Geo-Loco Event: Social Media Week San Francisco

Kevin Marks from BT Group hosts a panel of Foursquare mayors, geeks, thought leaders, investors and entrepreneurs to discuss the future of geo-location services and technologies in San Francisco this Wednesday night, February 3, 2010 as part of Social Media Week.

Magic Sauce Media, my newly branded gig, and Traveling Geeks are proud sponsors of the event, which will be held at 930 Montgomery Street, #301 in San Francisco. The event is part of a global Social Media Week conference, held simultaneously in six cities around the country.

The panel includes:

MG Siegler, Techcrunch

Robert Scoble, Rackspace

Jeremy Toeman, Stage Two Consulting

Matt Galigan, SimpleGeo

Tom Coates, Yahoo Fire Eagel

Catching up with Intruders TV in Europe

Catching up with Intruders TV in Paris in December during LeWeb.

How Worldeka Brings Together Charities & Brands Online #tg09

In the press and blogger lounge at LeWeb in Paris earlier this month, I interviewed Worldeka's Sophie Cox who talks to us about how charities and communities can use their service to extend their conversations, their voice and their brand.

Le Digital Photo Frame #tg09

Parrot's designer digital photo frame - a closer look at it as demoed by Parrot's CEO at their offices in Paris in December.

Coworking in Paris: Meet La Cantine #tg09

At Silicon Sentier and La Cantine in Paris, the goal is provide a environment in which to foster ecosystems and have companies collaborate and make projects emerge and happen.

I spent some time there with folks from Invest in France and Cap Digital recently during our Traveling Geeks Paris tour.

Meet Paul Richardet at La Cantine who helped make our event happen.

Says 37 year old engineer Louis Montagne, who's the founder of af83 and Bearstech, as well as the vice president of Silicon Sentier: "We consider that every entrepreneur is a hacker, and that he may need to fulfill what Steven Levy called the "hacker ethic" (sharing, openness, decentralization, free access to computers, world improvement, and pleasure), he needs to have support, to have elder brothers (companies he can tell the stories to explain his project), he needs financing, to be able to fail, he needs to meet with people."

That's basically what they do at La Cantine, which is the co-working space Silicon Sentier created. The group has 150+ members and a number of innovative companies with dynamic projects.

Centrally located, La Cantine has more than 25 events every month, and it has become a meeting point in Paris for technology people, geeks, nerds, hackers, artists, funders, and startups.

Action Shots from Traveling Geeks Paris & LeWeb

A number of memorable moments from the Traveling Geeks tour to Paris....below in trains, at meet-ups, tweet-ups, incubators, startups, dinners, and LeWeb.

Beth Blecherman

Jerome Tranie

The Pearltrees team at their Paris' offices

Robin Wauters

Meeting with Orange

David Spark

Eliane Fiolet and Beth Blecherman

Traveling Geeks at Orange offices

In the Paris Metro

Olivier Ezratty

Geeks at the Metro - taken by Scoble

Dancers perform at LeWeb dinner

David Spark, Eliane Fiolet and Dell's Richard Binhammer

Laura Fitton in Green

Parrot's CEO Henri Seydoux paints a colorful picture

Eliane Shoots

Kim-Mai Cutler

Matthew Buckland

Julien Wallen of Pearltrees

Tom Foremski

Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz and Sky Schuyler

Chris Pirillo at LeWeb Speaker Dinner

Ewan Spence

Paul Richardet from La Cantine

Loic and Geraldine LeMeur kick off LeWeb conference at Speaker Dinner

Renee Blodgett at Pearltrees -- okay, so I loved the lights

Kevin Marks

Amazing Dance Performance at LeWeb Dinner

Ben Metcalfe at dinner

Jean-Xtophe Ordonneau in Le Marais

Tara Hunt

Robin Wauters at La Cantine

Violet Blue

Answers.com Bob Rosenschein

Frederic Lardinois in the Paris Metro

Stribe's Kamel Zeroual

Jerome Tranie at Parrot

Chad Hurley on LeWeb stage

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordanr

Robert Scoble

Amanda Rose at Reception Hosted by Paris Mayor at City Hall

Imei Hsu and Chris Pirillo on the steps of Paris City Hall

The Traveling Geeks at Paris City Hall

Kim-Mai Cutler and Matthew Buckland

Vibrant Colors at LeWeb Speaker Dinner

Parrot demo: Sky, Nicolas and Rodrigo look on

Bob Rosenschein, Amanda Coolong and Sky Schuyler in Microsoft BizSpark booth at LeWeb

Nicolas Steeghann from Stupeflix Gives GREAT Demo #tg09

I'm looking forward to doing a custom project with the guys at Stupeflix. The Traveling Geeks met with them in London over the summer; I learned about new features and functionality from him in Paris earlier this month at one of the five incubators housing start-ups in the city.

Urbi on Robotics

Another innovation we saw during the Traveling Geeks tour to Paris was Urbi, robotics software platform and operating system from Gostai, that makes all robots compatible.

Urbi is already compatible with numerous robots on the market, including Nao, Aibo, Spykee or Bioloid, and advanced consumer applications based on Urbi have been demonstrated on the Spykee robot in partnership with mobile phone operators: home surveillance, entertainment for kids, or remote presence.

Gostai's project is to provide a standard environment for robotic applications development and to contribute to the growth of a new industry: service and consumer robotics.

Urbi plans to go open source in May 2010 because there is a clear need and strong trends that calls for an open source OS for robots today.

Parrot's Henri Seydoux Paints a Picture of His Vision #tg09

At their offices in Paris earlier this month. We started with what is current but also had a peak of what's coming in Q1 under embargo. No phones. No cameras. No video. And yes, there was a back channel joke about the deep dark secret unveiling and the NDA.

Think Orange is all Phones? Think Again #tg09

The Traveling Geeks learn about Orange's latest developments - Lionel Fumado and Stephanie Hospital tell us more.