Ubergizmo's Digital Summer: August 25: #DS2010

I'm a fan of Ubergizmo's content and their annual Digital Summer event, now in its second year. Last year, they drew hundreds of people to their August event in San Francisco, where movers-and-shakers in the area of technology, fashion, design and media converged.

Digital Summer's mission is to bring together technology exhibitors and art exhibitors (photographers, artists, fashion designers, designers, music artists) in a unique setting and it works, a refreshing blend in a city largely known for tech only -- all the time.

In fact, both worlds rarely mix and each has a lot to gain by doing so. Promoting promising artists, designers, photographers and emerging technologies is the underlying motivation of producing Digital Summer. Additionally, Digital Summer aims to promote women and their access to technology, both as users and as professionals. Rock on and kudos to producer Eliane Fiolet and her team.

This year, the event will be held on August 25th, 2010. Among the unique features of this one-of-a-kind event is a live runway fashion show showcasing designers Colleen Quen Couture, Jan Warnock, Harputs OWN and Sofie Olgaard. Manika Jewelry will provide the jewelry and attendees will also have a chance to enjoy a professional photo-shoot.

Attendees can register here and for the social media addicts among us, the Twitter hash is #DS2010, so tweet up a storm - it's an event worth tweeting about.

The program will include sponsors like Intel, who will showcase the future of fashion display and Verizon Wireless where you'll get an opportunity to try out their latest 3G smartphones. You can get a hands-on demo of the Droid X by Motorola and the Verizon Wireless MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot.

Other cool things and a call-to-action, or should I say, "eco-action" -- attendees are encouraged to bring their old phones for recycling through the Verizon Wireless HopeLine Program, where the contributed phones will be refurbished or recycled in an environmentally friendly way. With the funds raised from the sale of the refurbished phones, Verizon Wireless supports non-profit organizations providing vital services to domestic violence survivors.

We Blog the World is a proud media sponsor of this exciting event that promises to surprise and entertain.

TechCrunch Social Currency Meets August Capital Summer Bash

TechCrunch's Social Currency one-day event merged into an evening on August Capital's deck on Sandhill Road in Menlo Park. The event brought out the movers-and-shakers of the Valley innovating the nuts and bolts of social, Web 2.0, Enterprise in the cloud, social payments, aggregation, mobile, geo-loco and more.

Dave Marcus, CEO of Zong

TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld

Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman

Yelp and Google Discussion

Eventbrite's Kevin Hartz

Mike Arrington

Arrington interviews Playdom's CEO John Pleasants

Ron Martinez, Brett Bullington at TechCrunch August Capital after party

Shervin Pishevar on Social Gaming Panel

Echo's Chris Saad

John Pleasants

Jennifer Aaker, Hopelab

Wandia Chiuri, Renee Blodgett

SFNewTech Big Summer Social

On Friday night, SF New Tech's (Endless) Summer Social was held in the beautiful gardens of Stonebrook Court in Los Altos Hills, CA.   

David Lucatch demos Itibiti

Brian Zisk on right

Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze, Renee Blodgett, Magic Sauce Media

Myles Weissleder draws a name for a tablet Itibiti gives away

On left, Stephanie Block

July 25, 2010 in Events, San Francisco, Social Gigs & Parties, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 16, 2010

NetShelter Gathers a Great Crowd

NetShelter Technology Media, had a networking bash at San Francisco's ROE on Howard Street last night. NetShelter pioneered the concept of the vertical media network and has passed CNET to become the #1 tech news web property online. They now reach 18 percent of the total U.S. online audience, have 37 million U.S. unique visitors and 108 million monthly unique visitors globally, according to comScore.

Pat Houston, Dana Oshiro

July 16, 2010 in America The Free, On Blogging, On Journalism, San Francisco, Social Gigs & Parties, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 24, 2010

First Round Capital Draws the Best Again and Again

First Round Capital pulled off yet another top notch party last night at La Mar on The Embarcadero in San Francisco. Their events always draw the best in the industry not just because their team has connections in nearly every technology segment on both the east and west coasts, but because of their attitude and culture.

Their events are inclusive - after all, where else do you see a VC firm throw a high profile networking event and find a number of their competitors on the guest list? Sure, some of them may be firms they co-invest with, but that's not the point. They find some of the smartest and most innovative minds in the industry, and they're really really good at it. For this culture to thrive, it makes sense to continuously surround yourself with other like-minds so magic can happen again and again and again.

The gathering included entrepreneurs like Mitch Kapor and early investors like Ron Conway and Jeff Clavier, as well as respected VCs like David Hornik and David Stern. Blogger Ben Parr was there as were partnership guys from MSN and HBO. Then there were product innovators from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple and start-ups across countless sectors including social games, online video, social media, enterprise CRM, analytics, mobile and geo-location based services. Hats off to the First Round Capital team for an incredible bash!

Chris Fralic, Loic Le Meur, Flurry's Simon Khalaf

Ty Ahmad-Taylor, Kent Lindstrom

Jason Calacanis, Howard Morgan

Thomas Payne, Thor Muller

Andrew Lee, Jam Legend

Ian Eure, Simple Geo and Michael Wyszomierski, Google

Barney Pell, Simeon Simeonov

Chris Poole of Canvas and Matt Weeks

Ed Zsehau, Antonio (@antoniusego) and Mark Goines

Debbie Landa, Ben Parr

KG Charles, Renee Blodgett

Google's Benjamin Kott

Peter Farago, Kamal Shah

Other industry peeps who showed up included: @joshk @hlmorgan @chrisfralic @robhayes (hosts) @bambi100 @davidhornik @davemcclure @tjsassani @ryanshea12 @mh @mager @sacca @jason @benparr @hirshberg @edzsehau @markgoines @antoniusego @sfly @mattweeks @fanfeedr @tyahma @fotobabble @edanuff @roizen @danielgruneberg @abrams @tommypjr @kentlind @hirshberg @andrewdlee @ronconway @jeff @clevergirl @laughingsquid @jalichandra @voicestar @mkapor @barneyp @jacobyryan @tolles @lindastone and over a hundred others.

June 24, 2010 in America The Free, Events, On Technology, Social Gigs & Parties, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 09, 2010

Or Matias Plays a Mean Piano

I had the pleasure of chatting with and listening to Or Matias on piano at this year's Israel Conference. Listen to his story and his music.

June 9, 2010 in Events, Israel, Music, Social Gigs & Parties, Videos | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 05, 2010

The Faces of D8: All Things Digital

This year, the annual D: All Things Digital Conference, now in its 8th year, was alive and kicking. Last week, D8 attracted some of the most powerful and interesting people in the technology and media industries. Below is a sample of some of the faces and energies I came across in my path at this year's event, which was held at a new venue this year - Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California.

A very passionate James Cameron (Canadian Film Director) says Avatar was the most powerful film and cites childhood, "I always liked nature and describes his connection to it. The creation of Avatar is a result of that connection. Note: I preferred his hair a tad longer.

Google's David Krane and Yossi Vardi

Klaus Schauser, Michael Miller

Ev Williams, Jen Limm

Natasha Benningfield sings on opening night

Jill Sobule, Renee Blodgett

Claudia Cineceros from Cisco, Quentin Hardy from Forbes

Qualcomm's CEO Paul Jacobs

John Donahoe of eBay

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg sweats up a storm

John Doerr

Katie Boehret, Walt Mossberg

Lonely Planet's Matt Goldberg

Shireen Piramoon, NBC's Ramona Schindelheim, Annie Pong, Renee Blodgett (far right)

Walt Mossberg on D8 stage

Dan Gillmor, Larry Magid

Energy Post Cameron Talk

Chris Alden of Wordpress, DemandMedia's Richard Rosenblatt

The Thomson Reuters Party

Rob Hayes, Nat Goldhaber

John Battelle

Ellen Levy from LinkedIn, Alex Daniels from HBO

Pana.ma's David Hayden demos to Answers.com's Bob Rosenschein

Vinod Khosla

Steve Case

Dick Hillenbrand, Shervin Pishevar

Watching a magician at work

Steve Jobs

Asa Mathat, IDG's Bob Carrigan

Rob Glaser

Roger McNamee before his demo

Murdoch kicks things off

Jim Louderback, Bernee Strom

Larry and Patti Magid, Rick Smolan

Barrons' Eric Savitz

Brett Wayn

More James Cameron

More Steve Jobs

June 5, 2010 in Conference Highlights, Events, On Technology, PR & Marketing, Social Gigs & Parties, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 27, 2010

First Robots Graduation in History

Willow Garage hosted the first robots graduation in history last night in their Menlo Park offices on Willow Road, the same road where Google was birthed.

CEO Steve Cousins and founder Scott Hassan gave an emotional speech about how Willow Garage got started, the vision behind it and everything that led up to this historical moment.

Hundreds of people gathered together for the celebration: friends, fans, employees, a couple of local mayors, press, bloggers and universities. Among the university attendees were the 11 recipients of the PR2 beta program, who flew in from around the world to get trained on their robots this week and to celebrate the honor.

Together with the visionaries at Willow Garage and the Directors of the Personal Robotics Program Keenan Wryobek and Eric Berger, the recipients will work hard in the coming two years to accelerate the growth of robotics research and development and yes, change the world.

Below, Keenan and Eric thanked the open source community, the recipients, other Willow Garagers and of course, the PR2 robots. As the winners were announced, the PR2s decided it was time for them to celebrate too, with a little flag waving and dance for the crowd. I think they were starting to realize that they now have fans.

Later on, the PR2s danced with the attendees and zipped around the floor to show off their abilities. And why not, last night was about celebration and giving thanks to a community who accomplished this great achievement. As Scott so rightfully put it at the beginning of the event - "we can't do it alone, we don't want to do it alone." With more effort, resources, passion and talent behind robotics, advancement can happen that much faster.

A few shots of the event, the speeches, the party and the dancing below. A thumbs up to ROS and the efforts of the Willow Garage team and recipients who are going to work together to make magical things happen in the next two years.

Eric Berger demonstrates PR2 in front of a group of bloggers and press

Eric Berger, Scott Hassan, Steve Cousins and Keenan Wyrobek

The Singularity Hub guys Keith Kleiner and Aaron Saenz

Googlers and friends showed up to celebrate

Yes, that's John Markoff in the Texai robot

Scott Hassan

Steve Cousins

The PR2 robot graduation ceremony, the first in history

Steve Cousins and Scott Hassan

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

PR2 claps as his audience claps for him

Keenan Wryobek

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Jonathan Knowles, Renee Blodgett

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Kamal Shah and Janet Rae Dupree

The deserving 11 recipients are:

• Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

• Bosch

• Georgia Institute of Technology

• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

• MIT CSAIL

• Stanford University

• Technische Universität München

• University of California, Berkeley

• University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Laboratory

• University of Southern California

• University of Tokyo, JSK Robotics Laboratory

May 27, 2010 in America The Free, Client Announcements, Client Media Kudos, On Innovation, On Robotics, On Science, On Technology, On the Future, Social Gigs & Parties, Videos | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 20, 2010

Google IO: 5,000 Developers & Geek Toys Under One Roof

Last night, thousands of people gathered to see the latest and greatest apps at the Google Developer Conference (Google IO) in San Francisco. As the day turned into night, the lights of the Moscone West Hall were lowered, purple and blue lights spanned the ceilings and music videos played on a massive overhead screen.

The two previous days featured 80 sessions of deep technical content featuring Android, Google Chrome, Google APIs, GWT, App Engine, open web technologies, and more. The event attracted more than 5,000 developers who showed up to present 100 showcasing their technologies. Al Seckel, the illusion genius was also there doing demonstrations.

While they do include their Twitter hashtag on the front page of their website, I had to ask 9 people on-site before I could find out what it. The previous 8 had no idea what a hashtag was -- a hash what? asked a thirty something video producer who was walking the floor. Another said, I'm a coder, why would I care about Twitter? The official hastag btw was apparently #io2010 although many were using #googleio, including myself.

Below are a few shots I took of the show floor, which included the intriguing and fun heavy pedal cyclecide bike rodeo, which you can try at the Maker Faire event this weekend in San Mateo if you're in the Bay Area.

Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro with a PR2 robot

May 20, 2010 in America The Free, Arts & Creative Stuff, Events, On Innovation, On Robotics, On Science, On Technology, On the Future, San Francisco, Social Gigs & Parties, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 17, 2010

Robots Attend This Year's X Prize Benefit for Humanity

The X Prize Foundation's annual event was held at San Francisco's Letterman Digital Arts Center this past weekend.

Coined as a radical event for humanity, X Prize Foundation's Chairman & CEO Peter Diamandis gathered some of the brightest visionaries in the areas of science, sustainability, entertainment, technology and medicine together under one roof.

Jaykumar Menon, Susan Celia Swan

Peter Diamandis

Robin Williams, Renee Blodgett

Bruce Katz on the right

Roger Bingham

Auren Hoffman

Robin Williams

Jonathan Conrad

Jaykumar Menon and John Hagel meet a PR2

On the left, Keenan Wyrobek

Committee members who add their knowledge and time to the foundation include the likes of Sir Richard Branson, John Doerr, Scott Hassan, Reid Hoffman, Arianna Huffington, Chad Hurley, Steve Jurveton, Dean Kamen, Vinod Khosla, Eric Schmidt, Craig Vender and a host of others. In addition to Peter Diamandis, Sergey Brin and Larry Page co-chair and Larry gave a short speech.

The live auction included Taj Jaguar and Airship Ventures packages, Chihuly Glass Art, a Harry Winston Ocean timepiece, a Genome 100, a SpaceShipOne Full Size Replica, an ICON A5 Amphibious Aircraft, a Zero G with James Cameron and a Virgin Galactic Flight.

They announced a new prize platform called "X CHALLENGEs," which unlike an X Prize which focuses on a global paradigm change over a 3 to 8 year period, concentrates on a near-term technology advancement over a one to two year window. The amount raised is also smaller, ranging from $250K to $2.5 million. The hope is that when these contributions are properly used, the money raised can serve as a powerful economic tool for solving difficult challenges and bringing about authentic breakthroughs.

Bobby Yang & His Unrivaled Players performed during a cocktail reception while Willow Garage robots zipped around the floor. The PR2 robots 'played' with attendees and Robin Williams even managed to do the cha cha with a PR2 named "007."

Tony Robbins, Esther Dyson, Autodesk's Jonathan Knowles and a few others navigated Texai robots remotely from southern California and elsewhere in the Bay Area and as far away as Prague and Argentina. Below Tony says hello to Peter and laughs with some of the attendees.

Below is a video of Google's Sergey Brin who addressed the crowd from Utah via the screen of a Willow Garage Texai robot. He says hello and waves to Esther Dyson who was hanging out in another Texai propped in the front of the room. What an incredibly innovative and cool way to experience an event you cannot attend in real-time.

Listen to Ray Kurzweil talk about how far computers have come, and the power of a system that combines doctors with artificial intelligence which can bring high quality medical care to the vast number of humans. A short video clip below.

X Prize competitions provide the opportunity for individuals and companies to make philanthropic investments that are low-risk leveraged grants (teams typically spend in aggregate, 10 to 40 times the purse in research and development) that yield unprecedented returns in innovation, public awareness and support for radical breakthroughs that benefit humanity as a whole.

More shots taken throughout the evening.

Scott Hassan, Peter Farrell

Steve Cousins and Adeo Ressi

Peter Farrell, Renee Blodgett

Eric Berger on the right

Peter Diamandis and Sergey Brin

And, for those wondering what else was on the menu, they served green garlic pistou, fresh favas, white truffle mashed yukon gold potatoes, crispy roti, skywalker ranch herb zucchini cakes, porcini mushrooms, avocado and basil creme fraiche as well as a killer organic TCHO dark chocolate dome to die for with strawberry reduction. I had two. Ouch!!

May 17, 2010 in America The Free, Client Announcements, Client Media Kudos, Events, On Innovation, On Robotics, On Science, On Technology, On the Future, San Francisco, Social Gigs & Parties, Videos | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Next »