Posts Tagged ‘DC’

Summary GeeksOnaPlane DC/Europe 2009

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

GeeksOnaPlane DC/Europe Fall 2009 is over; here are cities & events we visited:

London (Seedcamp) | Amsterdam | Berlin | Prague | Paris | London (FoWA)

[9/17: Fly from West Coast To Washington, DC]

9/18-19: Washington DC

  • Fri 9/18 (11am-1pm) Gov/Tech Meetup with the White House Digital Media Group and the State Department Technology Innovation Team. Innovative technologists and policy makers will talk about how government affects technology today and in the future. (NOTE: this meeting is by invitation only and for attendees of the main travel group.)
  • Fri 9/18 (1:30pm-4:30pm) Startup2Startup Lunch & Seminar hosted by AIM/AOL featuring around 75 tech entrepreneurs and technology policy representatives. Discussion will center around how technology and government partners can create change and new opportunities with communication and new technologies.
  • Sat 9/19 Geeks On The Mall Museum Tour We will be visiting various museums in the downtown DC area on Saturday. We hope you’ll join us.

big ben final9/21-23: London — SeedCamp Week

  • GeeksOnaPlane will attend SeedCamp to meet and mentor entrepreneurs from the top 20 startups in Europe to help them develop and build their business. Several members from GeeksOnaPlane will speak. Over 100 developers, entrepreneurs, investors, and technology representatives will be in attendance.

Amsterdamtrainfinal9/24-25: Amsterdam — Picnic Conference, Ignite

  • Picnic is a cross-discipline platform for creative conversion and collaboration. The festival features a strategic conference, hands-on workshop, and matchmaking sessions.
  • Ignite will feature 10 5-minute presentations by creative and technical speakers on a variety of intense and innovative topics.

Berlinatnight final9/26-27: Berlin — Startup2Startup Brunch

  • GeeksOnaPlane will host a Startup2Startup brunch and networking event on Sunday 9/27 for local and international technology entrepreneurs to discuss perspectives on recent technology development and trends in Berlin.

prague castle final

9/28-9/29: Prague — STARTonomics, Startup2Startup Dinner & Ignite

  • STARTonomics Prague is a half-day tech and business seminar covering local and international topics including: Startup Metrics, Product Design & Development, Online Marketing and Customer Acquisition, Technology Platforms and Innovation, and Funding & Financing for Startups.
  • GeeksOnaPlane will host a Startup2Startup dinner and networking event for local and international technology entrepreneurs with discussions on recent technology development and trends.
  • Ignite will feature 10 5-minute presentations by creative and technical speakers on a variety of intense and innovative topics

4372799/29-9/30: Paris — Ignite, Startup2Startup

  • Ignite will feature 10 5-minute presentations by creative and technical speakers on a variety of intense and innovative topics.
  • GeeksOnaPlane will host a Startup2Startup dinner and networking event for local and international technology entrepreneurs with a featured speaker presenting his/her perspective on recent technology development and trends in each of the three cities.

10/01-02:big ben finalLondon — Future of Web Apps

  • The Future of Web Apps conference is hosting a 2-day tech event featuring presentations by leading tech industry professionals from companies such as Mozilla, Twitter, TechCrunch, Facebook, Digg, and more. Selected workshops will include the following: How to build Facebook Connect + open ID, Building Web Apps using Atlas, Kick-ass Online Marketing Techniques, and How to Build a Web App from A-Z

[10/3: Fly from London to USA]

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Coolest Museum in DC, Newseum: Historic Archives vs. New Media

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

In escaping from the geek-dom of the Geeks on a Plane journey for a bit, the group headed over to the “Newseum” in DC’s3938783017_90fcec77f3_mmuseum district. Coming from a communications and journalism background, I was ecstatic to discover the cool archives and exhibits that this unique and recently remodeled museum had to offer (even though I originally thought that the “Newseum” was all things new, rather than the history of news, newspapers and the evolution to new media).

The thing that struck me the most, was the fact that most museums are very historical in nature – whether the museum is showcasing art, artifacts or historical treasures. A lot of the exhibits at the Newseum revolved around news and incidents (mostly negative, unfortunately) that happened during my 32 years of life. Living through some of these landmark moments made me feel in touch with the world and current events and OLD!

During our VIP tour, the group had the opportunity to check out the broadcast studio, the server room and the primary control and programming station (full disclosure: we all turned into kids again).

Here is a little more information around the museum. I highly recommend it next time you visit DC!

3938780691_12d736e2a7_mNewseum Blends High-Tech With Historical

The Newseum — a 250,000-square-foot museum of news — offers visitors an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits.

The Newseum is located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., on America’s Main Street between the White House and the U.S. Capitol and adjacent to the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall. The exterior’s unique architectural features include a 74-foot-high marble engraving of the First Amendment and an immense front wall of glass through which passers-by can watch the museum fulfill its mission of providing a forum where the media and the public can gain a better understanding of each other.

The Newseum features seven levels of galleries, theaters, retail spaces and visitor services. It offers a unique environment that takes museumgoers behind the scenes to experience how and why news is made.

“Visitors will come away with a better understanding of news and the important role it plays in all of our lives,” said Newseum Executive Director and Senior Vice President Joe Urschel. “The new Newseum is educational, inspirational and a whole lot of fun.”

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Startup2Startup DC: 2gov.org Tweeting the Government Just Got Easier

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

Guest post by Eric Ries, Lessons Learned and co-founder of IMVU.

It’s been an exhilarating first day here in Washington DC for the Geeks on a Plane tour. We met a number of policy makers from the White House and State Department, and had a solid Startup2Startup all about government policy and entrepreneurship. After a full day of talking, debating, thinking, and strategizing, we feel about read to take some good old-fashioned action. Will you join us?Picture 2

In a previous post, I asked readers for suggested topics that the US government needs to know about startups and entrepreneurs, and got
some really interesting responses. I’ve done my best to represent those perspectives in the meetings I’ve had here over the past two weeks. In my presentation this morning, I emphasized three key areas: reducing the personal cost of failure for entrepreneurs, innovation-friendly legal reforms, and access to the digital means of production (slides from my White House presentation are available at the end of this post).

However, there’s one additional issue that has come up throughout the day today. It’s something that Brad Feld and Paul Graham have termed the Founders Visa. The idea is to enable up to 10,000 people per year to enter the United States if they are here to found a company that will employ US citizens. I think the benefits here are a no-brainer.

Let me quote from Paul’s original essay:

The biggest constraint on the number of new startups that get created in the US is not tax policy or employment law or even Sarbanes-Oxley. It’s that we won’t let the people who want to start them into the country.

Letting just 10,000 startup founders into the country each year could have a visible effect on the economy. If we assume 4 people per startup, which is probably an overestimate, that’s 2500 new companies. Each year. They wouldn’t all grow as big as Google, but out of 2500 some would come close.

By definition these 10,000 founders wouldn’t be taking jobs from Americans: it could be part of the terms of the visa that they couldn’t work for existing companies, only new ones they’d founded. In fact they’d cause there to be more jobs for Americans, because the companies they started would hire more employees as they grew.Picture 3

Brad Feld has been working on promoting this idea inside the halls of Congress. Today at Startup2Startup, an idea emerged to try and generate some grassroots momentum to help out. It’s actually part of a lean startup story.

David Binetti is an entrepreneur with some credibility in this area, having worked to create the original USA.gov. Recently, he’s been
engaged in a customer validation exercise around a new concept for a political action-oriented social network. When that concept didn’t pan out, he decided to pivot. His latest effort, called 2gov.org, makes it easy to contact your local, state and federal governments with just a tweet. For more on his lean startup journey, you can take a look at this slide presentation. 2gov.org automatically routes your tweet (aggregating it with everyone else who’s expressed a similar point of view) to the right legislator or agency. Because it checks your
registration against voting rolls, members of congress know that the contacts being received are from actual voters, not just astro-turf. In other words, the service transforms tweets into professional reports that are sent by snail mail, fax, and email – the channels that actually have attention paid to them.

He was at today’s event, and the Geeks on a Plane had a brainstorm. Let’s use 2gov.org to raise awareness of the Founders Visa movement in congress. To that end, we’re tweeting about it, and would like to ask you to join us. If you are a US citizen, tweet your thoughts on the
Founders Visa, using the #FoundersVisa hashtag and including @2gov. 2gov.org will take care of the rest. In order to have your tweet included in the printed packet that your representative will receive, you’ll need to register at 2gov.org (it really only takes a minute).

The Geeks are doing their part. Will you lend us a hand (or at least a tweet)?

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Geek Innovation @ EEOB Takes Over DC, White House, State Dept

Friday, September 18th, 2009

On a beautiful day in DC, the GeeksOnaPlane crew hoofed it over to the GovTech Meetup at the EEOB with the White House Digital Media Group and the State Department Technology Innovation Team. The presenters included innovative technologists and policy makers discussing how government affects technology today and in the future.3932019081_331a2c86cb_m

The presenters included:

Evan Cooke, co-founder and CTO of Twilio talked about  building web applications that interact with phone callers. He provided a demo where he mashed up a service to ping him about local flu prevention centers in the DC area. The crowd was wow’ed. Twilio lets you use your existing web development skills, existing code, existing servers, existing databases and existing karma to solve real-time communications problems quickly and reliably.  His presentation is below:

Twilio Flu Hotline Demo @ GovTech in DC with GOAP

View more documents from twilio.

Eric Ries, former co-founder of IMVU discussed “Lessons Learned” from building tech start-ups failing and succeeding. The focus of the presentation was that most start-ups fail – in order to realize how an entrepreneur can correct its mistakes, he/she needs to understand failure, its pivot point, that speed counts – lean startups go faster, and platforms enable leverage. Eric’s presentation is below:

2009 09 18 The Lean Startup Geeks On A Plane Edition

View more presentations from Eric Ries.

Kay Luo, representing LinkedIn discussed the power of social media within the Government 2.0 sector. She provided examples of LinkedIn profile pages of high level diplomats, including President Barack Obama’s LinkedIn profile, and discussed how very closed societies can leverage this type of new media platform to communicate and promote the initiatives and projects that they’re working on and more importantly, as a digital rolodex to gather resources.

John Anderson, co-founder of Cash.IO discussed the platform providing mobile solutions for payment systems. An interactive gift corporation, Cash.IO helps businesses send money to consumers in a safe and secure manner. He mentioned that in less than three weeks, Cash.IO has live partners, customers and the only way they could’ve pulled this off is by relocating from Wisconsin to Silicon Valley. His presentation is below:

Cash.io in DC – Disruption in B2C payments

View more presentations from groupcard.

Shervin Pishevar, CEO and co-founder of SGN, provided a product demo of F.A.S.T., SGN’s recently launched dogfighting accelerometer game. He discussed how global development starts with innovation and technology and noted that SGN has built offices in Argentina, Beijing and now Vietnam for that very reason. Development around the globe will provide an opportunity for people to join forces on a technological and entrepreneurial level, creating peace, incubation support, funding resources and overall opportunities. This will also be an opportunity to help the global economies as well as promote localization around the world.  Here is the SGN video Shervin showed off:

3932809550_ac78bb2e62_mLeonard Speiser, serial entrepreneur and innovator and founder of Twables.com, discussed how he built 12 Twitter-related products in 90 days. Some of the products he created revolved around self expression, games, connecting on Facebook to find people on Twitter. Public Stream Optimization or PSO is not replacing SEO, but is very important because it will continue to grow and become an extremely valuable metric.

Leonard’s presentation is below:

PSO vs. SEO

Adam Conner from Facebook noted that the issue with working with the government is that it is a closed environment. Getting the government comfortable with the idea of 1.0 and 2.0 – legal, security process, agencies getting on Facebook groups and fan pages – is not easy. The first step to fixing this issue can be addressed by using the ladder of engagement – This will allow new media specialists to continue innovating and moving forward in the White House.

Greg Cypes, technical lead for Open AIM, AOL Messaging explained the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communication. AIM is still utilized quite frequently within the government 2.0 space, not just for one to one communications, but also one to many – it’s a way to broadcast, real-time.

Dave McClure of FoundersFund rounded out the event by providing an overview of the current startup ecosystem and examples of how startups fail and succeed, efficient uses of capital, and how to handle high startup failure rates. He noted that ~30% of startups in the fbFund REV Social Incubator program will likely secure a future round of funding, or have achieved break-even. Other notable incubator programs that he mentioned include: YCombinator, TechStars, SeedCamp, LaunchBox, and Betaworks. Dave’s presentation is below:

Incubator 2.0: A Silicon Valley Success Story

View more presentations from Dave McClure.

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