Traveling Geeks

Smartmobbing the Traveling Geeks

I learned from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle that “unexpected travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” This explains why I knew I could not turn down the opportunity to spend an intensive week in London and Cambridge with the Traveling Geeks. I already knew Renee Blodgett, JD Lasica, Craig Newmark, and Sky Schuyler, but I won’t meet Meghan Asha, Sarah Austin, Susan Bratton, Tom Foremski, Jeff Saperstein, Robert Scoble until July 5 in London, at which point we’re scheduled to swarm over London, meeting various geeks, enterprises, institutions. Here are the geek bios. How could I not want to ride along with a crew like that? I’m not much of an industry observer, more of the 30,000 foot level observer, but I do follow the fellow geeks’ reports. I like that the geeks represent a range of media and beats. I like we’re not just old guys. The agenda sounds juicy and tiring. We’re supposed to be equipped with the latest from Nokia, so we’ll all be streaming video at one time or another – or simultaneously. I’m supposed to speak at two events while I’m there: Reboot Britain and Civil Service Live. Stay tuned.

Traveling Geeks Agenda – London and Cambridge July 5-11th #TravelingGeeks

If you are going to be in London or Cambridge from July 5-11th, here’s our Traveling Geeks agenda.

Perhaps you can join us for the TweetUp, the Guardian Round Table, Reboot Britian, the Europa awards from TechCrunch or the Round Table Discussion on Social Media in Cambridge.

https://tg.planetlink.com/agenda

Let me know if you can attend any of these fun events. I’d love to see you there.

Backstage Pass- JD Lasica

JD Lasica must have superpowers to do, and see, and interview all of the people that he does in any given month! Interested in all aspects of online social media, his new site socialbrite.org is tag-lined Social Tools for Social Change. If the word tools brings up an image of shovels or software for you, forget it! This site really has quite a range. It’s way more than just profiling online tools and sites.

SocialBrite also focuses on people to organizations, showing you how to apply those online tools to support the social activities that’ll help you build your organization for social good. JD has assembled a team of a half dozen experts who will help grow this site. Hey geeks, add SocialBrite to your RSS feed reader now!

Also see:
[1] Socialbrite.org
[2] Netsquared.org
[3] JD Lasica also on socialmedia.biz

Tweet up for “Traveling Geeks” in London

Last year, I was part of a group of Traveling Geeks visiting Israel, and this year, the UK.

The Geeks will be attending a TweetUp on Sunday, July 5th at London’s JuJu on King’s Road. Half priced tickets end on June 26th, so if you’re in London or know someone who is, please let them know.  You can register early here.  Sponsors include The Conversation Group and NESTA.org.

(Words mostly stolen from Renee Blodgett)

Digitrad Simplifies the Way People Communicate

Join us July 5th, in London, for a tweetup

For my friends in the UK, if you life or work in London you might like to join the 12 Traveling Geeks (includes me) who will be at a tweet-up at Juju in London on Sunday evening July 5th (2009).

A tweetup (like “meetup”) is a face-to-face meeting of people who previously only knew each other through Twitter. For some of the well-known geeks, like Robert Scoble, who has over 95,000 followers on Twitter, this could be a big thing – Robert might be able to fill the room just with his own followers who happen to be in London that night.

Where I stand right now, at 165 followers, maybe a couple of you will know someone who’d like to meet the geeks – reserve a place in advance online.

TweetUp on July 5 at London’s JuJu

I’ll be in London in early July for our second TravelingGeeks trip. We’ll be attending a TweetUp on Sunday, July 5th at London’s JuJu on King’s Road.

Half priced tickets end on June 26th, so if you’re in London or know someone who is, please let them know so they can register early. Sponsors include The Conversation Group and NESTA.org.

Every Israeli Has a Pitch

We interviewed multiple entrepeneurs and movers and shakers at the inaugural Israel Conference in LA a couple of weeks ago. The result? A four part video series which you can tune into below.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Part IV:

Also on YouTube although the full content is included here. Links: Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.

How one company uses Web 2.0 tools to run and promote their business

Everyone wants to be more efficient, productive, and successful. We’re constantly seeking advice on Lifehacker. We gravitate toward any post entitled “How to …” or “Top tips to …” And we’re feeding self-help book publishers who dominate 25 percent of the publishing market.

Rarely, though, do we get an opportunity to see one person or one organization completely open up the kimono and show us step by step how they deploy all of these time and cost saving techniques to actually run their business. (more…)

Startups Need Stories

The final panel at The Israel Conference crowded themselves onto the stage, three judges and five digital entertainment start-ups in a simulated Hollywood pitch meeting.

The most valuable lesson was the insight into how ideas are sold in the entertainment industry.  Apparently, the people who write the checks have attention spans that make Twitter seem like Tolstoy.   Or perhaps it’s just that in Hollywood pitching stories is the norm, so people need a narrative.

Like the rest of us, really.  When the judges looked bored their expressions were matched by the members of the audience.  One of the threads woven through the day’s panels was that we need to tell good stories.   The themes of Israeli character were brought up again and again, usually in the context of a story.  The conference included a surprise visit (and story) from Lou Lenart, one of the heroes of Israel’s war of independence.

Perhaps the most illustrative example on the panel was when Yosi Glick pitched Jinni, a movie search engine that helps you choose films based on search terms that have meaning and texture rather than flat keywords with no emotional content. Think – “I’m in the mood for…” instead of “Where are your action movies?”

Here’s how Glick, the company’s president, started: “I don’t know what movies my wife likes and I’ve been married to her for 24 years.  Plus I have no idea what her mood is.  So I have a challenge, because I want to save my marriage.”   His business idea was going to be the cavalry in his life’s own romantic comedy, and we were ready to buy tickets.

Shortly after he went to the slide presentation we started to get lost.  Most demos can’t avoid the PowerPointed details, but it all should feed the story – one of the judges, David Wertenheimer of USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, even suggested that he have some slides at the front and back of the presentation, at first fighting over a movie choice and at the end watching happily into the sunset. 

The other presentations are in streaming video available at the conference link above.  It’s worth a look, both for the content of the pitches and for the process itself.