The Blogo’Shawn

Here I am up bright and early to say that I really enjoyed BlogHer. I knew I probably would, but the day’s final panel and cocktail party really surpassed expectations. Among others, I was pleased to hear Mena Trott (Six Apart) and Arianna Huffington during the closing session in a packed ballroom setting. What especially struck me was how personal and upfront they were in relating their experiences regarding a substantial ground of, not just tech and politics, but life at large. I was very impressed with their candor and what they shared with us - the talk was fairly intimate at times which was a wonderful change of pace.

Also I met some wonderful women I had seen in passing, but who I had wanted to meet more in-depth. BlogHer provided a casual, friendly environment for just that. I love meeting intelligent women undertaking significant initiatives in the tech space, and so I met some impressive ladies tonight one-on-one. In particular I want to point out Joanne Wan from the STIRR network. She, along with her partners, are working extensively to bring about a truly vibrant, emerging technology networking mixer in Palo Alto that i just had the pleasure to attend a few weeks ago. Check it out, next on Wednesday, August 9th!

Also, I have an admission to make. i have had an extremely technical education and career experience, but it has emphasized the logical, programmatic over business survival skills. I am yet endeavoring to raise my entrepreneurial pluck to the degree I desire. I have strong instincts within me and I have been sitting on a few startup ideas. That part is not unique to the Bay Area, but I do gain significant inspiration from strong female role models who light the way ahead. Not unreasonable, right? Honestly, I haven’t had the opportunity yet to talk to many female founders in tech. I don’t think I realized how vital that is until tonight when by serendipity I met CEO and founder Tracy Sheridan from Waxxi (recently blogged about in TechCrunch). We had an insightful conversation and I am impressed by her interactive podcast product and also with her as a person who is following her passion and steering her own ship ably. It’s amazing how empowering it is interacting with someone who is confidently pursuing her business idea. Very much so! I wish there was an accessible unconference/gathering of women tech entreprenuers, VCs, and vital connectors. That would be my idea of a primo conference, and admittedly I got a taste of that at BlogHer! Strong women doing it well!

I cannot resist also mentioning that Arianna Huffington was a stunner. She is a wonderful, engaging dynamo on stage and an approachable, gracious person off-stage. Check out her insights and overview of politics on blog and also she has an upcoming book about to be distributed! I figure she knows her stuff regarding effective life strategies, oh yes!

As an addendum, I am inspired to begin covering more personal career developments and revelations emanating out of my work as a consultant. I will have to be somewhat discreet and guarded due to these companies being more or less at a stealth or beta start stage but I should be able to generalize somewhat to points and practice principles. So please stay tuned - I vow to cover more than just tech conferences! Just needed to warm up the blog-writing muscles first!

Tomorrow (Saturday) I will be headed way down south to San Jose for the BlogHer conference. This day will be primarily geared towards the female persuasion and I think it will be interesting to have the gender equation slew the other way for a new media gathering. In fact, this will constitute the first mostly women event I’ve ever attended in the tech space - that gives me some pause for thought actually. It ought to be interesting and I hope a profound level of bonding takes place between participants. So far it’s looking like a jam-packed day with good conversation in store!

And in other un/conference news…Chicago just hosted it’s first BarCamp some weeks ago, which is wonderful to hear! Now then for those of you who are not tech types in Chicago, let me give a bit of background. Suffice it to say that I am quite perplexed and befuddled as to how the tech startup craze has managed to largely pass by Chicago. Chicago is my home city. It is a big metropolitan setting with tons of people, a good many technically-minded and a good many business-minded due to top-notch MBA programs like Northwestern and the University of Chicago. It has the infrastructure to host a cohesive tech startup community. So it peeves me when I find tech entrepreneurs who don’t know each other and rarely meet, if ever, amongst peers and mentors. That is much of the reason why moving back to Chicago was never quite enticing enough. I know how vital it is to have a supportive community of VCs, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and tech folk. They have to be in place! How/why I wonder do other major and minor cities and towns surpass Chicago in this respect?! This is not right! Mostly all is splendid about Chicago (ok, well the weather could be better too), except this one niggling absence of collaborative entrepeneurial fire. It is the reason I meet so many Chicago “refugees” in the Bay Area. Anyway you get my drift, I’m sure. I expect a major city like Chicago to have the startup culture it deserves, like other places of similar and lesser size all across the U.S.
That’s why I am so pleased to see the Tech Cocktail emerge along with its adjunct Tech Social. Many kudos to Frank Gruber and Eric Olson for taking the initiative to get this off the ground and injecting some Boom2.0 enthusiasm and flair into the Chicago tech community. This initiative is such a needed step in the right direction. Alrighty I guess that’s my shout out to my home city - “Go team! Bring your people home to the promised land!”  So if you are in Chicagoland and reading this, I assume you are planning to attend these functions, ‘nuf said.

Today will be mashup camp in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum. I am excited to see what’s in store. Some proposed topics are of especial interest to me, in particular monetization models for mashup endeavors.  All these neat, wizzy mashups are cropping up ( I especially like the mobile 411sync collection), but I do wonder about the motivations of the contributors. Certainly, many are assembled with altruistic intentions, but what if the mashup takes off, then what does one expect the costs to be?  

 There seems to be no uniform, nor even approximately average, cost structure imposed by API providers for mashup applications that can potentially become commercial.  The stance seems to be to negotiate the fees down the line and hope for a fair situation.  So far, it’s perplexing to conceive of a business idea that progresses as 1) at the outset will probably be offered freely; 2) will gain traction and score an expanding user base; 3) at which point, one will have to negotiate with the provider companies about charges incurred by API use and hope to feasibly swing incurred costs while eking a profit. Isn’t that third step of factoring in costs supposed to procede the beginning of any bold new endeavor?? I hope we hear some concrete examples of how this step of arranging a mutually satisfactory balance manifests.

And so onwards to mashup camp, tally-ho!