The CrunchNetwork Experience

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CrunchNetwork MeetupOn the evening of Thursday May 1st, we attended CrunchGear’s CrunchNetwork Meet-up Held at Red Sky in NYC. Having been part of several TechCrunch meet-ups throughout the last year, we’ve come to expect an environment that blends a level of traditional networking and vendor demos, with a healthy dose of hip and trendy party-going.

This particular event seemed to reverse the formula with a compact, oversold venue that at times felt more like a techie frat party with vendors thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, the shoulder to shoulder, standing room only crowd and extremely loud sessions of Rock Band (played by hired gamers) didn’t allow for capturing a few video interviews like we have in the past. Ultimately the event catered to the the CrunchGear audience (as it should) and is clearly in a different category than the traditional TechCrunch experience.

With that being said, there were plenty of attendees who where very happy with the event and what it had to offer. All things aside, we still managed to spend some quality time with several notable individuals including Jeff Mould, President of Announce Mobile (and new client!), Joe Walsh of SquareLoop, Sarah Meyers of Pop17.com, Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch, Andrew Keidel of ModMyLife.com, Gunnar Larson, CEO of NetworkGlobal.TV, Donna Bogatin, founder and CEO of StartUp Alpha and Hunter Cohen of NQ.com.

At the end the night we walked away from our first CrunchGear event with mixed feelings. It certainly wasn’t what we expected, but worked for the younger audience it was intended for. There were certainly plenty of smiling faces after the numerous raffle prizes were handed out! Ultimately, the experience, while not completely our scene, hasn’t soured us from attending again. Next time, however, we suggest a bigger venue and better locations for demo stations. Look forward to hearing more about bigger and better CrunchGear hosted events in the future.

PerkettPR Interviews Sean Percival of Mahalo

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Although the lighting gets a little dark in places (they were testing the lights while we interviewed), Sean Percival of Mahalo tells PerkettPR why people should be paid for content. Lisa Dilg learns more.



PerkettPR Interviews JoAnna from ChefJoAnna.com

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Even professionals who may seem non-techie are embracing social media technologies to boost their business. I ran into Chef JoAnna at TechCrunch and had to find out just why a chef was at this “geeked-out” LA party. She tells us more about her business and how she uses podcasts, Twitter and Facebook to market herself and communicate with customers. Cool stuff!



PerkettPR Interviews Loren Nason from The Future of Real Estate blog

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Vertical industries are embracing technology in new and interesting ways all of the time. There’s an abundance of opportunity and – as Loren Nason of The Future of Real Estate Technology tells us – a lot of need. He explains more in a brief (slightly noisy) interview at TechCrunch/PopSugar’s MeetUp. (Pardon my interview skills, I’m used to putting others in front of the camera, not myself.)



PerkettPR Interviews Dave Cruser of Survivor China at TechCrunch LA MeetUp

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We had a fantastic time at the TechCrunch PopSugar LA MeetUp last week. Thanks to all who attended and took the time to chat with us at the event. Stay tuned for more great interviews from the TC Meet Up coming soon.

In the meantime, as some of you may know, the theme of the party was ‘Geek Goes Chic’ – as the event was co-hosted by both TechCrunch and PopSugar, a fashion, beauty, shopping and celebrity news blog. This theme created an interesting mix of about 2000 beautiful people from both the tech and entertainment worlds. While many of our interviews were with traditional emerging tech start-ups, our own Lisa Dilg (a massive Survivor fan) was able to bag an interview with Dave Cruser of Survivor China fame. She catches up with Dave on just what the heck he was doing at the TechCrunch MeetUp and, of course, she had to get the inside scoop on what it was like behind the scenes on Survivor. You gotta love LA!



TechCrunch MeetUp LA–Searching For Internet Celebrities

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TechCrunch/PopSugar PartyPerkettPR is gearing up for the biggest and best TechCrunch MeetUp event yet, being held at the Vanguard in LA this Thursday night. In addition to sponsoring again, we’re interested in turning the tables on tech bloggers and reporters and interviewing them for our blog (thoughts on the NYT blogger piece? Perez Hilton vs. tech bloggers? Arrington vs. Shipley? Facebook vs MySpace? What else is on your radar?).

We’re also interested in interviewing Web 2.0 and social media entrepreneurs on what they’re working on, what they think is hot right now and where they see the market headed in 2008 – will tech stay strong?

If you’re an Internet celebrity or undiscovered talent with opinions to share, and would be game for an interview by the PPR video blog team, please drop us a note or direct message us on Twitter @PerkettPR. We’d like to meet up at the MeetUp and capture your insights for colleagues, friends and industry pundits who can’t be in attendance.

Look forward to seeing those of you that can make it on Thursday night. Please look for us at the event we’ll be the ones “lighting up the night” with some sweet shwag give-aways.

A Tale of Two Breakfasts

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While working for a virtual company is an altogether fantastic experience, it’s not uncommon for a little “cabin fever” to set in every now and then. Escaping from the home office for client meetings or networking events can offer a nice change of pace. This week I was able to venture out for some [quite cold] fresh air to attend a pair of Social Media Breakfast events here on the East coast.

Pancakes with Pulver

Brickway on WickendenTuesday morning brought me to Providence, Rhode Island to participate in one of the stops on Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Breakfast Tour. The Brickway on Wickenden was the perfect location (thanks to Sara Streeter) for the small turnout of folks ready for social media conversation. The smaller head count allowed for a much more intimate series of conversations.

A highlight of the morning was a challenge offered up by Jeff Pulver. It involved creating a brand new word to describe the experience of meeting someone online and then later on in real life. The word could not already exist and had to be capable of being used as a verb. We came up with quite a few candidates during the 2 hour session and were even able to get some instant feedback on our creations from the BlogTV chat room while Jeff streamed the entire breakfast live via EVDO. The search for that perfect word is being continued on various blogs as well as Facebook.

Muffins with Mavens

Wednesday morning not only brought Bryan Person’s Social Media Breakfast 5 event to the S & S Restarant in Cambridge, but it brought an ugly mix of snow and rain that attempted to slow down the early commute. Despite the tricky traveling, the event was very well attended. It was nice to see a good number of new faces in the crowd along with the regular set of social media mavens.

SMB5 was sponsored by our client, Mzinga, and featured a series of 5-minute speeches from Scott Monty, Doug Haslam, Jim Storer and Laura Fitton on how Twitter has changed their lives. Each presenter brought a unique and engaging story to their discovery, use and love for Twitter. Steve Garfield was able to provide a live broadcast of each speaker via his Nokia N95 for those who were challenged by the weather.

In addition to the numerous still photos that were taken at the event, I was able to capture footage of the speeches. You’ll find the speech by Mzinga’s Jim Storer below. Links to additional media created from the event can be found in the round-up post on socialmediabreakfast.com.


Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Breakfast Tour

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Boston is a great place to be if your job revolves around social media. Each month you can count on multiple events taking place, and all of them are supported by a tight-knit bunch of social media and PR professionals.

One such event is the Social Media Breakfast, which was the brainchild of Boston’s own Bryan Person. Bryan founded the concept of the Social Media Breakfast in 2007 and has successfully organized four events to date. His fifth is scheduled for February 13th in Cambridge, Massachusetts and reservations quickly filled up in a few days. Jeff Pulver also brought his flavor of social media to Boston in 2007 in the form of his “Real-Time Social Networking” event which he started in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

The concept is simple. Take online activities like “tagging” or posting on your friend’s wall and apply them to a real person! Jeff provides small stickers for real-time tagging and Post-It notes for people who want to post to each other’s walls. His first of these events in Bean-town was a well received evening affair at Vox Populi. His second was a mash-up between between Bryan’s SMB concept and his own real-time networking idea. Are you ready to move to Boston yet?

Fortunately for those outside of Boston, Jeff has begun taking the Person/Pulver mash-up on the road as “Breakfast with Pulver (and friends).” Scheduled dates for February include:

A date for San Jose, California is also scheduled for March 17th, but will be specifically for friends attending the Spring 2008 VON.x Conference. Additional events for Chicago, Atlanta, Toronto, Montreal, Nashua, London (UK) and more are being planned for futures dates. A Facebook account is required to get more details on each event and to RSVP.

Employees of PerkettPR will be at Jeff’s Breakfast in Providence on the February 12th as well as Bryan’s Social Media Breakfast in Cambridge on the 13th. I highly recommend attending one or more of the events if you reside in or near any of the cities listed. Its guaranteed to be great time filled with food, fun and networking. Besides, where else can you cover someone with stickies in public and get away with it?!

Crunchies or Crashies?

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Crunchies or Crashies, call them what you like..either way call it an entertaining evening in San Francisco on Friday.

The Crunchies 2007

Attending the Crunchies was a great way to end a very busy work week. Upon arriving at the Herbst Theatre it was clear the bubble was back in full effect (or on its way to bursting, according to the usual cynics and of course the Richter Scales). Though the exuberance was rational, there were some flash signs of the days of old, the folks from Tesla Motors had one of their super-spendy electric cars parked out in front of theatre (who said you had to sacrifice sophistication to go green?) and there were massive search lights attracting passers-by and pointing them in the right direction to tech party fun. The camera crews from the local broadcast stations and video bloggers like PopSnap’s Sarah Myers were circling Michael Arrington, and others, to get some good pre-awards ceremony sound bytes and, of course, the usual party crashers were there too.

As with other TechCrunch events, the place was filled with overly enthusiastic students and bloggers, budding entrepreneurs and established CEOs, as well as the marketing and PR folks like us doing their best to network while juggling flashing mobile devices, handshakes and a drink, pre-ceremony. All of us were in the same boat with our thoughts though, hoping to see our company or client take home one of the coveted Crunchie monkey statues, or, at the very least, be entertained on a Friday night — and that we were. Check out this hilarious (though somewhat vulgar) acceptance speech video from the fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons). Apparently no one from Apple was available to attend the ceremony and accept the award so the Crunchies had a great laugh at their expense, and so did the rest of us! Also check out the Cool Whip response from Twine in the first set of video interviews section — very funny guy. The Richter Scales also had us laughing with their catchy tech party song, Here Comes Another Bubble.

Arrington along with Om Malik (who courageously still made it on stage 15 days post heart surgery), Matt Marshall and Richard MacManus were all gracious hosts and entertaining presenters. The event flowed just as well as any other first-year awards ceremony, with a few hiccups, that Arrington was the first to point out and remedy, (like never, ever leaving the stage empty), and the unscripted “Blogger Bash” panel, moderated byDan Farber, that was a bit rushed. All in all, that the event was a great success for the four blogs that hosted, all the companies that were nominated, and for those that won the coveted, crazy monkey “Crunchie.” And for the rest of us, the night was a chance to celebrate what a cool and crazy year in tech it has been. It was great to see the tremendous amount of activity that has happened in tech this year culminate in one nicely put together event. Congratulations to all the winners, and look forward to seeing you all at the next big valley celebration sometime soon.

Thanks to Mike, Om, Matt, and Richard for hosting all of us tech geeks and reminding us what a great ride it’s been –so far (I mean the second time) ☺!

PerkettPR speaks with Mark Pascarella, CEO of Gotuit at TechCrunch Boston

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TechCrunch Boston was a great place to meet new people and to connect with old friends and clients, like the focus of today’s blog entry and interview, Mark Pascarella, CEO of Gotuit Media, a former client and sometimes project partner of ours. We’ve been big fans of Gotuit for a few years now and loved hearing about the recent successes they have been experiencing in the mobile space with the NFL Fantasy Football application through Sprint, their recent selection as Streaming Media Magazine’s 2007 Reader’s Choice Award for “Best Search and Indexing Platform” and their very impressive work with Sports Illustrated and Fox Reality Channel.

Check out our interview with Mark to hear more about what Gotuit has been up to, and why they came to network at the TechCrunch Boston MeetUp.

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