Traveling Geeks

Speed Dating with Tech Entrepreneurs in London “US/UK Speed Date with SeedCamp Winners” as Part of the Traveling Geeks Blog Junket #TG2009

by Susan Bratton on July 6, 2009 at 3:10 pm

One of the fun events we’ve created for the #TG2009 trip July 5-11th is a “US/UK Speed Date” event where the Geeks are moving from company to company around the room to collectively meet with all of the SeedCamp winnners.

SeedCamp is an organization that matches mentors with technology entrepreneurs. It’s a terrific idea and one that goes beyond just the relationship of a venture capital firm with their investment companies.

I’ve reviewed these organizations in advance and will hope to capture as many of their business models and unique points of differentiation for you on the trip as possible.

Here’s a list of the companies with whom we’ll meet for this event. This is my quick overview of what I got out of just looking at the home pages of each of their websites. I’ll be briefing you more via this blog as I get to hear their stories.

The biggest thing I noticed in reviewing these sites is the terrific work coming out of the UK. The Silicon Valley used to have an unfair advantage of venture capitalists, tech workers and local savvy. No more.

Today I am working out of Utah on my MacBook Pro, starting to write this blog post on free WordPress software that was updated by my tech guy from India (thanks, Satish!). Once you see the creations of these Seedcamp winners, you’ll agree that consumer web service creation is no longer coming solely from the California coast.

Basekit Groupspaces Huddle Kwaga Moo Qype School of Everything Skimlinks Spotify Stupeflix Ubervu Zemanta

Basekit Drag and Drop Object-Oriented Web Site Designer. Hot area for massive growth, according to moi. Can’t wait for this demo.

Groupspaces The next generation of Yahoo! Groups, full of excellent features, like file sharing, payment systems, group scheduling. Finally, someone with an alternative to that heaving elder, Y! Groups.

Huddle Like Basecamp. Interested to see the differences. Global collaborative projects are here and Huddle knows it.

Kwaga Email management system. Perhaps like OtherInBox? Hoping it has support for Apple Mail.

Moo We all love those little cards. Checking in on the advances of one of the most fun, unique companies in the world of printing.

Qype User-generated local reviews. Yelp for Europe and South America (so far).

School of Everything Great idea – sign up to teach something or cruise the database for something you’d like to learn. As Boomers age out, they want to give back and have a lot of skills. Great individual matching opportunities for unique skill sets. Fire dancing anyone?

Skimlinks Site-wide JavaScript to add affiliate link codes to your whole site. If you are a publisher, signed up with a bunch of affiliates, this is a great way to automate links on your site to add affiliate code and get rolled up reporting.

Spotify A new spin on music. Waiting to see the demo. My buddy, Shak Kahn, is involved so I know it’s going to be clever.

Stupeflix Kinda like Animoto – take your photos, images and add your music to create a video. This is absolutely what’s hot right now and I like the new empowering tools for folks who want to be creative but aren’t schooled in the arts.

Ubervu If Twitter Search and Google Alerts had a baby, it would be Ubervu. I’m super high on the meta services for social nets. Like MobyPicture, a syndication tool that let’s you post your images, audio and video to all your soc nets in one fell swoop, Ubervu is a social listening tool that also lets you comment from the ap. This is smart – take out the steps to commenting by helping you reply and comment to any service from one ap. Can’t wait to see this demo.

Zemanta Speaking of “commenting,” Zemanta is a Firefox extention that gives you creative ideas for adding images and other associated content to the comments you’re making on the web. I’ve installed it and will play with it and see if it makes me look smarter.

P.S. At SXSW, I interviewed Dave Taylor (AskDaveTaylor.com) about his blog commenting strategy. At this juncture of the web, you must engage in social listening, and Dave gives some great strategies for commenting and managing your time around responding. Here’s the interview.

Dave Taylor and Susan Bratton Community Powered Podcast SXSW

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Susan Bratton & Dave Taylor on Social Media Strategies for Staying in the Game Without Being Overwhelmed – Coping Mechanisms from @DaveTaylor