersonation) – basically what Dave means here is that when people hate your product they will tell you specifically what to fix – if they love your product, you will probably only get an “i love your product” response
• testing is cheap, coding is expensive – Dave notes that you are better off testing up the behind before you code because it’s easy to change a test, harder to change code
• Dave featured a slide about cartoons and noted that SouthPark is a really shitty product within a niche and that’s why they won

Dave also discussed pricing – in that you are better off starting with charging for your service and possibly moving free later on than the reverse. He said that way you will get customers initially who really, really want your product. I agree with his conclusion but for a different reason – it’s very, very hard to move to paid when you start free – just look at what the backlash when this is done – but if you go from paid to free, you look like a hero.

Below are Dave’s slides from the presentation:

Find more stories about: analytics, Conferences, metrics, startups, sxsw, SXSW 2011

So today begins the annual event known as SXSW. I am just back to the office after grabbing my Interactive badge. I wanted to share some last minute SXSW 2011 tips and some changes that I noticed as I walked around the convention center. If you want a more detailed list of tips and suggestions, check out my SXSW Primer. I plan on attending the Lean Startup day on Saturday and the Google Developers Event on Sunday. My goal this year is to meet CloudContacts customers, meet potential partners for CloudContacts and conduct startup interviews for CenterNetworks.

• If you haven’t already posted your photo on the SXSW Social site, do so before you go to retrieve your badge. This will speed up the registration line and you will also get the picture you want on your badge versus some webcam photo.
• CapMetro transit is running their MetroRail service on Friday night and Saturday – this is the tram that stops right outside the convention center. If you are staying at a hotel near one of the MetroRail stations, it might be easier and cheaper to just use the tram.
• Austin360 has a list of parties on the “side” – meaning no badge is required.
• Apple is opening a pop-up shop near the convention center on Congress Avenue in case you want to buy the new iPad 2 when it arrives tomorrow.
• The registration location has moved to the Hall 1 – it’s near the far end of the convention center – near 2nd street or as far away from the big escalators at the front
• There are a LOT more food vendors than previous years – looks like everything pretty much starts at $6 – my suggestion is to make sure to pack a bottle of water so you don’t get robbed
• The lego pit near the escalators is gone – I really liked the designs people came up with and the good meeting location – it’s been replaced by Chevy.
• There are now about 30 tables near the big escalators at the front – the volunteer section has been removed
• Remember parking meters don’t run on the weekend so if you can grab one of those spots, you got a free pass (double check all rules, I am not responsible if you park incorrectly)
• You can call the conference “south by southwest” or “sxsw” – never “south by” – thank you for your adherence to this important notice
• It looks like everyone attending this conference is some sort of “social media expert” based on the conversations I heard in the registration line

Most of all – be safe and have some fun! The weather looks perfect for walking and relaxing here in Austin – keep it weird!

Find more stories about: Austin, Conferences, sxsw, SXSW 2011