Traveling Geeks

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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.

Join us – TweetUp at London’s JuJu on July 5

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.

We’d Love to Hear from UK Bloggers

As we get closer to heading off to London, we’d love to hear from bloggers in the UK. If you’re interested in contributing to the site, please let us know.

Nokia’s Ovi Maps for Mobile and Web

As part of our prep for London, we met with the Nokia Ovi Maps team late last month to learn a bit more about their mobile and web apps. Ovi maps allow you to see the world in new ways with 3D, satellite and terrain views, weather, information and more.

Features include collections, which allow you to collect and store your favorite routes or destinations for quick and easy access. You can also search for new places from restaurants to remote towns and the service helps you with routing prior to your trip as well as navigation on-the-ground.

You can do all your pre-planning on the desktop if you’d like, save your favorites into collections, and then sync up with your mobile device so you can later navigate using the same information when you arrive at your final destination.

They currently have 216 cities worldwide and 30 landmarks per city. “If you do a really deep dive into the maps, you may not really want to see labels, but its something you can turn on and off easily depending on your preference,” said Berlin-based Jörg Malang, head of Ovi Maps for Nokia.

There’s also a very cool terrain view which gives you views of mountains and landscape.

Maps 3.0, the latest version, which came out in the first quarter of this year, includes hi-resolution satellite and terrain maps in 2D and 3D views and you can walk with enhanced pedestrian routing and features.

You can download updated maps for free anytime from over the 200 countries and of those 200, roughly 74 are navigable today (meaning you can do real-time pedestrian and car navigation in those countries).

You can also share locations with your friends but you can’t yet export or have multiple profiles, that is if you don’t want those two profiles to be synced with each other. Sharing features are coming in the not too distant future however.

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. (Continue reading this entry…)

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.

Backstage Pass- Introducing Susan Bratton

As if managing to publish 40+ podcasts at Personal Life Media weren’t enough, Susan Bratton is totally a bundle of energy. (In fact, maybe that’s her secret.) She’s no stranger to tech, having worked in the semiconductor industry, but her personal podcast DishyMix (now at 100 episodes) is focused on marketing and she does the most fascinating interviews, digging down deep to find out what makes each of her interview subjects really “tick.”

Susan says “Our mantra is ‘frank talk and deep discussion for your personal life.’ ” And Personal Life Media’s tag line is “Podcasts and blogs with expert advice on personal growth, anti-aging, intimacy and relationships.” You can tell that Susan is going to have a great time in the UK and we invite you to follow along!