If you’ve had your fair share of coffee, then you’ll be good to go at the TWTRCON. The relatively intimate conference drew a crowd for the Martha Stewart talk. While I missed it, I made it in time to watch @BPGlobalPR guy talk. I’ll post the video later.

I stayed specifically to watch the panel on Real-Time Media Brands. Craig Engler, a SyFy executive, called “Twitter the Swiss Army knife of the Internet”. Engler uses Twitter to reach out to the fans, tweets to them during shows, uses it for casting roles in shows, and for engaging in conversation.

Paul Berry of The Huffington Post talks about they are leading the way in Social News and why they are curating tweets. HuffPo is at 24 million unique page views a month with more than 2 million comments.

Eric Carvin of AP says the AP is relatively new at this. They published a style guide for social media and encourage their journalists to build their own individual brand.

And Cynthia Collins of The New York Times says Twitter is just another way to engage with their readers and allows people to share NY Times stories with their friends.

Media brands talk about their social media strategy at TwtrCon is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

Every week, I will write about one thing I have learned from my mentor. This idea was born during a random night of chatting — I write about things I’ve learned from him and about lessons I am learning from him.

While the technology to publish engaging stories may change, the good stories still need to be told. That will never change — people told stories before they could write. While we have become content driven as a society, believe it or not, Google doesn’t have all the answers. Internet search engines can never replace good ole’ fashion wisdom.

Here’s the first piece of advice:

Take 3 hour lunches. There really is no need to rush lunch. If you are having a good time with someone, the more time you can spend with them, the better. I can remember almost every long lunch I’ve had in the city, but can’t remember that many networking parties I’ve gone to.

Each lunch leaves a lasting impression — something that is pretty much impossible to do at networking parties. I have a habitual horrible habit of misplacing business cards anyway.

So when it is possible, have lunch with someone you want to get to know more on a professional level. And never, ever buy into the one hour curfew. It’s BS. Plus if you are an entrepreneur, the best ideas arise from table top discussions.

And one more thing, cut down the number of distractions. It’s best to leave your phone and your watch at home, so you don’t become a time Nazi.

No wonder this whole social networking thing has killed the buzz. Why get lunch with someone, when you can just Facebook stalk them and then occasionally send them a message? Well, for one thing, you might get free lunch, which is always a bonus . I see social networking is real life’s ugly and evil twin. In the real world, we leave no digital footprints and live in the moment. And in the moment, should be you sitting for hours, enjoying a really long lunch.

Tips from my super mentor is a post from: TechStartups.com

I think the New York Times article on “Attached to Technology and Paying a Price” is a bit overblown. Are we really that addicted to technology?

On average we consume 12 hours of media a day and we surf 40 websites daily.

I have to admit, when I got an iPhone I became more attached to technology — at times, I slept with it in my bed (and from what I hear is not all that uncommon).

The New York Times reports:

“The technology is rewiring our brains,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and one of the world’s leading brain scientists. She and other researchers compare the lure of digital stimulation less to that of drugs and alcohol than to food and sex, which are essential but counterproductive in excess.

So fine, I did get side tracked yesterday while I was surfing the Internet and was late to a brunch. Maybe technology is so habitual that we are unaware of how much we depend on it. I must admit when I didn’t have a smart phone or Internet for 2 weeks, time went by more slowly and I read paperback books.

Now if you are wondering if you spend an unhealthy amount of time on the Internet, you might want to take a self assessment. No doubt, access to the Internet widens the range of temptations — so much so, scientists are finding that people who have a gambling problem also have a “problematic Internet” behavior.

Technology is a utility and we depend on it, so of course, it is changing our habits and our brains.

The NY Times also reports that experts think that this media overload makes us “impulsive, forgetful, and  even more narcissistic.” Oh, and I just thought that was just a part of living in New York.

Photo: rick /flickr

How gadgets are rewiring our brains and our behavior is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

As I said earlier, Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants people to move to New York to start their businesses. The NYC Entrepreneurial Fund will pump in $19 million into New York-based startups. The Wall Street Journal reports:

“The fund really is going to play a big role in encouraging information tech firms to move to our city,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We want people to get jobs. We aren’t trying to give handouts.”

Seed money is a start. Office culture matters too. New York also has incubation hubs that put these entrepreneurial minds together. There’s Dogpatch labs, which I went into a few months ago. The New York Times reports on another tech hub called Betaworks:

“Money is nice, but I actually needed expertise more than anything else,” [TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth] said. “Betaworks had a track record in this field back when no one had a track record in this field.”

Betaworks built Bit.ly and Chartbeat from scratch. TweetDeck and Bit.ly hit it big. But they are looking for entrepreneurs to help the hub grow with greater vision. Investors look to Betaworks to weed out the startups.

If you are in New York and are looking for ways to engage with the vibrant tech community, check out Mashable’s list of individuals and organizations who are attracting hundreds to thousands of people to their events.

Image: flickr/ Phillipp Klinger:.

New York wants startups: offers up money, hubs, and fun is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer –

Obama began Small Business Owners Week, asking Congress to create a small-business jobs package ASAP.

“Small business owners have been the hardest hit by this recession,” Obama added. “From the middle of 2007 through the end of 2008, small businesses lost 2.4 million jobs.” While it is not the government’s duty to create jobs, government must “knock down the barriers” preventing small business owners from getting loans or “investing in the future,” he said. [Politics Daily]

At TechCrunch Disrupt, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg encouraged people who want to start a startup to move to New York. ZDNet editor Andrew Nusca wrote about Bloomberg’s surprise visit, noting that:

[Bloomberg] announced a partnership with First Mark Capital — which had promised to co-invest up to $19 million in an NYC entrepreneurial fund founded a year ago — that expands that investment to $22 million. Finally, he announced that the fund made its first investment: $300,000 to mobile app provider My City Way for a New York-specific app.

New York is where dreams are made of certainly. However, other American cities are expected to become prime small business meccas too: Austin, Seattle, Washington D.C., Salt Lake City, Rochester, Des Moines, Burlington, West Hartford, and Topeka.

Image: flickr/ joiseyshowaa

Obama and Bloomberg encourage small business owners is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer –

Many of the entrepreneurs in New York have lived through the dot-com boom. But as of late, the tech scene has gotten a second life and the time is ripe for a new breed of Internet companies to thrive. The start-up energy sizzling on the streets of New York just got some love from the The New York Times.

Okay, it got a lot of love from The New York Times:

“After the crash, New York was a complete wasteland of dead funds and companies,” says Charlie O’Donnell, an entrepreneur in residence at First Round Capital, which hired him recently when it opened a new office in Manhattan.

Since then, “the community has gelled,” Mr. O’Donnell says. “We now we have a critical mass of support and financing.”

The main points of the NY Times story are:

• Thrillist co-founder Ben Lerer started an investment firm with his father (co-founder of The Huffington Post). The father and son team will make 25 investments in start-ups.
• An earlier investor of Twitter, Facebook, and Google has invested 20 percent of his portfolio in New York City start-ups.
• NY has the right mix of entrepreneurs, investors, and developers.
• Silicon Valley. Boston. NY is third.
• Dogpatch Labs, a frat house for geeks, gives start-ups free rent. Home to 13 start-ups.
• VC Fred Wilson notes the shift from software business to Internet business.
• Co-founder of Hunch, Chris Dixon, also founded Founder Collective, a $40 million investment fund for start-ups.
• The New York Tech Meet-Up draws up to 700 people to its monthly meetings.
• North Brooklyn Breakfast Club hosts a brunch with A-list entrepreneurs

The “PayPal mafia” effect needs to happen in New York. The tipping point might be when a big tech company goes public, so employees can go off and start their own successful businesses. The Huffington Post comments:

The startup game is distinctly different from Wall Street, consulting, mainstream media and other professions that have long dominated New York’s economy. For those driven by money, it’s feast and famine, all or nothing. Folks who have grown up in the cushy get-along-with-everyone-and-get-good-performance-reviews-and-you’ll-slowly-get-rich world of consulting, law, and Wall Street aren’t well-prepared for the “I worked my ass off for 5 years and then lost everything” world of startups.

Feeling the startup jitters too? Well, why not try your luck in The Startup 2010 Competition.

Related Posts:

Venture Hacks play match maker for entrepreneurs and angles.

Small business owners react to The State of The Union address.

Creative people drawn to the Ace Hotel?

Start-up scene in NYC is hot! is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer –

The secret to success is to “play dirty.” And apparently, New Yorkers don’t know how to play rough enough.

Dan Porter reports in the Business Insider:

There are secrets out there. There are secrets about how to win at SEO. There are secrets about what hides in your analytics reports. There are secrets about what happens when someone looks for friends on your site by entering their address book. If I have to be more clear about that, well then you’ve proven my point. In the Bay Area, there are a wealth of folks who know these secrets. Folks who could take a health content site and have it suddenly appear on top in every search. Sites with millions of members that leave you scratching your head about why they joined.

None of this is wrong per se, nor in any blatant violation of common internet rules. But it’s that stuff in the trenches that those who know guard carefully and often are employed by those companies who we would never suspect employ them.

Silicon Valley folks aren’t sharing their tricks with the East coast people either. Porter says New Yorkers can wine and dine all we like, but warns that without the West Coast mentality, it will be hard for start-ups to gain global traction like Facebook.

Of course, playing dirty has its consequences — especially if every IM and email can later be used against you and later show up in an exclusive. Just ask Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, about that. Business Insider broke a story on Zuckerberg’s hacking tendencies in 2004 and the birth of the social networking website.

Zuckerberg’s IMs reveal his thought process before he created the multi-billion dollar empire:

Zuck: So you know how I’m making that dating site

Zuck: I wonder how similar that is to the Facebook thing

Zuck: Because they’re probably going to be released around the same time

Zuck: Unless I fuck the dating site people over and quit on them right before I told them I’d have it done.

For the full scoop, read here.

Image: flickr/ Vasjen Katro

Facebook secrets revealed is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

Wahed Said wants to build a waste-to-fuel plant in New York. He is not alone. Said is a green entrepreneur, who is a managing partner for Native American Investors Group. His two partners are Native American.

“Our mission is to create economic development on tribal land. Our main focus is green energy,” says Said.

Ideally, he’d like to build a waste-to-energy plant on a reservation in New York. Said is focusing on Native American land because they “have an ability to work around state regulations.”

“We have a turn key operations. We have several types of technology, it doesn’t have to be plasma,” he says. “We want to take garbage and make energy.”

British Airways is developing a waste-to-fuel facility, to help power their planes by 2014.

And since 2003, Changing World Technologies in Carthage, Missouri has been able to turn anything into oil. Fed by the nearby ConAgra Foods Butterball Turkey facility, the plant is the first biorefinery that can take any type of waste — turkey, old tires, and mixed plastics — and turn it into high quality oil.

While the concept of turning waste into energy works on a fundamental level, even the company’s  most “mature” plant in Hamstead, New York is “struggling” after 5 years of full operation. But losing $5 million in the first quarter of 2008, doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad thing for the startup.

Discover magazine reports:

But Changing World Technologies’ experience at Carthage—where the feedstock is tons of turkey parts from the nearby ConAgra Foods Butterball Turkey slaughterhouse—has yet to demonstrate the economics of biocrude. The company is in a “quiet period” as it prepares for a $100-million initial public offering and declined to respond to questions, but its detailed IPO prospectus tells the story. According to the filing, fuel output at Carthage is variable, sales are difficult, and costs are high.

But whatever you do, make sure you think about the name of your energy startup before you make the bad name mistake.

One man has waste-to-fuel dreams is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

Tech Crunch is bringing a game show approach to elevator pitches. At an event on May 24-26 in New York City, entrepreneurs will dish out their startup ideas in front of a thousand people — and the audience will vote American Idol style for the top products.

At TechCrunch Disrupt, entrepreneurs will get feedback from a panel of all star judges. And the winner will walk away with $50,ooo cash. According to The Washington Post:

It’ll be a little bit like pitching a top VC, except it will be done live on stage in front of thousands. Audience voting as well as expert feedback will factor into final competition scores.One startup will emerge the overall winner and take home a $50,000 cash prize. But all of the startups get an incredible launch event for their product, and priceless feedback from people who can really help. And, best of all, it’s free for startups to launch at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Calm down. You have until March 26 to apply.

And even better news: The venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, with the help of startup lawyer Ted Wang, has created a website called www.seriesseed.com. On the site, entrepreneurs can find 30 documents made to cater to companies looking to secure $300,000 to $1.5 million of funding  — without having to go through the headaches involved in the paper trail.

Ten big name venture firms such as Polaris Ventures have signed on. If the funding process can be hastened, then it will be easier to get startups going.

Image: flickr/ svenwerk

Pitch your startup idea: The winner takes home a grand prize of $50,000 is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

Over the last year, small coffee shops had slowly crept into New York. The timing couldn’t have been better. After all, the unemployeed, freelancers, and small business owners, need a comfy place to call their “office.”

The Ace Hotel serves the best coffee. I remember my first time experiencing Stumptown coffee well — the rich, chocolate taste. And now my coffee tastes have graduated from the likes of Starbucks and I’ve become a Stumptown snob. On a snowy day like today however, I will grab the closest cup of coffee.

New York Magazine did a lovely profile on Duane Sorenson, the founder of Stumptown. In it, you’ll learn the humble beginnings of coffee perfection in Oregon and why Sorenson moved his coffee tastes to New York.

New York Magazine reports:

Never mind Starbucks and its 264 franchises in New York; there’s Ninth Street Espresso, Grey Dog, City Girl, Irving Farm, Abraço, and so on. Roasters like Chicago’s Intelligentsia and Counter Culture from Durham, North Carolina, are a few years ahead of Stumptown in indoctrinating New Yorkers on the subtleties of bean varieties and breaking the psychological price barrier (a pound of beans from one of those roasteries can be as much as $27).

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How To Find A Good Cup of Coffee In New York! is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

I remember the first time I saw snow. It was on TV. Come to think of it, a Seinfeld episode probably exposed me to New York City snow.

The first time I touched snow, it felt so surreal. I was in Australia, skiing on top of a mountain called Blue Cow Mountain.

At eight years old, the excitement of feeling white powder beat the rush of seeing a human-sized Mickey Mouse or riding roller coasters at Disney World any day. It was magical feeling.

Wait, I lied. I remember one cold winter Florida morning, when I woke up to white plants — white because a layer of frost covered them. But I don’t really count that.

When I lived in Colorado in 2005, I traveled to the mountains to get a fix of the fresh mountain air. I liked the peaceful feeling of looking out at the world from so high — and it probably matched a lifetime of yoga sessions.

In New York City, a snow storm doesn’t have quite the same effect. Today, I made my way to Central Park in the blizzard. I opened my mouth, stuck out my tongue, and tasted the chunky snow flakes as they fell from the sky.

My blue jacket was soon covered in snow. My socks absorbed the water that leaked through my boots. Clearly, the snow had already begun to melt. And this made walking difficult.

The smart ones knew what to do. They bent down, picked up some snow, and started a snowball fight. For a full slide show of my trip to Central Park, click here.

I Remember My First Time (SLIDESHOW) is a post from: TechStartups.com

The New York City Big Apps winners were announced this evening and release by Center Networks.

The winners were selected from contest entrants that developed applications to best transmit information about city and add to transparency. That information took on all kinds of shapes with this contest with apps for direction, city visualization, taxi ratings and feedback to apps for picking a library book or finding something interesting to do at any park in the city.

Without further ado this is from Center Networks (full awards list):

Best Overall Application:

• Grand Prize: WayFinder NYC – an application that allows users to find the nearest and best directions to New York City subway and New Jersey PATH stations on Android phones. It was also selected as the Grand Prize winner for the “Data Visualization Award.” Team members: Victor Sima and Steven Lao.
• Second Prize: Taxihack – an application that allows users to post live comments on New York City taxis and their drivers via email (alert@taxihack.com) or Twitter (@taxihack). Users send messages to the system, which are then posted on the appropriate pages for public viewing. Team members: Randy Meech and Sam Cole.
• Third Prize: Big Apple Ed – an education application that provide residents with an easy-to-use guide to schools in the City, including school searches, top ten lists, analyses, comparison charts, and detailed school profiles. Team members: Adda Birnir, Jonathan Soma, and Kate Reyes.
• Five Honorable Mentions were also awarded for Best Overall Application including: Actuatr, UpNext 3D NYC, Trees Near You, PushPin Web, and NYC Way.

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• Meet 10 NYC Big Apps Contenders (centernetworks.com)

NYC BigApps Winners Announced is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

I’m sitting at a table that is dimly lit. The designer sitting next to me is fiddling with Chinese characters for a night club client. I’m told writers, designers, and tech people frequent the tables, so I’ll fit right in. I can feel the creative energy brewing in this hotel lobby.

Within the first hour of sitting here, I’ve overheard talk about the iPad, of course. And couldn’t help but eavesdrop on a media meeting with a handful of people talking about the tech start-up scene in New York. Is it lonelier to start a business in New York than in San Francisco? Is it more fragmented here? The scene is new here and it will take time to find its identity.

The days when just one technology evolved into another is over. Technology and media are mixing more than ever before.

There’s an ecosystem of designers, writers, developers, and tech-minded people here in the city, meeting in places like the Ace Hotel, to turn their ideas into a company or product.

The barrier to entry is so low these days. But building a sense of community will take some time. Tech people are congregating in co-working spaces like Hive at 55 or in start-up frat houses like Dogpatch Labs. The community is slowly growing — and it’s growing strong. Soon, the mainstream media will cover start-ups as frequently as they cover Twitter and Facebook. If Obama’s plan pans out, then start-ups may very well be the talk of 2010.

I look forward to going back to this creative scene to eavesdrop and see if any of these good ideas turn into jobs.

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Is The Ace Hotel A Paradise For Ideas? is a post from: TechStartups.com

My inbox dings and I’ve got mail from New Work City. I take a look and what should I find but the most intriguing email of my morning.

New Work City (NWC) is a coworking space here in New York City that had does a great job in facilitating the cowork culture. To receive an email from the Mayor of NWC, Tony Bacigalupo, with the title “New Meetup: What Can Corporations Learn from Coworking?”, is extremely exciting.

The email outlines an event with a goal of discussing how coworking values can be applied in a corporate work environment. Tony refers to the event as a ’salon’ that will allow for a low threshold discussion for those on both sides.

For those that are coworking veterans it might feel like cheating since almost all of them have had corporate experience. Their counterparts, however, have probably had little to no exposure to coworking. It will be interesting to see how two different approaches to the same goal of productivity will meld.

The salon is described as,

No lectures, no expectations, just an opportunity for us to discuss the coworking/corporate dynamic together. We want to learn as much as we possibly can from others who share our curiosity.

This format will open the floor for everyone to gain some insight into how coworking can create efficiency, community and brew up new business relationships.

If you’re interested in attending and bringing someone from your HR department head on over:

Date & Time:
Tuesday, 1/26/10
7-9pm

Location:
New Work City
200 Varick St, Room 507B
New York NY 10014

RSVP:
Here! http://shift0110.eventbrite.com/

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Can Corporations Learn from Coworking? is a post from: TechStartups.com

Hey guys! I wanted to give you a heads up that I will be blogging as much as possible tomorrow morning from the Seesmic Look launch event here in NYC.

The event is set to start at 9 a.m. EST but I’m sure I’ll be firing off some messages well before as we prep for the product launch.

So just what is a Seesmic Look? According to  the companies founder Loic Lemeur it is:

We’re launching a new product, it’s Twitter for the mainstream, a new experience that can be used by anyone. Very close to watching TV.

We’re going to have to wait and see – but not much longer. In a little less than 12 hours we’ll know exactly what Look is . . . I hope.

The event is also going to be live streamed so you can catch it on the launch site.

Update: I just realized connectivity might be a problem today as the location for this even is in the lower levels of the Times Center. Going to be interesting!

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Join Us Tomorrow Morning for Seesmic Look Launch is a post from: TechStartups.com

The time has come for you to make money online doing what you love. Getting paid to provide a service, entertainment or news isn’t shameful. No matter what people have been saying for years, free is not a way to make a living.

For the first 4 years of my internet career I was paid by people to make websites, media players, presentations, the whole ball of wax. Then in 2004 podcasting came along with all of its beguiling attributes. The most appealing of which were low production costs and even lower cost for the audience. So low in fact that the podcasts  they consumed cost them less a cent!

In the five years since I began podcasting I’ve watched the community grow to video, to streaming and the changing of the mainstream media landscape. It has been a great run. But it isn’t sustainable. The time to get paid is now.

I’m not only saying that it is time for podcasters but anyone producing content online that doesn’t want to be forced to create ancillary types of revenue streams to maintain production of their love. Your passion shouldn’t be a loss leader!

The example that I would like to use is my own. It’s simple and I think you’ll get some value from me sharing this.

Three months ago I decided that my wife and I should pick our podcast back up and start cranking out shows. Our podcast, Croncast, had been dormant for the previous 3 months since our move to New York City. We both wanted to start the show up again and wanted to figure out how to generate revenue from our work.

So like any business person, I did the math on production costs, time invested and internet hosting fees. I took a look back at the previous work, 5 years worth and then ran the numbers.

We had produced 534 episodes at an average of 30 minutes apiece and the server/bandwidth alone cost $200 a month. I had paid $12,000 in server fees alone. During this time the episodes flowed freely and we took donations that totaled roughly $1,000. Holy cow! That is a lot of red.

We decided that if we were going to move forward and startup the podcast again that it was going to have to go behind a paywall of some type. The thought of producing our show and giving it away to then sell merchandise or affiliate relationships was about as appealing as paying another $12,000 out of my pocket for server fees. Why should we spend our time dealing with t-shirt vendors, shipping or coming up with ebooks? We shouldn’t and neither should you – unless t-shirts are your thing. Time should be spent crafting the main product, for us, our show.

Once we made the decision that we were going to go paid for our show we needed software to make the sale and ability to consume the shows as similar to getting a regular free podcast as possible. I spent the last 3 months making that happen.

I was fortunate to have put my skills to use in creating some custom software for quite a few projects that when aggregated together could create an easy checkout and subscription system. I worked on the system in my spare time when not working here at Tech Startups.

After a total of 6 months of not producing a single podcast for our now dispersing audience we were prepared with a landing page that offered pricing for packages, links to make payment and a method to download the podcasts quickly without additional software.

It has been 2 weeks since we launched the system and I thought that by sharing real numbers I would be able to let you know that you can make money online. People are ready to pay for the content that they enjoy. It is time to get paid or forever hold your peace.

These numbers don’t account for attrition over the coming year or forecast new audience acquisitions during that time either. I will run those numbers once we have more data.

Each episode starts at a base price of $.37 and as the packages get larger in price the cost per episode is discounted gradually. The One Time fee, which we call “Cool for Life” is what we consider and market at a “patronage” level. These are the audience members that we look to for guaranteed support.

Patrons will also receive special offers and discounts if we do provide merchandise in the future. We will, but now because of this recurring revenue the funds to create this merchandise won’t be coming out of our pockets. The audience has invested in our show. They placed their faith in us to deliver. The audience made a choice that our once free episodes have a real value.

We love producing our podcast and cranking them out at a rate of 3 episodes per week. We know our audience likes to receive 3 episodes per week and enjoys an hour and a half of our story telling. Collectively, we’re finding a balance that is sustainable.

For yourself, the first thing you will need to do is decide which of your passion plays satisfies you the most. Then plug that passion into a product that you can deliver while you sleep – figuratively and literally. Chances are that if you’re doing it the right way you’ll be blazing a trail of some kind that requires custom solutions in both business model, distribution and software.

Anyone that tells you that it is easy or there’s no need to reinvent the wheel hasn’t studied the landscape hard enough to realize there isn’t one any longer. The only thing that remains true is that online you need to make the process easy, payments easy and follow standard user experience. All of which are hard work.

In the end, you will succeed. Even if you don’t find a way to make your online business sustainable a first time or second or third, you’ll have the experience to know what didn’t work. You’ll have stuck your neck out when others were telling you not to.

You should be proud of your work and be paid to produce it!

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Make Money Online: Get Paid or Forever Hold Your Peace is a post from: TechStartups.com

PluggedIn NYC is a startup and investor conference designed to facilitate knowledge sharing, relationship building and deal making amongst the handpicked media, advertising, social media and mobile executives and gatekeepers that will be in attendance.

Oh – and bloggers. Yours truly will be there to investigate the participating startups which include:

PluggedIn NYC will take place at the Sy Syms School of Business in Manhattan on January 12th, 2010.

Click here to learn more and register.

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

PluggedIn NYC Conference on January 12th is a post from: TechStartups.com

Today was absolutely beautiful. I was excited to visit the Wired Store for the first time, but it was closed. Instead, my editor Kris Smith and I drank coffee at the local Starbucks.

Then I took the subway to Wall Street, had a short brisk walk past Ground Zero, before I entering the 40^th floor of the New York Academy of Sciences. Experts from SUNY, IBM, Cornell, and Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical R&D were in the house.

I was in for two hours of discussions about how industry and academia work together. The world is changing. The days of the crazy Einstein scientist image is over — some scientists work with corporations on more applied research. When the technology is commercialized, the economic impact is huge.

BP gave Energy Biosciences Institute $500 million over 10 years to conduct research on biofuels.  As part of the agreement, BP scientists would work directly with Berkeley and Illinois scientists. “We have corporate and academic partners sitting in the same space,” says James Weyhenmeyer, a senior vice provost for research at SUNY. The “cross pollination” has really made a difference.

Creating relationships is one thing, but finding good people to work for the corporations is another. Stevel LaFleche, the managing director for New York State at IBM, says “we need to create smarter people and a talent pool. It’s critical for our future.” IBM is growing smart “ecosystem” by funding educational programs at some universities. A perfect partnership that has gone right is the one IBM set up with Albany in 1996. They created the Albany NanoTech Complex, which has been a huge hit. By 2013, IBM would have put in $1 billion there.

Universities can participate in the economy and can help create jobs, says Rene Baston, the chief business officer at NYAS. But collaboration takes work — NYAS has found a sweet spot as a middleman. The academy develops R&D relationships with companies and universities and also has a network of 25,000 scientists. “We can put together a team of scientists to spend a day helping companies,” says Baston. That way, the companies don’t have to have in-house researchers. NYAS wants to turn Mexico City, Delhi, Sao Paulo, and Buenos Aires into high tech hot spots. If those serendipitous interactions that happen in the Bay area. Then they can happen just about anywhere, as long as the culture is there.

It’s already happening right here, in New York City.

Why Good Industry and Academic Relationships Matter is a post from: TechStartups.com

I never thought in a million years that I’d ever say this: I wish I knew how to sew.

The pattern featured this week on Burdastyle is the Tikva Trench. The $6.50 pattern is so hot. “You never know if people are going to like it,” says BurdaStyles’ co-founder Nora Abousteit.

BurdaStyle is a good example of a user generated site. “People like sharing. We are getting high quality content,” she says. Women living in New York, London, and other fashion hubs typically spend time in this online sewing world. We upload a new design every week and users upload whenever they want to, says Abousteit.

The site has built a community of 276,900 members since its launch in 2007, and continues to grow online and offline. This spring, Abouseit launched 238 sewing clubs around the world to give members a chance to meet each other for real.

The concept began in Germany when Abousteit was working for the publishing house, Hubert Burda Media. She agreed to try to do something with the media giant’s sewing magazine. Abousteit began her research by surfing the Internet to gauge the sewing activities online. “I found that a lot of people were very passionate about that they are doing, but the information was scattered around on places like Flickr and blogs,” she says. Abousteit thought all these things should be combined, so she created a platform where people can work together.

The turning for the concept occurred on November 2, 2006. It’s a day Abousteit remembers well. She flew from Germany to New York for a photo shoot. “I extended my stay for 2 weeks, then extended it for another month. I’m still here. It’s a bit ridiculous but that’s the story of my life,” she says.

The site relaunched for the third time this past August and is now getting 300,000 unique visitors a month. BurdaStyle made the sewing patterns open source and removed the copyright from the design. “The patterns always stay fresh,” she says. A pattern can have up to two hundred different designs, when users add their personal touch.

The really ambitious users can use the patterns to create a clothing line and make money. But anyone can use the step-by-step guide to bring a design to life.

All you need to do is pay a few bucks, download the directions, and then print them out. At the fabric store, patterns are printed on large paper. “We are spitting up the designs so you can print them at home, and then you just assemble it like a puzzle. We offer step-by-step pictorials and also share techniques and tips,” she says.

Sewing has been a hobby for Abousteit since she was 14 years old. She took lessons from a seamstress. Back then, she was limited to the patterns at the fabric store. Using some creativity, she began sewing material over rubber bands and sold these as headbands at school. Now through BurdaStyle, Abousteit can see others create their own unique designs. Only this time, it’s open for the whole world to see.

Image: Danielle St. Laurent

BurdaStyle Makes Sewing Fashionable And Easy is a post from: TechStartups.com

It’s here! Web 2.0 Expo New York takes place this week, November 16 – 19 and I’m gearing up to talk to some startups for TechStartups.com. I’l l have my OWLE Bubo paired with Reel Director on my iPhone and will be recording and posting video interviews right from the conference.

If you have an interesting startup you think we should cover, I’ll be there all day on Wednesday starting at 8 AM. Take a look at my calendar. If you and I have the same availability, send an email to john@techstartups.com, tell me about your company and what time you’d propose we meet.

ShamelessPlug: My only scheduling conflict on Wednesday, November 18th is my Lunch & Learn session during the Web2Open unconference from 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM. Come on by to participate!

There will be some great sessions from Mitch Joel, Greg Cangialosi, J.C. Hutchins, Julien Smith, C. C. Chapman & Kristen Brandt, Valeria Maltoni and others – and it’s all free to participate. You can download the entire Web2Open schedule here.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Startups: Come Talk With Us at Web 2.0 Expo New York is a post from: TechStartups.com

Fifteen years ago I listened to James Burke at a symposium deliver a speech titled, “Axe Makers of the 21st Century“. It was the precursor to his writing of The Axemaker’s Gift. A book that dealt with the problem that Burke was working through in his head before the internet exploded.

Axe Makers was a syllogistic study of mankind’s ability to restructure society based on how the internet age would create a diaspora of talented workers. These workers in turn would be able to lead a nomadic lifestyle based on their connectivity to the internet as information workers. At this time, part of his hypothesis was that these workers would then raise the standard of living for local inhabitants.

Some components of Burke’s look into the future have come true. A connected information worker can now perform their duties from anywhere they choose as long as their employer has signed off on it.  Another was his correct assumption that the ubiquity of near real-time information would change global culture.

His book, The Axmaker’s Gift, was an attempt to reconcile this new culture shift with cultures of the past. Burke was concerned that technology was and would strip away our humanity. That our future needed to have a moderated technological lust passion interest. In the book he advocates for the simplicity of life and a continued movement toward small communities but not through technology.

What really got me going down this path today thinking about James Burke was my experience at another small conference here in New York. As an information worker in one of America’s largest cities, I find myself more connected to a community of like people than ever before.

For the last three years I was one of the diaspora working from remotely from home for businesses that at their closest proximity to me were 900 miles away. An opportunity that Burke described in detail. But in this space I was isolated. I had a few friends that could identify with my work life and worked in similar ways. However, most of the people that I was in contact with on a daily basis I couldn’t connect with. We existed in two separate realities.

What Burke didn’t account for was this loss of community due to the lack of commonality in the experience that nomadic workers have with the locals they take up residence with. In New York I am able to continually find common experiences with other people, workers that have similar experiences to mine.

The proximity of information workers even in this large city is due to the multitude of businesses that need our services. Many of them in media and others in financial or advertising benefit from the central location of talent. What makes this talent even more valuable is its ability to connect to one another and flow through these businesses to keep culture and ideas fresh.

The ability to capitalize on common experience, talent and proximity is what has made certain locations on our planet the centers for varying industries. Information workers, like Burke described, should be considered skilled tradespeople that for the better should be concentrated into spaces so that they can produce their best work.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Proximity: The Power of Space is a post from: TechStartups.com

A piece ran this afternoon in the NY Times site about their hometown rival, The Wall Street Journal. The focus of this piece being that the WSJ is hiring roughly a dozen journalists to fill a local NYC bureau in a print media local build up.

The first engagements in what is becoming a fight for survival are happening in local markets. And in this battle of media titans, the WSJ and the NYT are set to square off over the streets of New York City.

The most intriguing element of this move by the WSJ isn’t that they are broadening the scope of the news that they deliver to take on The Times but they are moving in a direction that local, independent bloggers have had their eyes on for some time.

It will be interesting to see what impact this has on the WSJ’s circulation or web traffic. A mobile app for this new local channel could make this offering stronger.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The Print Media Local Build Up is a post from: TechStartups.com