DC: Keep Feb 7th Open on the Calendar

I hope everyone has Feb 7th open on the calendar for some great local events !   I had already been planning on attending the DC Social Media Breakfast in the morning obviously at Bens Chili Bowl downtown.  Then I logged into Facebook this evening only to see some of my local friends Shashi , Shana (The DCConcierge ), and Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs rsvp to attend the “Media Rules” DC Book Launch Party taking place that evening downtown as well.  It sounds like a pretty cool event.  Here is a little info about the Media Rules book:

When it comes to communicating with an ever-evolving audience, today’s organization has more than enough tools to get the job done — blogs, podcasts, social networks, search advertising, and much more. Yet the combination of rapid technological innovation and continuous social shifts have left many organizations — from the largest corporation to the smallest nonprofit — struggling to stay focused and execute their ideas.
Media Rules! provides you with a framework for understanding this dynamic world and overcoming its many challenges.

So what is everyone going to do.
1.  The Social Media Breakfast
2.  The Media Now ! Book Launch Party
3.  Both

Hope to see many of you out at these events.

Pay For Your Plane Tickets With Paypal

My wife is setting up a trip for her and her girlfriends to go to Kansas City later this spring .. I know Kansas City you ask ? ..  In any case she came to me and mentioned she was about to buy her ticket for Southwest and then said something about PayPal.

PayPal ?  I asked … Yes I was shocked to find that Southwest actually takes PayPal to purchase their plane tickets.  I thought wow, this is pretty cool.  I mean I use PayPal all the time to buy things online, but I have never come across a “mainstream” entity like an airline accepting it.

How about you all, any other examples like this you can share with us ?

Microblogging the Campaign Trail

Of course the “staff” here around the East Coast Blogging offices are well engaged in all things Twitter, but I am not so sure about the rest of the mainstream population. Twitter has become a valuable tool in tracking and following the Presidential campaigns, but until now I think it was mainly to a rather niche audience. Not that this will change anything, but the NY Times ran a piece today about journalists using Twitter following the ongoing events. The piece is titled “Campaign Reporting in Under 140 Taps“.

It starts by showing an update by John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for the online magazine Slate:

NASHUA: Just saw Bill O’reily misbehaving at Obama rallly. Shoving Obama staffer.

And from there goes on to mention others, to include Time reporters who have begun using the tool. I was just imagining non-tech saavy people getting up this morning to read about this “Twitter” thing those crazy kids are using these days. We are in it and know it, but to others it must seem as foreign as aliens.

I found a quote by Olivier Knox, a White House correspondent for Agence France-Presse very interesting. He stated

Despite the new gadgetry, these journalists are actually rediscovering telegraphese — the clipped (ideally witty) style that flourished because of word limits imposed by an earlier technology, the telegraph. Today, it is the limits imposed by text-messaging.

Interesting how we see Twitter as new technology, the underlying message snippet is actually older than most of us using it today. I can see all of us now, in the backroom, visor on our heads, tapping away on the telegraph machine as the letters goes racing across the cable to its destination. Odd irony isnt it ?

Anyway, its pretty cool to see a new technology hit the mainstream news. Hope everyone doesn’t rush to use it … I don’t know if Twitter can handle it ….

Silicon Valley’s Secret History

I am not sure if any of you check many YouTube videos out, but Google has some great videos up on a googletectalk channel.  I watched one the other day on Ajax. Anyway, I saw a post today pointing to another video on the Google channel.  It is a video of a presentation by Steve Blank

Steve Blank spent nearly 30 years as founder and executive of high tech companies in Silicon Valley, most recently the enterprise software firm E.piphany. He has been involved in or co-founded eight Silicon Valley startups, ranging from semiconductors to video games, and personal computers to supercomputers. He teaches entrepreneurship at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Columbia University and Stanford’s Graduate School of Engineering.

It is a pretty cool presentation on how the valley was built by the CIA and NSA during WWII

World War II set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of Silicon Valley, and the role of Frederick Terman and Stanford in working with government agencies (including the CIA and the National Security Agency) to set up companies in this area that sparked the creation of hundreds of other enterprises.

It is not east coast or DC news, but I thought it very interesting and wanted to share with all of you.

I cannot embed these videos, so go and check it out HERE.

Programming Alert: Upcoming Jonny’s Par-Tay !

As you all know, the “staff” here at East Coast Blogging are huge fans of Jonny’s Par-Tay, the weekly show run on blog.tv.  The show is great, as is the interaction with Jonny, the guests, and the other viewers.

I was excited to see another stellar lineup planned for this week.  Jonny’s guests will be Ann Bernard, Founder and CEO of our own DC startup WhyGoSolo.  Ann recently took WhyGoSolo live into a private beta.  I got an invite and the site looks good.  I will be anxious to hear how things are going for Ann and her team.
In addition to Ann, Jonny is going to have on Shana, aka dcconcierge.  That is if she gets back from her trip to the Keys and stops taunting us with her notes on Twitter of cruising on wine cruise and eating freshmahi ….  Shana runs a very cool web site called DC Concierge where she answers readers questions on what to do and see around town.

I believe the viewership hit a record a few shows back and hit 158 or so.  Let’s all mark our calendars to meet up in the chatroom and enjoy the show together.  Show starts Wednesday at 9pm, so I will see you all there.

Mixx Hits 100 Days, and Going Strong

I had totally missed this news on the Mixx blog, but was reminded of it when I saw this post over at Centernetworks. But it seems that our local DC startup Mixx hit the 100 day mark and has good news to report. According to the blog post:

• We’re now averaging hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month
• There are tens of thousands of registered Mixxers – 78% of whom have personalized their Mixx pages with more than 10 category tags
• Mixxers have created more than 700 groups, and counting
• So far, more than 5 million votes have been cast
• We now have a library of more than 50,000 tags submitted by Mixxers
• Mixx buttons have been found on the websites of some of the biggest media companies, including USA Today , Reuters, The L.A. Times, Slate, Forecast Earth from The Weather Channel, and Kaboose, with more on the way
• And it’s not just the big dogs! Many very cool and interesting blogs have added a Mixx button, allowing Mixxers to get great information from diverse sources

I am confident they will continue to grow and prosper in this space. They have some good plans moving forward to include an API, a Facebook application, and most importantly SCHWAG ! Yes, we can pimp our local friends over at Mixx as we are out and about around town and the world.

Engadget Looking For East Coast Editor

Heh all you geeky DC bloggers who also happen to love gadgets (I know who among us doesn’t).  Engadget is looking to hire a East Cost editor.  It says they would prefer NYC, but I assume they would also consider DC east coast …..   Here is the post and here are the details:

Oh sure, you love gadgets — but do you have the chops to write about them? We’d love to know if you think you do, because we’re looking to actually pay people to do this stuff. Professional writing experience isn’t necessary (though it doesn’t hurt), but what we really care about is that you can write about gadgets with wit, concision, and authority. And being obsessed with Engadget is good, too.

East Coast editor (full-time, salary, benefits, the whole-nine — must be based on the East Coast, preferably NYC)

So any of you out there with the skills, I know we have some around here, get cracking on that resume.

I Would Define a Startup As …

Well actually that brings up a good question. Last week, Allen over at Centernetworks had a post “How Do You Define a Startup?” . He laid out a few criteria, or questions rather, to get us thinking about what qualifies as a startup:

• Is it based on funding? If a company has funding of any size, can they still be considered a startup? Angel round = startup, Series A = not a startup?
• Is it based on level of “live”? If they are in pre-alpha, alpha or beta, are they automatically a startup?
• Is it based on employee count? If the company has more than x employees - Erick on TC called a 14 person company yesterday “tiny”
• Is it based on time? If the company is in business a year or more, no longer a startup?
• Is it based on revenue? If the company generates over x amount in the first year, no longer a startup?

I had to chuckle a bit at this post. The other day I started a DC Area Startup Wiki where I wanted the DC community to be able to go in and add local startups. One reason was to bring together the community with the hopes of further building said community and also to let people know some of the great things that are taking place in the local area.

What was funny was that the night I created the wiki, there was a ongoing conversation between a couple of us, Nick O’Neill, Peter Corbett, and myself, as to what should be considered a startup to put on the list. We came to the same conclusion Allen came to, it is hard to define a startup. So I decided to let the list speak for itself. Let it grow organically and let it sort itself out. My intent is to showcase local companies really, “startup” or not.

There was a pretty funny response post to Allen’s post over at The Drama 2.0 Show.

So what about it ? Leave a comment and simply continue the sentence I started as the title, I Would Define a Startup As … and lets see what we can come up with.

Google Sets Up Shop In DC

I had heard at the DC blogger meetup the other night about an event Google was having the following night, but I was not able to make it out. Anyway, it seems, our non-evil friends have finally set up permanent digs here in DC for its local operations. Google is becoming more involved in the tech space of many government agencies and also need to have that presence up on the hill.

Here is the post from Google’s Public Policy Blog recapping the event. I am jealous, the office space looks awesome, as one would expect from the Googler’s.

Welcome to DC Google.

DC Photowalking Coming Soon To A Town Near You

Calling all you DC area photographers. The DC Metro Area Flickr group is having a Photowalking outing next Sunday, January 27th.

Here are the delicious details:

When: Sunday January 27th 2PM Start - 4PM Photo Walk for those interested.

Where: Rocket Bar in Chinatown
714 7th Street NW WDC 20001
202 628 7665

Come one, Come All. To the January 2008 Meetup/Photo Walk.

We’re gonna meet at Rocket Bar at 2 pm. Have some drinks, some banter, and I’m sure a ton of photos just inside of Rocket Bar. Then at 4PM those of us that want to head out into the wild blue yonder can head up to the streets of DC and out into the early evening light for a photo walk around that area. We can discuss the walk more once we’re at Rocket Bar, or on here if you’d like. And if it’s too cold out for you or you just wanna stay inside and drink and talk, that’s fine we can split up. This isn’t a guided photo walk. I will have no idea where I’m going and I’m sure we can break into groups, but lets discuss this on here or at the meetup.

I am going to really try to get out. I have been chomping at the bit to roam around downtown and get some pics. I got out yesterday to get some snow shots around Frederick, MD. The one above is my fave … Check here for the rest . I will not be there for the social, but most likely will show up for the walk @ 4pm. I would love to see some of you there. Let us know if you plan on coming.

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