down the avenue: TechCrunch40 Kick-Off

FAVORITE QUOTES

Only Those Who See the Invisible, Can Do The Impossible
The Age of your Heart is the Age of what you Love - Marcel Prévost
Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I'll understand.
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one opening before us. -Helen Keller
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity. -Leo Tolstoy
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. -Paul Tournier
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. -Carl W. Buechner
Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The foolish reject what they see, the wise reject what they think
Imagination is more important than knowledge - Albert Einstein
When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you - Lao-tzu
The world surrenders to a quiet mind
It is a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it - Somerset Maugham
"At the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to assist you." Goethe

« TechCrunch40 Sneak Peak | Main | Xobni Simplifies & Empowers Email »

September 17, 2007

TechCrunch40 Kick-Off

The TechCrunch40 event in San Francisco is underway. So far, it's more than I expected, meaning that for their first year out of the gate, they have managed to pull together a group of high-profile sponsors (including VCs) and a stellar list of start-ups across a variety of industry sectors. And instead of 400 folks on-site, they sold out and have a packed main room with close to 1,000 attendees.

One morning panel brought in co-founders of Yahoo, Netscape, and YouTube while another went through the pitch, vote and comment model. I walked in when the CEO of Yap was talking about Dragon and IBM Via Voice which threw me - "am I in the right decade? the right conference?"

My old world and new world collides today. Then a reference to former client VoiceSignal who was recently acquired by Nuance was raised by someone on the far right of the panel and I thought - 'is speech rec buzz is back?"

And then there was PowerSet's PR team who was handing out viles of vodka and juice. While it looked more like window cleaner, it actually tasted pretty good. More from the ground coming.

September 17, 2007 in Conference Highlights, On Technology, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451c79e69e200e54ef41cbf8834

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference TechCrunch40 Kick-Off:

Comments

How many of those 1,000 people that packed the room were given free tickets by organizers to make it look more successful? How do you think that made people feel who had to pay $3K for a ticket and then have to fight for seat space?

Posted by: WoodyBristle | Sep 19, 2007 12:41:06 PM

Frankly, I don't think they needed to make it look more successful. They had stellar sponsors and attendees....they managed to get the founder of Netscape, YouTube and Yahoo on stage to talk about their early beginnings, a panel largely found at only the highest profile conferences in the industry. They were only shooting for 400, ended up with close to 1,000 and were still sold out.

Posted by: Renee Blodgett | Sep 19, 2007 12:50:45 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.