I’ll be in Las Vegas early next week speaking at PubCon on feed syndication best practices. The session takes place from 10:15-11:30 a.m. on Tuesday if you are attending the search conference. I have not been to Las Vegas in a few years so I’ll be checking out new pieces of grandeur at the Wynn, new Caesars Palace, Treasure Island, etc. Hopefully there will be lots of search geeks in attendance leading to interesting conversations….
Category Archives: Business
Business Plan Archive studies companies of the late 90s
I’ve been sucked in to the Business Plan Archive created by the University of Maryland and George Mason. They’ve archived business plans, investor pitches, term sheets, screenshots, mockups, and even old business cards. Here’s a sample company description from an online job site: The company will introduce a new network of online recruiting sites that will utilize the latest advances in internet technology to provide online interaction between employers and job seekers. Seeking a $26 million Series A in mid-1998. Another company I found was after $10 million for a sports site and ended up with $500,000 in convertible notes….
Widgets Live! timeline
I received a few e-mails this morning from people interested in how Widgets Live! came together. Yep, the event really was planned in about a month, from site selection to the actual day-long event. In this post I’ll outline how Widgets Live! grew from an idea to an in-person event. July 12 Coming up short on ideas for my weekly podcast with Om Malik, I suggested we talk about widgets and how they are changing web publishing. I had been playing around with widgets as a form of web feed syndication, specifically thinking of performance on Live.com and other views…
Widgets Live! wrap-up
Yesterday’s Widgets Live! conference was a success! Over 200 people involved in the widget ecosystem came together to discuss the current state of the industry, show off their work, meet new people, and learn new things. There were two big takeaways for attendees: we’re just getting started and the widget world is a bit too fractured. Highlights from the day Arlo Rose talked about getting a call from a friend at Apple after a meeting discussion “steamrolling” his product and small company, Konfabulator. Apple later released Dashboard. Fox Interactive Media launched Spring Widgets, a new desktop and web-based widget hybrid….
Widgets Live! conference is sold out!
The Widgets Live! conference sold its last ticket this morning, filling the room next Monday with 200 people interested in the current state of the widget ecosystem and what’s next. We have a good mix of people in attendance, representing large content publishers, investors, designers, and even some hardware manufacturers. It should be a lot of fun. Below is some more information about Widgets Live! attendees. The conference website had visitors from all over the world and is a pretty good correlation to conference attendees. We’ll have companies present from Europe, India, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and the United…
Planning a small conference
I like small, focused events especially in the early days of an industry. Om and I organized the Widgets Live! conference to bring together the major players creating widgets, gadgets, and modules and the major endpoints of deployment. Many decisions were made along the way, and I’ll share just a few in this post. When? We knew lots of people from around the web industry would be in San Francisco for O’Reilly Media’s Web 2.0 conference November 7-9. Scheduling the widgets conference adjacent to the Web 2.0 conference creates a convenient opportunity for a few people to extend their visit…
Conference industry basics
I’ve been busy over the past few weeks organizing the Widgets Live! conference. I’ve talked to lots of people interested in various aspects of the conference industry, so I’ll summarize a few logistics in this post. Venue costs Event venues typically charge a room rental fee combined with a minimum catering expense. All prices quoted are usually a “list price” and negotiable depending on factors such as the length of the conference, number of rooms booked at the hotel, your total catering spend, and your repeat business if you host multiple conferences a year. Many venues will waive the room…
Moderating video search panel tonight in Mountain View
I am co-moderating tonight’s Search SIG event on the video ecosystem with Om Malik. Speakers include founders of VideoEgg, CastTV, Dabble, and POSTroller. I’ll do my part to make sure the topic stays on search and discoverability, and hopefully we won’t get too caught up in billion dollar buyouts. The event takes place at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus starting at 6:30 p.m. If you’re in the area and have an interest in search or video come by and check out the crowd and presentations. I’ll be down in Silicon Valley for most of the day, visiting Google for lunch and…
Data launchpads of the cloud wars
The war of the data clouds will really start to heat up in 2007 as large Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft open huge data centers in the Pacific Northwest fueled by cheap power and bandwidth. Our digital lives continue to be fueled by the cloud, with new data services and software that replace or complement desktop tasks coming online every month. Software as a service is the new development push, and custom build outs next to a few large dams and fiber highways are a sign of what’s next. Internet giants are building up their server…
WSJ raises questions about Mobius Venture Capital
Rebecca Buckman wrote about the seemingly impending breakup of Mobius Venture Capital on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal Markets section this morning. Buckman cites “people familiar with the matter” saying Managing Director Brad Feld may break off and form his own fund, bringing a few people from Mobius with him. Mobius raised a $630 million fund in 1999 and a $1.25 billion fund in 2000. The firm does not plan to raise another fund and the article cites investors saying the funds are “well underwater” Mobius invested in blog and feed syndication firms FeedBurner, NewsGator, and Technorati. The…