Tag Archives: technology

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December 13, 2012

Latest trends powering the Innovation Economy


Tony Perkins, organizer and founder of the Venture Summit Silicon Valley.

Target audience: Startups, mature businesses, technology innovators, funders and venture capitalists, marketers.

JD LasicaI‘m just back from the Venture Summit Silicon Valley (“where Big Ideas meets Big Money”). And so here’s a short report from the frontlines of the key players — entrepreneurs, firms and investors — powering the Innovation Economy.

“There is no little kid hoping there’ll be a laptop with Windows 8 under the Christmas tree.”
— Jay Samit of ooVoo

Let’s start with this Flickr set of 51 photos — you’ll recognize some of the speakers, like TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, AlwaysOn founder Tony Perkins (the conference’s impresario) and other notables from the tech world.

The 250 to 300 folks who turned out at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay were a mix of business executives, VCs and startup founders. I was here to report some highlights for Socialmedia.biz as well as to soak in some wisdom around social data for the geolocation start-up I’ve begun working on, Placely. Continue reading →

November 1, 2012

Guide to events & conferences in December


A scene from Le Web London this summer. The original Le Web, in Paris, returns next month (Photo by kmeron on Flickr).

Ayelet NoffDecember, with all its holiday cheer, eases the pace of conferences and events in social media, marketing, and technology.

This December I’m most excited about Le Web in Paris, the city of lights, love and Internet innovation. This year Le Web will focus on how Internet-driven devices are taking over the world; just look at how much time people spend surfing “le web” on their phones. I’m also thoroughly excited for the 2012 startup competition where sixteen emerging startups will duke it out on stage. To learn more about this great conference read my take on Le Web.

For the full year, see our full Calendar of 2012 social media, tech and marketing conferences.

Continue reading →

September 14, 2012

Up-close photos of TechCrunch Disrupt 2012

Mark Zuckerberg

JD LasicaIn 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 →

September 5, 2012

3 O’Reilly tech conferences on tap for October

Socialmedia.biz readers get 20% discount for tech conferences

By Shannon Falzon
Socialmedia.biz staff

October is on the horizon and so it’s time to welcome a slew of conferences and events to help amp up your business. The conferences will allow you to collaborate with business people and thought leaders to explore the new market opportunities made available by technology. You’ll have an opportunity to meet and learn from leading practitioners, share ideas and examine successful case studies to help you hone your skills and develop your own strategy.

Strata conference in London

Where: London
When: Oct. 1-2, 2012

Details: The O’Reilly Strata Conference comes to London this year. Join the best minds in data to explore the latest in the data revolution: trends, tools, new practices, careers and culture, as well as the ongoing discussion around ethics, policy and privacy. Emerging data tools and technologies are converging with cloud computing to solve longstanding problems and uncover surprising opportunities. Impossible solutions are now possible; extravagant solutions are now affordable. And this is just the beginning. The O’Reilly Strata Conference in London will explore the opportunities made possible by the latest state-of-the-art big data tools and analytic approaches.

Register: Register now. Socialmedia.biz readers get 20% off standard conference pricing when they use code SMB. Can’t make it? Keep up to speed on Twitter at #strataconf. Continue reading →

October 18, 2011

Welcome to the Social Revolution

Sean Parker
Sean Parker at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday (photo by JD Lasica)

 

Sean Parker, CEOs of Salesforce & eBay highlight day 1 of Web 2.0 Summit

JD LasicaThe one conference I try to make every year is the venerable Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. I’ve now been to seven out of the eight annual gatherings of entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley luminaries and tech-savvy business people.

Here are some highlights from day one of the three-day conference, which you can follow live on Livestream. And here’s my photo set of the conference speakers on Flickr.

Highlights of Web 2.0 Summit 2011

Sean Parker, who was immortalized on screen by Justin Timberlake as a brilliant, rich party boy in “The Social Network,” was captivating when questioned by host John Battelle:

• On Facebook: “The problem isn’t privacy but the glut of information available to power users” who prop up the network.

• There was an interesting exchange when Mashable co-editor Ben Parr asked Parker about his Wikipedia entry, which says: “Sources are inconsistent as to whether he was a co-founder or early employee of Napster.” Parker said flatly that he was a co-founder and provided Napster with its first big infusion of cash. About 30 seconds later, someone in the audience updated his entry to reflect that — but editors reverted the entry back. Even the subject of a Wikipedia entry isn’t authoritative if it’s not in a published source somewhere. Besides, as one of my Twitter friends told me: “John Fanning was source of initial funding; he had online games company, Sean Fanning worked for him, Parker came later.”

• Would it kill Wikipedia to include photo credits for photos of living individuals? I’m willing to contribute one of my photos of Parker to the public domain but have too much on my plate to do so as an anonymous donor.

“CEOs should be thinking about what a social car looks like. Toyota should name its next car the Toyota Friend.”
— Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce

• Parker on Google Plus‘s threat to Facebook: The advantage of first movers is high in the social sphere. Switching costs are high for the end user, and Facebook must falter for Google Plus to take over a good chunk of Facebook’s users.

• More Parker: “One of the big mistakes we made at Napster was going completely peer to peer without even talking to the record labels.”

• John Battelle likes his Wikipedia entry because he’s 3 years younger there than in real life.

• Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and a pioneer in the tech sector, says he loves the music service Spotify, which Parker is an investor in. “It’s all I use for music now.”

• Benioff: “Facebook is becoming a vision of what the next-generation consumer operating system will be.”

• Benioff sees three main forces driving the tech sector: the cloud, mobility and social. “These forces are creating a revolutoin in our industry.” At Salesforce’s recent Dreamforce conference, the overarching theme was: “It’s a Social Revolution.”

• Benioff: “We didn’t see protesters in Egypt and Tunisia carrying signs that said, ‘Thank you Microsoft’ or ‘Thank you IBM.’ These social networks represent a democratizing force and a fundamental shift in how people organize.”

• Benioff said the auto industry is missing out on an opportunity to capitalize on the social wave. “CEOs should be thinking about what a social car looks like. Toyota should name its next car the Toyota Friend.” Continue reading →

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