Here is some of my coverage of the 2012 TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco where I was reporting for Dice and Dice News.
Ugh! Not another conference call. Many of us are not so attentive when it comes to our participation or even listening on a conference call. At the 2012 TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, I wanted to see if people were being star employees or were they complete slackers not even paying attention. And if they weren’t paying attention, what were they really doing?
Want to know what people are really doing on a conference call? Watch this video to find out.
Here is some of my coverage of the 2012 TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco where I was reporting for Dice and Dice News.
Whether posting something public what you meant to DM (hello Anthony Weiner) or letting drunken photos of you get posted to Facebook, we’ve all done stupid things in social media. At the 2012 TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, I asked the socially savvy attendees, “What’s the most embarrassing thing either you or someone else has done in social media?”
Even though they wanted to block out the past, many were able to come up with some embarrassing tales. Check out our 2-minute roundup.
In the past two years, TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco has become the single most important technology conference on the planet. And so it was this week, as entrepreneurs and startup founders and marketers came out in droves at the SF Design Concourse for three days of preening, schmoozing and, yes, showcasing of cutting-edge technologies, many of them social tools.
I received a press pass to this year’s event, which ran Monday to Wednesday, and created this Flickr photo set of 174 photos, including Mark Zuckerberg, actress Jessica Alba, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and dozens of innovators, venture capitalists and tech fangirls and fanboys (I’m certainly one). Continue reading →
It has become something of a tradition for me to interview my Socialmedia.biz partner Ayelet Noff, aka Israel’s Blonde 2.0, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, which ended Wednesday.
This year Ayelet headed up the communications and social media for four Israeli startups, which were fairly representative of the fledgling Web 2.0-style companies that showcased at the seminal tech conference in San Francisco:
• Tonara: This was one of my favorite discoveries: an iPad application for musicians that provides interactive sheet music. Tonara will show you where you are on your sheet music, and it will flip the pages for you. As Ayelet notes, until now, sheet music hasn’t changed much since Mozart’s time. As the pièce de résistance, on Monday they brought in a string quartet with ex-Facebook honcho Randi Zuckerberg as lead singer. (Who knew that Randi can warble like an angel?)
• uTest: Looking for someone to kick the tires of your new website or app? uTest uses crowdsoruced testing for usability testing, loading testing — “anything, anywhere, in any circumstance” testing, says Ayelet.
• Farmigo: One of the more ambitious efforts, Farmigo is an effort to create a global network that lets consumers find and purchase locally grown, fresh produce.
• TapTank: Use your social networks to achieve goals and build relationships in real life. Sign up for early access to the online service.
A production note: At 3 am, I gave up on trying to correct the white balance, which went kablooey about 3 minutes into the 6-minute interview. The Color Correction filter in Final Cut Express just flat-out refused to work after a dozen attempts. So I opted for timeliness rather than high production values.
Ihad a blast at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this week. Met startup CEOs, some new and old friends, marketers, grassroots journalists — and not a few tech pioneers.
Here’s my Flickr photo set of 80-plus photos — including actor/celebrity Ashton Kutcher (who’ll be replacing Charlie Sheen on CBS’s “Two and a Half Men,” but has an incisive instinct for investing in innovative tech startups), Mike Arrington, Sarah Austin of Pop17, Gina Bianchini, Kevin Rose and my longtime partner, Ayelet Noff, aka Blonde 2.0.
See coverage of TechCrunch Disrupt and my accompanying interview with Ayelet Noff about four startups that made waves here.
For years I’ve admired the efforts of Rachel Sklar to highlight the underrepresentation of women at the upper echelons of the tech and media worlds.
Rachel, editor at large at Mediaite and someone who carries both intellectual heft and personal likability, started a Tumblr blog a few months ago called Change the Ratio. It’s an effort to change the ratio of visibility, access and opportunity for women in new media and tech. The website was prompted by a cover story in New York magazine in April 2010 on the New York City tech scene with photos of 53 people, six of whom were women.
“If you have a crazy idea and think, ‘Oh, no one will ever like it.’ You know what? Do something about it.”
“When you’re talking about the percentage of women being profiled, appearing on panels or pitching VCs, you’re starting basically at 80-20,” Rachel says. “There are still areas that are challenging, like getting to the table, getting to a meeting and once you’re at a meeting, having the people at the table take you seriously.”
For example, check out the makeup of WiredBiz: Disruptive by Design. As Rachel tweeted about a recent Wired magazine cover story: “Easier to get breasts on a Wired cover than on stage at a Wired conference? http://bit.ly/aerj9I #sheesh #lame”
Rachel, who was the focal point of a recent TechCrunch Disrupt panel on Women in Tech, is especially interested in helping young women entrepreneurs to overcome the social barriers they’re likely to confront. “If you have a crazy idea and think, ‘Oh, no one will ever like it.’ You know what? Do something about it,” she says. “Make something great, and when people turn you down, figure out how to use that.”
Her advice to women? “Thicken the skin, and take every rejection as a lesson in a way to figure out how to get around that.”
A social microgiving initiative
Rachel has another initiative she’s put her energies behind: Charitini, a social microgiving site. Similar to other models, instead of buying her a birthday gift, you donate a similar small amount for charities of her choice: Habitat for Humanity New Orleans, DonorsChoose, Foundation Rwanda or the Bob Woodruff Family Foundation Fund.
“The untapped potential of using social networks for good and for fundraising is really exciting,” she says.
Ugh! Not another conference call. Many of us are not so attentive when it comes to our participation or even listening on a conference call. At the 2012 TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, I wanted to see if people were being star employees or were they complete slackers not even paying attention. And if they weren’t paying attention, what were they really doing?
