Archive for the 'conferences' Category
March 16, 2010
Just to round out the series of posts on SXSW Interactive, I feel I must finish this one. I’m not particularly motivated to do so, but here’s a recap. On Day 4, I showed up and checked out one of the Accelerator panels where companies were pitching in the personal social media category. One was about sharing your favorite foods on the iPhone and another one was about getting opinions on what you were wearing before you went to a big event by sending people pictures of what you were wearing. Both were interesting, but I couldn’t really see how they would scale and make significant amounts of money.
Then I went with my friend Cindy Lo who runs Red Velvet Events to a keynote speech by Gary Vaynerchuck who hosts Wine Library TV. He was mighty entertaining and dropped the f-bomb several times. He wrote a book called Crush It that he mentioned a lot and was overall very motivating. Then Cindy and I went to go hear the keynote of Umair Haque of Havas Media Lab, who I think also wrote for Harvard Business Review, interviewing twitter founder Evan Williams. About 10 minutes into the interview, I was bored to tears because Umair was so low energy and the questions he was asking were so dry. I was wishing that Gary was interviewing Evan instead. We left. Because I had a headache and had to go pick up my kids from a friend of mine’s house who was so wonderful to watch them because they are off from Spring Break, I left the conference all together. For some reason, the fact that there were seemingly thousands of people watching this unenlightening talk, made me feel kind of sick and I couldn’t stomach being there.
I sometimes get overwhelmed in crowds of people and the sensory overload of colors, sounds, and desperate people seeking meaning and attention in this world gets to me. I couldn’t deal so I left. I decided not to go back on Day 5 (today) and instead go back to work where the desperation is slightly easier to handle. 
Then I had dinner with some great long time friends who were visiting from Dallas at another one of our friend’s houses in Austin. I had a wonderful home cooked Indian vegetarian food while catching up with friends who accept me for who I am…even if I don’t really know who I am at the moment.
Posted by Aruni
9:55 pm •
conferences •
March 14, 2010
Although I didn’t get in too late last night, I figured I’d wait until today and do a post about both days. For those who know me, I’m usually all about ‘the plan.’ I like to have a plan, know the plan, and resonate with the plan. Not having a plan heightens my anxiety level above its usual anxious state. But for SXSW Interactive, I had no real plan other than to show up and see what happens and that’s what I’ve been doing. To every rule there is an exception and that exception was attending Austin Technology Incubator‘s Entrepreneurial Lounge the last three evenings. And quite honestly, that event has evolved into the ‘place to be’ for entrepreneurs at SXSW Interactive! Bart Bohn did a post about the Entrepreneurs Lounge for the ATI blog at Entrepreneur’s Lounge at SXSW Interactive – March 13, 2010.
I attended a Porter-Novelli (PR firm) event, crashed a Women in Tech Digitini event at the top of the tallest building in Austin, and attended a couple of parties but didn’t stay too late. I hung out at the blogger’s lounge sponsored by Microsoft with the irony being that 80% of the people in there had iPhones. At the blogger’s lounge there was a woman giving out free jewelry and she gave me a nice turquoise bracelet from Charming Charlie (there’s a location in Austin’s Domain) that matched the shirt I was wearing. I’m just not a late night bar hopper kind of person. Now if there was dancing involved, I’d be more interested. One party sponsored by Microsoft/TechSet had two women dancing in what looked like black/red lingerie near a guy who was playing the guitar. Just goes to show you how male dominated the tech industry still is.
Today, I went into a SXSW Film panel where Jeffrey Tambor was giving an acting class. He and two amateur actors were on stage with him. He was coaching them through a scene where this man and woman were broken up but the man wanted her to pretend they were still together while they had dinner with his brother. She refused and he was supposed to try to get her to do it. It was a marked difference between how they first did the scene and how he pulled out the emotion in them to show the scene in a different more touching way. The actress, in my opinion, was much better than the actor. The actor wasn’t convincing when he tried to get her to pretend to stay together. It was like he was trying to get her to do something more out of fear rather than love and because of that the actress reacted accordingly. He was so non-believable, no woman would have been convinced by him. It’s obvious he didn’t feel it. Jeffrey tried to get him to be more playful to pull out the residual love the actress still felt. It was a fascinating workshop because I could see how you could apply his same techniques to people management/coaching.
The weather has been gorgeous here. California weather. Tonight was especially nice. I thought briefly about staying out longer but as I was walking back to my car from the convention center, I breathed deep and was glad I was going home to see my kids, do some laundry, have some quiet time to finish writing this post, maybe watch Grey’s Anatomy, and then go to bed.
Only two more days left…
March 12, 2010
Another early night. Maybe I’m just getting too old for these conferences or maybe I’m just wearing the wrong shoes. Tomorrow, I’m wearing Skechers and will just have to not plan on going dancing anywhere! Today was a pretty good day. I had some meetings in the morning and then went back to the Austin Convention Center. I went straight to the blogger’s lounge and saw some people I hadn’t seen since last year. I thought about listing their names, but I’m too tired or is that lazy to list their names and link to them. Needless to say, the hugs and hellos were nice. I didn’t see any panels that were that interesting to me so I spent most of my time catching up with people and networking.
I always find it interesting going to SXSW because you see all sorts of people. The world I live and work in, everyone is pretty prim and proper with conservative clothing. At SXSW you see tattoos, piercings, and unusual clothing. It’s a fascinating reminder of the world outside of business and high tech…everyone is living their own lives according to their different standards and we all live on the same planet and all attend the same conference for different reasons.
Walking around the convention center, I also ran into several Austin people I know but haven’t seen for a while. The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) co-hosted Entrepreneur’s Lounge at the roof top of Fogo de Chao and as I mentioned on my Day 0 post, the caipirinha’s, cheese bread (probably had about 6 of them) and meat were great. The networking was awesome although I didn’t recognize about 80% of the people there.
After that we headed to a Microsoft event at Speakeasy and it was crowded. I couldn’t find the guy I was trying to find, but I did run into a guy from Dell who I was trying to get to come speak at one of our Lunch & Learn’s at ATI so that was good. Then I felt like it was just too crowded and my feet hurt so I figured I’d call it a day and come on home.
I was invited to two parties tomorrow evening so it may be a later night and if so, I probably won’t blog about Day 2 until Day 3.
Posted by Aruni
9:53 pm •
conferences •
October 4, 2009
The following was originally posted by Laura Benold, marketing associate at the Austin Technology Incbutor (ATI), where I work, on the ATI Blog.
The third annual Clean Energy Venture Summit: Bringing the Smart Grid to Life is scheduled for October 14 and 15, 2009 at the AT&T Executive Center in Austin, Texas. The Clean Energy Venture Summit (CEVS) will focus on technology related to the Pecan Street Project (PSP), the largest clean energy laboratory in the United States and a place where researchers and entrepreneurs can develop and test their technology on the grid.
The day-long summit on October 15 will include a competition of 20-30 early stage clean energy companies in five focus areas: distributed generation and renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation and storage, demand management and miscellaneous. From each area, the strongest company will emerge and compete to win overall. We summit organizers will pre-screen participating companies based on innovation, overall market opportunity, stage of development, intellectual property position, resource requirements, environmental impact and potential return on investment.
CEVS also presents an opportunity for networking and software companies, including wireless mesh companies, broadband power line companies, energy dashboard web interface makers and software systems developers.
In addition, CEVS will host an invitation-only, pre-conference event called the Smart Grid Showcase on October 14 for CEI-accredited investors and sponsors to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Smart Grid agenda from the Austin Energy technology pathway. The University of Texas at Austin Office of Technology and Commercialization will introduce presentations by key university researchers who will highlight clean energy and wireless solutions for distributed generation and renewable energy.
For more information or to attend at the great price of only $100, check out the Clean Energy Venture Summit site. The Who’s Who in Clean Energy will be there! We’re bringing the Smart Grid to life!
Posted by Aruni
3:20 pm •
conferences •
August 18, 2009
Last year I submitted a panel for SXSW Interactive on Building A Web Business After Hours that got selected. It went really well and we got a lot of great feedback. I really enjoyed pulling it together. I’ve since learned that for me building a business like Babble Soft after hours is not something I can continue to do given the many things I’m juggling so we are looking for a new home.
This year I proposed a panel called Online/Offline Networking in the Age of Social Media inspired by one of my co-workers, Bart Bohn, Director of our IT/Wireless incubator at the Austin Technology Incubator. I’m hoping to get some great speakers from key social companies to talk about the importance of leveraging online tools to enhance your offline networking in order to meet your personal and professional goals.
Please vote for the panel at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/2851 and if you have any great speaker recommendations, let me know. You do have to register to vote.
Thank you and I look forward to seeing some of you at SXSW Interactive next year!
Posted by Aruni
6:38 pm •
conferences •
April 7, 2009
Photo by Sandy Blanchard
I just finished the Landmark Advanced Course that builds on the lessons learned in the Landmark Forum. It was a very powerful course and although it turns out I’m not an elephant or a horse, I discovered courageous parts of myself that I have suppressed because of the fear of what other people would think of me. And worse yet the fear of what I would think of myself.
To me, life has always been a journey of learning and self discovery. The Landmark Education courses have been one of the most fascinating steps I’ve taken on that journey. I’ve gotten more out of these two courses than all of the professional and personal advisers/counselors I’ve seen and books I’ve read…especially more than the romance novels I used to breeze through for mind numbing distractions from my text books in undergrad.
Some people stop pushing the envelope of self discovery because it can be a very scary process and others stop because they realize there really is no envelope to push and are at peace with themselves and the world. I haven’t met any of the latter kinds of people who have kids…in fact, I’ve met very few of the latter kind. So I wonder if the way to achieve the rare occurrence of enlightenment is not to have kids. Hmmm.
I’ve been becoming more aware of an ability/talent I was given to sense people based on what they say, don’t say, their body language, etc. I’ve heard that 80% of what someone conveys is not through words but through their body language. I happen to be more attuned to that 80% than most people. People tell me the most intimate things about themselves and their lives and sometimes I think they are surprised at what they tell me based on how I notice them.
I am sometimes pretty raw and honest about what I see in certain people with varied results. Sometimes I don’t say anything because I sense the person would not get in the slightest what I’m saying and think I’m crazy. But ironically, this ability doesn’t work as well with my close family and friends. And people have had a hard time knowing me because to deal with the bombardment of cues I get from people, I ‘was being’ a person who unknowingly suppressed my ability to share what was going on with me. In the words of Landmark, I was not being “authentic or fully self expressed” because fundamentally I didn’t trust people with my being. I was loudly letting them trust me, but I was quietly not trusting them with myself.
There are no magic pills or overnight fixes, just different ways of looking at things, and I think the path I’ve chosen has helped me understand other people and myself a little better, and therefore be a better friend, manager and connector. I’m sharing more and being more open and vulnerable than I have ever been in my life, and my close friends (and even people I’ve only recently met) and family are responding with such kindness and support that I have found myself with tears in my eyes more often than I expected.
There is another course in this 3 part series, but for now I am not planning on taking any more courses. I’ll digest, make some changes, and consider what’s next. I know they are a business so they will do their best to up sell me on their other courses…which is fine because I know I have the choice whether to sign up or not. Landmark Education is a global, fast growing phenomenon written up in Harvard Business Review and other reputable publications, and I think they will continue to grow given how they deliver their curriculum. They don’t do any outside advertising but rely solely on word of mouth and occasional press mentions. Of course those who do the research also pull up stories of their roots in something called EST. But from what I’ve heard of EST, the courses I’ve taken are drastically different and much less intense. The only way to know that is to see how it has changed the life of someone you trust and care about.
At any rate, I have met some amazing, brilliant people in these courses who I dare say I’ll probably be in contact with for quite some time. I’m a bit envious of the younger people who are taking the course because what a head start they will have in making transformation happen in their lives and their organizations. We had a few 18 year olds in the group. What a gift they have been given to have access to this technology at such a young age!
It’s all about Living A Powerful Life and Living A Life You Love! That is the reason I signed up for the Landmark Education courses. I’m on my way…stay tuned…
Posted by Aruni
11:21 pm •
conferences •
March 14, 2009
I just finished my second day at SXSW. The first day left me a little hung over, tired, wanting a nap. I got my 2nd wind right about the time I ran into Erica O’Grady in the Microsoft Windows Mobile Blog Lounge mid afternoon. Ironically enough 95% of the people in the lounge have iPhones.
Erica is so awesome! She is one of the 25 people selected as the Austin American Statesman’s Texas Social Media Award recipients. I was also nominated but people like Erica, who are the master-esses of the social media world, truly deserve it. I don’t think I had seen her since last year. She’s one of the happiest people I’ve ever met and tweeted with. When she stepped out of the lounge, I borrowed her pink hat and asked Brian Solis (who Erica introduced me to) to take a picture of me with another social media/entrepreneur great: Guy Kawasaki.
We spoke with Garage.com (founded by Guy) back when we were doing our first high tech start-up and at one point we had a t-shirt our son wore when he was a toddler that said “Garage.com. My favorite letters are I, P, and O.“ 
Guy is one of the most down to earth tech entrepreneurs you can meet. He graciously has me and my blog listed in a few places in his AllTop library sites (Mom Bloggers, Twitterati, Startups, etc.).
I hope I and my panelists are coherent by the time my panel – Building A Web Business After Hours – rolls around on Monday, March 16 at 3:30 pm!
February 15, 2009
South by Southwest Interactive is just around the corner! I was honored to have my one and only panel idea selected and it’s called Building A Web Business After Hours. The idea/thought came to me to submit this topic because I found myself living it when I took on a day job back in June 2008 so in October when they were looking for panel ideas…. If you keep up with my blog, you’ll realize that I get some strange thoughts sometimes and I’ve been known to unwittingly follow them. This time I got lucky! It will be on Monday, March 16 at 3:30 p.m.
Many entrepreneurs spend time after hours building businesses for a variety of reasons and let me tell you it’s NOT easy but given this economy, it’s a very viable bootstrapping option. I have lined up some really credible, fun, and amazing people to be on the panel. All of them have either built businesses after hours or are currently doing so now. Here’s the info:
Building a Web Business After Hours
Room 18BCD
Monday, March 16th
3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Many businesses are built after-hours or during odd hours of the day and night. Join us for a panel discussion by entrepreneurs who built (or are building) their Web/E-commerce/Other business while holding a day job, multiple jobs, or who are currently balancing two+ career options.
Gretchen Heber CEO/Co-founder, NaturallyCurly.com
Jeremy Bencken Co-founder, Buzzstream
Aruni Gunasegaram Founder/CEO, Babble Soft LLC
David Altounian President/Founder, iTaggit
Lisa Stone Co-Founder & Pres Of Operations & Evangelism, BlogHer LLC
Please tell all your friends who are attending SXSWi about this really cool panel.
Posted by Aruni
8:27 pm •
conferences •
December 13, 2008
Photo by my friend, Sandy Blanchard. 
Last weekend I had a profound experience at a seminar called the Landmark Forum. At the beginning of the forum, they tell you the goal is to experience a transformation. I don’t think I achieved it in the intended way but the insights I gained have been phenomenal!
I was extremely skeptical when I first heard about it. I usually approach things from a very analytical viewpoint so I had a hard time getting over ‘I’ve seen this all before‘ mentality. I even went to one of their orientation sessions at the recommendation of an amazing person, Marlene Merritt who founded Merritt Acupuncture, and left feeling like they were trying to ‘hard sell’ me on signing up. I don’t like it when people try to convince me to buy something when I’m not ready.
I saw Marlene a few times after that and each time she said she really felt I would get something out of attending and how taking it profoundly affected her life 7 years ago. She didn’t get anything out of me signing up. Nothing at all, except for the joy in seeing me go through a life changing event. And for that I’m grateful. I had been experiencing many diametrically opposing feelings leading up to my standing at The Entrepreneurial Ledge, so I signed up.
After signing up, a friend sent me a link to an article on a well respected online site with a note saying it seemed like a ponsi-scheme. In addition to acknowledging that CNN and Reebok executives have successfully participated in the forum, the article strongly insinuated that it was cult-like. I was hurt when I read the article because it took a lot for me to share that I was taking the course. After taking the class and thinking about it, I decided to re-interpret his response and apply a different meaning — one that meant he cared enough about me to research it and share his concerns.
Another friend who had taken the course also said it was a good course but she could see how people could think it was a bit cult-like because of the terminology they used. After taking it, I determined it’s no more cult-like than the Episcopal or Southern Baptist churches I attended growing up! She said she thought it might help me surface some issues so I should go in with an open mind. And boy did it really unearth some stuff for me.
It’s hard to explain everything I got out of taking that course in a mere blog post but suffice it to say, I now view the world differently. I’ve been able to have very different conversations with my kids, my husband, my mother, my sister, and my co-workers. I even called my father who I haven’t spoken to in probably a couple of years…although we exchange email from time to time.
I’m still me, but with a different view of my life and my world. They describe the transformation as something like when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. It is still the same creature but the butterfly has a vastly different view of its world because it can fly. I don’t feel like I’m a butterfly yet, but I understand more of the mechanics of how one becomes one.
The Landmark Forum can’t really be compared to anything else, but humans learn by comparing so while I was sitting there, many of the concepts reminded me of what is written in The Power of Now, Siddhartha, and A New Earth (book links below) as well as what many philosophers and psychologists have mentioned in the past. After all, even the Bible states “there is nothing new under the sun!“
I 100% believe that if everyone took the Landmark Forum, there would be fewer wars and misunderstandings in this world. Before finishing the Forum, we were all supposed to come up with a possibility we were inventing for ourselves and our lives and one 50-ish year old man got up at the microphone in front everyone and shared his. His mother and brother had both died when he was fairly young and he had been angry for most of his life. He was angry that they had left him and he had not even realized how hurt and angry he was for so many years. The possibility he invented for himself was the possibility of having every teenage orphan in the United States take the Landmark Forum for teens. He felt if he could save those kids the decades of pain he felt, he could make a huge difference in this world. I gave him both of my cards and said “let me know how I can help.”
You’ll have to take the Forum yourself for the punch line, but one of the possibilities I invented for myself and my life is the possibility of being courageous and empowering people to achieve their dreams. Now people might think I already do some of that but it’s always been laced with fear of people not liking me…or worse that I will be abandoned and not loved.
And coincidentally enough on Tuesday at my day job, before the last late night session of the Forum, I was presented with the opportunity to be courageous. And I was and still am afraid, but I took a stand anyway. I may not have this day job for much longer because of the stand I am taking, and people might not like me, but I don’t want to look back and say I was not true to the possibility I invented for myself and my life…
Posted by Aruni
10:08 pm •
conferences •
December 4, 2008
Remember when I wrote about the Clean Energy Venture Summit that’s going on in Austin, Texas right now? Well a big announcement happened yesterday at the conference (see article below). Texas is poised to be a market leader in clean energy and where I work during the day, the Austin Technology Incubator, will most likely be ‘deep in the heart of it.’ [For those who don’t get that reference, there is a famous Texas song called “Deep in the heart of Texas…”
My boss has been intimately involved in the planning meetings to make the Pecan Street project happen and we just (finally!) hired a new clean energy director to continue to lead the efforts in building our clean energy portfolio. I’m particularly excited because the new director (not yet officially announced) will be taking off a bunch of stuff from my plate. I, my boss (aka ‘the man’), a couple of interns, and one of our Advisors (who gave freely of his time) have been holding the clean energy incubator pieces together since the previous director left back in April. It has been a true experiment in juggling!
Nine companies join clean energy partnership – Participants include Dell, Freescale, Microsoft
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
By Claudia Grisales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Austin’s clean energy future just got a major shot in the arm.
More than a dozen business and community leaders announced Wednesday that nine major companies – from Dell Inc. to Freescale Semiconductor Inc. to Microsoft Corp. – will join in a partnership to help bring clean energy to Central Texas. The companies will help contribute employees to the Pecan Street Project, a public-private plan in the works to bring innovative energy ideas and jobs to the region.
“There is not another city in the country that has the ability to bring together all these companies on a common vision,” Austin City Council member and mayoral candidate hopeful Brewster McCracken said.
The announcement, which was made at the Clean Energy Venture Summit at the University of Texas, signals that the Pecan Street Project has drawn the muscle necessary to move forward with its aggressive plans.
Read more…
November 24, 2008
In my day job running Operations for the Austin Technology Incubator, I work with great people. They were factored into my decision not to jump off The Entrepreneurial Ledge…
One of those amazing people is Melissa Rabeaux. She is coordinating the 2nd Annual Clean Energy Venture Summit happening Dec 2 – 4, 2008 here in Austin, Texas. It’s going to be a fabulous event with several top name individuals in the clean energy space speaking and attending. Texas is poised to be the hub of clean energy innovation and the conference theme is How Can Texas Win in the New Energy Economy.
There will be panels with topics ranging from venture capital, utility, agriculture, power, and state policy. The big keynote speaker is Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund. Check out the Conference Agenda for names of people who will be flying in from all over the country to speak.
If you are interested in clean energy (i.e., looking for a new career), this conference is the place to be!
There may even be some special passes for big time bloggers who want to cover the event.
Check out the sponsors below:
Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! I’ll be taking a much needed holiday break…but I’m sure I won’t be able to keep myself from tweeting so if you are really that interested in seeing what I’m up to, I’ll be sending out a few tweets… @aruni.
October 2, 2008
Woo Hoo! I submitted a panel idea for the 2009 SXSW Interactive extravaganza a couple of months ago and I was just informed that it was selected! It will be called Building A Web Business After Hours. Although I have several panelists lined up, we have been asked not to finalize the panel yet — probably to make it oh so hugely compelling for all of you to attend!
One of the cool things about being selected is that I get a free Gold Badge pass to attend SXSW interactive and so do the panelists! I probably won’t have much time to party late into the evening unless my husband doesn’t mind watching the kids for 5 days/nights in a row.
Thank you to all of you who voted for the panel idea during the open voting period. It wouldn’t have been selected without your support!
August 14, 2008
Earlier this year, I had such a great time at SXSW Interactive 2008, that I submitted a panel idea for SXSW Interactive 2009 called Building A Web Business After Hours and more people than I thought are interested in seeing it happen!
Panel Description: Many businesses are built after-hours or during odd hours of the day and night. Join us for a panel discussion by entrepreneurs who built (or are building) their Web/E-commerce/Other business while holding a day job, multiple jobs, or who are currently balancing two+ career options.
For those of you who don’t know, I am attempting to build a web business (Babble Soft) after hours and lets just say it has it’s ups and downs but mostly it’s really hard and challenging with a big upside bejng that in my day job I get to be around other entrepreneurs.
How many of you (or people you know) are building sites and businesses in their spare time (on the side)? What kind of businesses are they? Many great businesses start with tinkering on the side…
I’ve started to assemble a great group of panelists including:
- One of the co-founders of BlogHer, the top female blogging site in the world that has partnerships and customer relationships with some of the top recognized brands in the world! Elisa Camahort Page, a co-founder, awesomely mentioned my panel in her Time to vote for SXSW panels post. Check out Elisa’s post to see the other great panels she’s recommending.
- Thom Singer is the director of business development for Austin based vcfo. Additionally he is the author of four books about the power of business relationships and is a professional speaker. With the support of his employer, he successfully manages his job and his own business, speaking to companies around the country on how to network. He blogs at Some Assembly Required.
- Karen Bantuveris, Austin founder & CEO of VolunteerSpot, knows firsthand what ‘juggle’ means. She’s built VolunteerSpot from the ground up while running a successful management development and executive coaching business, and being active in her daughter’s school PTO Board and Scout troop. She even manages to sleep, occasionally.�
- Jeremy Bencken, co-founder of ApartmentRatings.com, Tenant Market, and PR for Pirates. Jeremy and his wife, Katie, founded ApartmentRatings.com in 2000 out of their one bedroom apartment in Mountain View. They bootstrapped the site while attending business school at UT-Austin and then during full-time jobs for 4 years before selling the company to Internet Brands in 2007. Along the way they grew traffic to over 12M unique visitors per year (without an ad budget), built a base of advertisers, fought off frivolous lawsuits, and got their site featured on NPR Marketplace, and in stories in the NY Times and AP.
Please, please, please go vote for the panel by clicking on this link: Building A Web Business After Hours. I believe 30% of the weight on whether a panel is chosen is from people like you voting. The only downside is that you have to create a log in, but the upside is that you will be in the SXSW system and see all the other cool panels going on and vote for many more!
Thanks and I look forward to seeing some of you at SXSW next year.
May 16, 2008
So here’s the rest of my Women 2.0 Conference story. If you want to see tons of pictures (which sadly I and my deep pink Banana Republic shirt don’t appear) please check out the official Women 2.0 Conference Wrap Up post. You can also see Sophia Perl’s (another semi-finalist) post on it here.
Friday – May 9, 2008
I took my rented yellow car and drove around the Palo Alto/Menlo Park area to meet some people. I met Jeff Nolan, who was one of the venture investors in my first company, for lunch at a place called Buck’s. We only just got to know each other while at my last company before I left, but he seemed to be one of the good guys. I mentioned him in a post I did about angels and venture capitalists a while back. We might get to work together again and this time in hopefully a more creative and collaborative way.
I tried to meet up with Guy Kawasaki later that afternoon but he had something mildly important to do like make some sort of silly book submission deadline, so we traded tweets and emails instead. Then I went to the Stanford mall. I’m not a big shopper, but since I had a few hours to kill, and my husband wanted me to get him a Stanford t-shirt (It’s one of his alma-maters) I wandered around a bit and read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, but was not feeling in the “now” at the time so didn’t make much progress. So I got some hot chocolate, my rings cleaned, and happened to find a couple of light-weight jackets at really good sale prices to protect me from the Bay Area cool evenings!
Later I had the pleasure of meeting up with Maryam Scoble for wine and fabulous brie with a flakey crust. Yum! Maryam and I met through our blogs. I initially heard about her and her husband Robert Scoble from our very own Austin based Connie Reece. Robert even did a Qik video of me at SXSW but I don’t think that many pregnant moms or parents with newborn babies, preemies or twins are watching those videos. Go figure!
Saturday – May 10, 2008 (conference day)
You can see the agenda for the conference here. It was an interesting day in a tent near the Stanford golf course. Walking in grass was a challenge for many of us who were wearing heels. Those wearing pointed heels especially suffered by sinking into the grass/dirt, but since I would trip and fall on my face in pointed heels, I wear more flat ones.
The most interesting sound bites, in my opinion, came from the Power Panel: “Igniting the spark through strategies taught and lessons learned”
Terri Ghio, Unique Solutions and TBS Connect said: Make sure you have an audience, a secret sauce, strategic alliances, and ability to build the blocks and barriers for success.
Amy Love, Protégé Performance Group said: Build an inner circle, share your dream, think big, and have the confidence & energy to move forward.
Dr. Jwala Karnik, JwalaCo said: Be open to inspiration, tell people what you want to do, and just take the first step!
Dr. Maggie Haertsch, VOICEMAP said: Have passion and be totally committed, focused, and fearless!
Pat McEntee, AuxoGlobal said: Women entrepreneurs are different and that’s OK. Women look at things they want to spend their time on differently. Women build different companies. The fact that many retail companies are currently dominated by men is not going to last long, but women should build companies that men feel comfortable in. By the way, Pat is a guy!
I mentioned the winners of the napkin business plan challenge in my yellow car post, so I won’t mention it here again, but I did want to mention one company and founder who was on one of the panels: Erica Estrada of d.light design. She is impressive and her company is very cool! They make affordable, small, solar power lighting units for people in third world countries who have no access to electricity. So the kids in who live in shacks can study/read after dark and parents can cook or work after dark without having to use a kerosene lamp that not only stinks and has to be bad for your lungs, but also doesn’t last very long. I really do wish her and her company great luck, good partners, fabulous investors and perfect timing!
I ended the day by eating sushi with the friends I was staying with. They even took a picture of me (see below) drinking this huge cup of sake! The waitress finished the bottle on me, so the sake overflowed into its holding bowl. I was glad I wasn’t the one driving us home in my rented yellow car. 
Coming soon I’ll post an update on my SEO experiences, so you might want to subscribe to read more about the birth pains of a web business. It’s not pretty.
May 14, 2008
So I lost the memory stick with the pictures I had taken while in the Bay Area for the Women 2.0 conference. That’s why it has taken me this long to do my first post about it. OK, so it’s not that long because I got back Sunday and it’s now Wednesday, but it feels long in Internet/blog time! I had to harass the friends I stayed with to email me the pictures I took with their camera because, yes, I forgot to take my camera with me. I guess when your brain is also trying to keep up with two kids, things like cameras get forgotten from time to time. Thank goodness we live in a time where lost memory sticks can be backed up by good friends and email!
As you may know, I was selected as a semi-finalist but not a finalist, and decided to go to the conference anyway. I’m glad I did. I saw the 5 finalists present and was quite confident that my company, and several others I met while there, would have probably been better (i.e., more fundable) than at least 2 of the teams that presented. But hey, it would be hard for most people to decide what teams are the best based on a one-page summary and 2 minute video.
Koollage was the winner and their tag line is Kool, Kolorful snippets of your digital world to go. The People’s choice award was Gaiagy and offers residential and commercial building owners recommendations for how they can most economically make their operations more eco-friendly. To see a full write-up on the winners on TechCrunch go here. But I digress.
It all started with a yellow car. I reserved a car at Hertz and got a pretty good $22/day rate and the lady at the counter asked me if I wanted a yellow car. I had expected a compact Hyundai or something so I said sure, but what do you mean by yellow? She said it was sporty and the notes said it was yellow. She told me if I didn’t like it I could exchange it for something else. I half expected it to be some sort of light yellow, champagne color, but it was in fact bright yellow and here’s the picture to prove it. I smiled when I saw it and figured everyone could see me so chances of my being hit in California traffic would be significantly reduced so I took that Chevy Cobolt, sporty, 2-door with sun roof car and headed towards highway 101!
Stay tuned for the rest of the Women 2.0 and yellow car story by subscribing to this blog. I’ll be writing about who I met and what I learned in the days to come.
