Following up on my Day 1 and 2 post on SXSW Interactive, I continued days 3 and 4 following my zen-like strategy. On Day 3 (Sunday), I went to the Girl + Guy party hosted by Guy Kawasaki (well known in the tech start-up world and a big supporter of women entrepreneurs) and companies like Culture Map. Last year, I got a picture with Guy at the party they hosted at Allen Boots which I think was why I was wearing a pink cowboy hat. Afterwards, I went to eat Indian food with some new friends that I met at the party and one of them emailed me the picture of her friend wearing the t-shirt that I put in this post because it’s pretty funny.
Today, I caught a panel led by my friend Thom Singer called You Can Impact Charity Without Being Rich. Eugene Sepulveda (also a friend), who runs the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas (where our company’s at ATI donate a portion of their equity) was on the panel. I caught most of the keynote with Felica Day, a former World of Warcraft gamer who created an online TV series called The Guild, and although I had no idea who she was before I walked into the room, I was impressed with her youth and energy.
I walked the Trade Show (a whole separate blog post to come about that experience) before going to a panel run by another friend, Enrique Ortiz, on mobile development and applications. He had the founder of Rovio Mobile, which makes Angry Birds on the panel. My kids love playing Angry Birds so I asked him if he had a couple of those stuffed animals he could give away. He didn’t have the big ones, but he gave me two small ones. He was also giving away t-shirts that said “Chillin’ Like A Villian” with a St. Patrick’s Day theme. My kids thought I was awesome for a few short moments. He said they have surpassed $100 million in revenue, Angry Birds was the 52nd game they made, and it had 1.2 billion hours of played time last year. Amazing!
Then it was off to the ATI co-hosted Entrepreneur’s Lounge to network with a bunch of folks and I got a Fandor (facebook fan page) video/flip book done with one of my co-workers that is supposed to be uploaded to their facebook fan page sometime tomorrow. Then a few of us headed over to the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)/NEA party which was pretty rockin’. The CEO of Groupon was there playing the keyboards for one song that apparently had to do with some lost bet. I’m not sure who the singer was, but it wasn’t his best voice night.
Overall, this year’s SXSW has been pretty low-key for me. I think I tweeted (@aruni) more these past few days than I have all of last year. I’ve been home by 10:30 pm each night despite the lure to stay at the parties longer and go to yet another party afterward.
One more day to go…
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: conferences,
entrepreneur,
entrepreneurship,
networking,
social networks |
Tags: angry birds,
culture map,
enrique ortiz,
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felicia day,
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guy kawasaki,
NEA,
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I just finished my second day at SXSW. The first day left me a little hung over, tired, wanting a nap. I got my 2nd wind right about the time I ran into Erica O’Grady in the Microsoft Windows Mobile Blog Lounge mid afternoon. Ironically enough 95% of the people in the lounge have iPhones.
Erica is so awesome! She is one of the 25 people selected as the Austin American Statesman’s Texas Social Media Award recipients. I was also nominated but people like Erica, who are the master-esses of the social media world, truly deserve it. I don’t think I had seen her since last year. She’s one of the happiest people I’ve ever met and tweeted with. When she stepped out of the lounge, I borrowed her pink hat and asked Brian Solis (who Erica introduced me to) to take a picture of me with another social media/entrepreneur great: Guy Kawasaki.
We spoke with Garage.com (founded by Guy) back when we were doing our first high tech start-up and at one point we had a t-shirt our son wore when he was a toddler that said “Garage.com. My favorite letters are I, P, and O.” 8)
Guy is one of the most down to earth tech entrepreneurs you can meet. He graciously has me and my blog listed in a few places in his AllTop library sites (Mom Bloggers, Twitterati, Startups, etc.).
I hope I and my panelists are coherent by the time my panel – Building A Web Business After Hours – rolls around on Monday, March 16 at 3:30 pm!
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
conferences |
Tags: guy kawasaki,
sxsw interactive |
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I mentioned before that my blog is listed on Alltop Moms. Well now thanks to Guy Kawasaki, I’m listed in Alltop Startups and for a brief time I was listed in Alltop Twitterati. I guess I took too long to write this blog post, because I’m no longer listed in Twitterati. Maybe I can earn my way back into Guy’s good graces (unless they changed the criteria for being listed there) and find another spot on Alltop in exchange for another blog post about the amazing and ever so ubiquitous Alltop concept! 😉
He also added an Alltop Adoption page so for those of you interested in people who write about adoption, adopting kids, their adopted kids, and other people’s adopted kids, check it out!
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
Just For Fun,
random stuff |
Tags: adoption,
AllTop,
alltop adoption,
AllTop Moms,
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guy kawasaki |
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So here’s the rest of my Women 2.0 Conference story. If you want to see tons of pictures (which sadly I and my deep pink Banana Republic shirt don’t appear) please check out the official Women 2.0 Conference Wrap Up post. You can also see Sophia Perl’s (another semi-finalist) post on it here.
Friday – May 9, 2008
I took my rented yellow car and drove around the Palo Alto/Menlo Park area to meet some people. I met Jeff Nolan, who was one of the venture investors in my first company, for lunch at a place called Buck’s. We only just got to know each other while at my last company before I left, but he seemed to be one of the good guys. I mentioned him in a post I did about angels and venture capitalists a while back. We might get to work together again and this time in hopefully a more creative and collaborative way.
I tried to meet up with Guy Kawasaki later that afternoon but he had something mildly important to do like make some sort of silly book submission deadline, so we traded tweets and emails instead. Then I went to the Stanford mall. I’m not a big shopper, but since I had a few hours to kill, and my husband wanted me to get him a Stanford t-shirt (It’s one of his alma-maters) I wandered around a bit and read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, but was not feeling in the “now” at the time so didn’t make much progress. So I got some hot chocolate, my rings cleaned, and happened to find a couple of light-weight jackets at really good sale prices to protect me from the Bay Area cool evenings!
Later I had the pleasure of meeting up with Maryam Scoble for wine and fabulous brie with a flakey crust. Yum! Maryam and I met through our blogs. I initially heard about her and her husband Robert Scoble from our very own Austin based Connie Reece. Robert even did a Qik video of me at SXSW but I don’t think that many pregnant moms or parents with newborn babies, preemies or twins are watching those videos. Go figure!
Saturday – May 10, 2008 (conference day)
You can see the agenda for the conference here. It was an interesting day in a tent near the Stanford golf course. Walking in grass was a challenge for many of us who were wearing heels. Those wearing pointed heels especially suffered by sinking into the grass/dirt, but since I would trip and fall on my face in pointed heels, I wear more flat ones.
The most interesting sound bites, in my opinion, came from the Power Panel: “Igniting the spark through strategies taught and lessons learned”
Terri Ghio, Unique Solutions and TBS Connect said: Make sure you have an audience, a secret sauce, strategic alliances, and ability to build the blocks and barriers for success.
Amy Love, Protégé Performance Group said: Build an inner circle, share your dream, think big, and have the confidence & energy to move forward.
Dr. Jwala Karnik, JwalaCo said: Be open to inspiration, tell people what you want to do, and just take the first step!
Dr. Maggie Haertsch, VOICEMAP said: Have passion and be totally committed, focused, and fearless!
Pat McEntee, AuxoGlobal said: Women entrepreneurs are different and that’s OK. Women look at things they want to spend their time on differently. Women build different companies. The fact that many retail companies are currently dominated by men is not going to last long, but women should build companies that men feel comfortable in. By the way, Pat is a guy!
I mentioned the winners of the napkin business plan challenge in my yellow car post, so I won’t mention it here again, but I did want to mention one company and founder who was on one of the panels: Erica Estrada of d.light design. She is impressive and her company is very cool! They make affordable, small, solar power lighting units for people in third world countries who have no access to electricity. So the kids in who live in shacks can study/read after dark and parents can cook or work after dark without having to use a kerosene lamp that not only stinks and has to be bad for your lungs, but also doesn’t last very long. I really do wish her and her company great luck, good partners, fabulous investors and perfect timing!
I ended the day by eating sushi with the friends I was staying with. They even took a picture of me (see below) drinking this huge cup of sake! The waitress finished the bottle on me, so the sake overflowed into its holding bowl. I was glad I wasn’t the one driving us home in my rented yellow car. 😀
Coming soon I’ll post an update on my SEO experiences, so you might want to subscribe to read more about the birth pains of a web business. It’s not pretty.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: competition,
conferences,
diversity,
entrepreneurship,
venture capital |
Tags: guy kawasaki,
jeff nolen,
maryam scoble,
palo alto,
Robert Scoble,
sake,
silicon valley,
stanford,
sushi,
women 2.0 conferenece,
women entrepreneurs |
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What do 5 White Men, Rebranding, and Dads have in common? Well other than the fact that Dads are usually men, probably not a whole lot. These are just some of the interesting things happening around the blogosphere.
5 White Men Talk About Social Media was written by Connie Reece at Every Dot Connects. Connie is a huge presence in the world of social media especially here in Austin, yet was overlooked for a panel on Social Media the Chamber of Commerce was putting on. She voices her frustration at women still being “invisible” even when they are playing a major role in the world of social media. Connie got me started in blogging almost a year ago! She is also one of the main reasons the Frozen Pea Fund initiative got started as a result of Susan Reynolds struggle with breast cancer. Here’s a quote from her post:
This afternoon I got an email from fellow Dot-Connector Brenda Thompson with the subject line: “Five White Men Talk About Social Media.” That got my attention and I opened the email right away. …
It irked me too. It’s not like the organizers would have had to look very far to find some outstanding women to speak, and I’m not just referring to myself. In less than 30 seconds, Brenda and I came up with a list of five or six local women who would have made great panelists.
See, lists are easy to make. But women on lists are still invisible if conference organizers aren’t looking for the list.
Looking Minnesota. Feeling California and The Gaping Void Between Our Brand And Our Audience were two recent posts written by Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home. After her recent trip to SXSW Interactive, she realized she needed to rebrand because many of her readers are not eMoms or even parents! I love Wendy’s blog for a variety of reasons but mostly because she is open and honest about her experience as an entrepreneur and she readily shares her blogging and business tips. We met through our blogs, had a couple of phone conversations and when we finally met in person at SXSW, it was like we just “got each other” as entrepreneurs and as moms! I’m not sure if she has come to a decision on the new name, so go check out her posts and give her your 2 cents!
AllTop Dads launches. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World my entrepreMusings blog is near the top of AllTop Moms blogger list. It’s a great place to go to check out all the top mommy and daddy bloggers. If you don’t know Guy, he was once asked to interview for the CEO position at Yahoo! take on the CEO position of Google and he turned the opportunity to interview down thinking there’s no way Google Yahoo! would amount to much. He often refers to it as his $4 billion dollar mistake, but he reflects back and realizes that instead he was able to be involved in his children’s lives, which is priceless!
So as I said when I began this post, there isn’t much in common between these links, but all are great reads!
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
dad,
diversity,
father,
mom,
mother,
parenting,
random stuff,
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working father,
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Tags: ,
AllTop Dads,
AllTop Moms,
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branding,
Brenda Thompson,
connie reece,
diveristy,
emoms at home,
every dot connects,
google,
guy kawasaki,
how to change the world,
social media,
sxsw,
sxsw interactive,
wendy piersall,
women,
women in technology |
7 Comments »
It’s been a long, fun filled day at SXSW Interactive today. So this post won’t be as meaty as my previous SXSW post. I met tons of people today and many people who know me and who I know from twitter. It was so cool to have so many people come up to me and say, ‘hey, aren’t you @aruni on twitter?’ I guess I kind of stand out in a crowd. 🙂 I probably gained about 30 followers just from tweeting about the panels I attended. Here’s a quick overview because honestly I’m kinda worn out:
The Care and Feeding of Your Startup
This panel was made up of some local entrepreneurs from Unwired Nation as well as a venture capitalist from Texas based DFJ Mercury and a couple of others. Some key insights:
- Someone needs to serve as the “Belief Engine” for your startup which I took to mean the “evangelist” but I thought that was a unique way of saying it.
- Make sure your product fits into your users way of life and they don’t have to drastically change what they are doing
- Understand if your concept is a feature or a business. It could be a feature that expands into a business.
- You should aim to exceed investor’s expectations.
- 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs can’t go the distance so they really should identify a strong mentor.
- Make sure the people you hire have ‘karmic velcro’ which means they have the fortitude to stick around when the going gets tough.
- There are 3 key people you need in a start-up. 1 in charge of product, 1 handling business development who can close the early deals, and 1 evangelist.
- It’s not appropriate to go to VCs in the first 2 years of a business, because in the first 2 years you are still assessing the market risk. Almost all the VC deals that occurred with Web companies in early stage have not worked out and they are struggling to get their money back.
- Keep two sets of books. One you show your investors and one with even more aggressive numbers that you aim for internally.
True Stories from Social Media Sites
This panel was moderated by Guy Kawasaki, who was so kind to put my blog near the top of his new AllTop Moms site. It was notably a panel of 5 women and 1 guy. Two of the women were twitter pals so when I got up to ask a question and say ‘hi’ one of them was tweeting about me.
I had my son with me at this panel because he’s home for Spring Break so I wasn’t able to take a lot of notes or do many tweets because half way through he wanted to play a game on my phone! He actually did really well, scribbled a bit, and then drew a funny looking dinosaur who he felt the need to show was pooping. Such a funny kid! He wanted me to go up to the mic and say something, but when I tried to get him to come with me, he got shy…he is only afterall 5 1/2.
The panelists discussed their great and not-so-great experiences using social media. What funny and sometimes unbelievable stories they shared!
I met up with my husband after that panel and we took our son for a late lunch at Bennigan’s and then he took him home, and I went to the BlogHaus to network with more bloggers.
Online Adulation: Use Don’t Abuse Your Fans
This panel had an editor from CNET as moderator and some pretty fabulous bloggers including the infamous Dooce whose current post is called Fueled Entirely by Advil.
I was sitting next to Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home during this panel and she was twittering away. She had her laptop so she could do it much faster than I could so I let her take over so go read her twitter stream if you want to read all about it.
Went back to the Bloghaus after this panel and met none other than Darren Rowse (aka Problogger). Someone took a picture of us and said he’d email it to me so I’ll post it when I get it…assuming he remembers.
Conversation Starters
This event was hosted by DELL and Federated Media and they booked the entire Iron Cactus restaurant on 6th and Trinity. Richard at DELL was the lead blogging rep from DELL, who I had met a few weeks earlier at an Austin Tweet Up.
Because I’m twitter friends with Kim Haynes, I volunteered to help with registration since it was an RSVP only event. Of course, that meant I had access to extra drink tickets and people wanted to get to know me!
The key speakers were top blogger and FastCompany.tv producer Robert Scoble (aka Scobleizer) and Shel Israel of Global Neighborhoods.
I met so many twitter buds at Conversation Starters, including the famous Chris Brogan, and throughout the day that it would take me all night to type up their names. Already, this post is longer than I thought it would be!
Stay tuned for my next SXSWi post on Tuesday’s events.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
conferences,
entrepreneurship,
networking,
social media |
Tags: AllTop,
AllTop Moms,
chris brogan,
Darren Rowse,
DELL,
dooce,
emoms at home,
Federated Media,
Global Neighborhoods,
guy kawasaki,
online adulation,
problogger,
Richard at DELL,
Robert Scoble,
Scobleizer,
Shel Israel,
social media,
south by southwest,
sxsw,
sxsw interactive,
unwired nation,
wendy piersall |
2 Comments »
If you’ve been in technology start-up land for any length of time, you have no doubt heard of Guy Kawasaki. He’s a former Apple executive, founder of Garage Ventures, and author of 8 books. Now he’s doing something new which I think is very cool called AllTop, and “they have all the top stories covered all of the time.”
So if you are into Politics, Gaming, Sports, Celebrities, Tech, Automobiles, etc. then they aim to be the place to go to find out all the latest news. Since I’m a mom and love to know about what other moms are up to, I’m thrilled about their NEW Mommy Bloggers page called AllTop Moms! My little ‘ole entrepreMusings blog is currently near the top of the page. Thanks Guy!
If you are a mommy blogger or you blog on any of their other topics and you’d like your site to be included, check out their About page to get more information.
Yay, Moms! I did see some people on twitter (I’m @aruni) asking about a Daddy Bloggers page so check back frequently to see what new and interesting pages they add.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
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mom,
mother |
Tags: ,
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Following up on my Day 1 and 2 post on SXSW Interactive, I continued days 3 and 4 following my zen-like strategy. On Day 3 (Sunday), I went to the Girl + Guy party hosted by Guy Kawasaki (well known in the tech start-up world and a big supporter of women entrepreneurs) and companies like Culture Map. Last year, I got a picture with Guy at the party they hosted at Allen Boots which I think was why I was wearing a pink cowboy hat. Afterwards, I went to eat Indian food with some new friends that I met at the party and one of them emailed me the picture of her friend wearing the t-shirt that I put in this post because it’s pretty funny.
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