Category Archives: Events

KRON blogger gathering

I spent the afternoon at KRON-TV with about 100 other bloggers as part of a hosted meetup. In attendance was a diverse crowd of bloggers covering food, photography, travel, technology, and local news. General Manager Mark Antonitis (pictured above) hosted the event. KRON is a television station struggling to survive after being separated from NBC a few years and they differentiate themselves from the market by airing many programs with a local focus such as full coverage of parades or a weekly show about exploring the lesser-known parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. I arrived at KRON’s television…

KRON hosting bloggers at TV studios

I received an invitation from KRON-TV, a local San Francisco Bay Area news station, to attend a blogger gathering on June 11 at their television studio in San Francisco. From the open invitation: We recognize the significance of the personal media revolution, and we want to listen to what you’re saying. We think this is a good way to start. Sounds great! KRON is a local TV channel that was approached by NBC a few years ago but did not sell. They are still alive and kicking with local programming from parades or the back roads of local parks. The…

Tim Draper music video

Tim Draper broke into song during yesterday’s speech at Stanford. I have never before seen a high-profile venture capitalist prance around on stage, play air guitar, and slap his ass, but luckily I had my camera ready to capture this unique moment. Tim Draper recently attended an event with a very unique auction prize: Scott Cargo of The Eagles would produce a song using your original lyrics. Tim won the auction and wrote “The Riskmaster.” Draper Fisher Jurveston sent a CD of the recording to 5,000 business associations last December, and I happened to get a CD from Tim. The…

Tim Draper on changing the world

On Wednesday I attended a lecture by Tim Draper of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurveston at Stanford. Tim talked about new ideas that will change the world and solve common problems of humanity in the process The Draper Fisher Jurveston logo was designed to symbolize change. A globe is at the forefront, representing the referenced but uncharted world. The delta in the background symbolizes changing that world through new investments, ideas, and support. Tim likes to think in terms of “cyberspatial” competition. Given an environment of perfect information a new idea or breakthrough will spread throughout the world…

Paul Graham business tips

Last night I saw Paul Graham speak at PARC about how to sell a startup. Eventually the text of the speech should be posted to Paul’s site. Paul sold ViaWeb to Yahoo! in 1998 to create Yahoo! Stores. Paul believes startups should be created and quickly sold for profit. Below are some tips shared by Paul last night. The most powerful motivator is the fear of loss. Startups get bought for one of two reasons: revenues or strategic purpose. You have to convince people at big companies that not buying you would be a big mistake, either as a…

Danny Shader on entrepreneurship

Yesterday I attended the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar to hear Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit and corporate coach to startups such as Google, interview Danny Shader, CEO of Good Technology. Stanford posted a video of the seminar. Danny Shader has an interesting background including companies such as GO Corporation, Collabra Software, Netscape, and Amazon.com. Danny was an entrepreneur-in-residence with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital before joining Good Technology. Bill Campbell was an economics major and a former football coach before his highly successful software career. Good Technology originally developed audio hardware for the Handspring Visor…

Flickr event at Cafe Abir

Tonight I had the opportunity to meet Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake of Flickr at Cafe Abir in San Francisco. The entire Ludicorp team has moved to the Bay Area and Stewart was sporting his purple Yahoo! access pass. Cafe patrons thought the Flickr meetup group was a wedding reception for Stewart and Caterina; it was interesting to see their reaction to this small independent café taken over by a bunch of photo geeks. I liked how Stewart and Caterina sought out different groups of people even when it involved walking over couches. Stewart mentioned the gift accounts were…