Posts Tagged ‘Internet Summit’
Thursday, October 13th, 2011
 - Jack Krawczyk of StumbleUpon is one of the presenters at the upcoming Internet Summit in Raleigh
StumbleUpon, which lets users find web sites they might like based on those they surf, has hit a record 20 million users and 1 billion stumbles a month, according to the company.
The company says the user growth is due to new features, mobile use, according to VentureBeat.
If you haven’t tried it, StumbleUpon is fun and will likely show you sites you’ll enjoy. We’ve found new sites using it, although it’s one of those things we don’t use during work hours much. It can be addictive.
Here are some tips on how to use it for marketing.
StumbleUpon, bought by eBay in 2007, then sold back to its founders after two years, raised a $17 million funding round in May.
For some inside insight into StumbleUpon marketing, you can hear Jack Krawczyk, senior product marketing manager of StumbleUpon, along with 120 other top presenters at the upcoming Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, Nov. 15-16.
Krawczyk is responsible for the product marketing development of advertising and partnership solutions. Focused on Paid Discovery, StumbleUpon’s social media marketing platform, Krawczyk has been working closely with marketers to understand how to better engage brand promise with consumers who are in the mindset of discovery.
Tags: Internet Summit, Jack Krawczyk, Marketing, NC, Raleigh, StumbleUpon, web site sharing
Posted in Internet/New Media, Marketing | Comments Off
Monday, July 18th, 2011
 Joe Procopio Adzerk Founder and CEO James Avery is the kind of guy you just sort of immediately feel a kinship with. It’s not because he’s filthy rich, although he is, or because he’s quick to give you a sticker, he’s got tons of them, it’s the fact that he’s a straight talker who always happens to know exactly what he’s talking about.
Example: At the recent Tech Jobs Under the Big Top job fair, when a dozen RTP startups got up on stage to present to roughly 250 job seekers, Avery showed a minute or two of the Startup Guys video, which then faded to black with the caption:
“Not all startups are full of ****.”
What Did He Just Say?
Huge laugh from the crowd, but this is exactly what Avery is about. It’s a joke, right? Or is it? I dig that. Plus he hired someone from that event, so obviously at least one other person dug it as well.
I feel a kinship with Avery because we took a similar path. We both got out of the corporate technology world and started one-person consulting practices that grew over time into larger and more successful consulting practices. Neither of us were ultimately happy, no wait, neither of us were fulfilled. Something was missing.
It was the startup thing.
So while I started shifting the focus of my practice to the startup world, Avery went out and started another company.
Enter Adzerk
More specifically, he bought an ad network in 2007 which was bare bones, and he replaced it and built on top of it. In the beginning, he was only using it for himself, but then he started another vertical ad network and modified the software to run both of them, The Lounge and Ruby Row.
When he tried to start a third ad network, he realized that the software itself was a more compelling play than creating and running ad networks.
Now, there’s a long history of companies in the ad-tech industry trying to run networks and sell software at the same time, and usually the software part ends up becoming the ugly stepchild. You just can’t do both and have both be successful. So in December 2010, he sold off one of the ad networks and focused on the stepchild.
The RTP Startup Playbook
An office in American Underground came first. And when the Underground announced via Twitter that Adzerk was moving in, Avery got a tweet asking if he was hiring.
Now he had space, an engineer, and a little bit of runway. So when he saw how much of an impact those dollars made, he knew he needed more.
He ran the gamut of the RTP support structure, including the aforementioned job fair, the CED Venture Conference (although he knew everyone there), TechMedia’s Internet Summit (where he met the guys from Argyle, Spring Metrics, and JobKatch), Launch Durham (although he launched at Calacanis’ LAUNCH Conference), and even though he was too far along for Startup Stampede or Launchbox, he eventually hired three former Launchboxers.
Elevator Pitch
Most every ad server has two fundamental problems. It’s likely built on 90s technology and it’s probably run by a big media company.
Adzerk is independent and based on current generation technology. And they innovate. Right now they have what Avery calls an “incrementally better ad server.” It’s faster, the ads get served asynchronously, stats are real time, all cloud based, scales quickly.
Some publishers care a lot about this, others don’t. So Adzerk has carved out a market where those features are differentiators. But Avery knows that having an “incrementally better” mousetrap is not enough.
So Adzerk is going after bigger game. They’re bucking the traditional model – enterprise software, contracts, etc. Thus, the pitch becomes “let’s change the way ad-serving works.”
Good pitch!
Eight months go by. $650K seed round.
This is where the story gets a little funny, because out of that $650K Avery finished raising this month, exactly $25,000, or just a little under 4%, came from in-state.
Avery says he was naïve as every other first-time fundraiser, figuring he’d go to the people he knew, find the right ones at the right time, and get just what he needed to get to the next level. It took about a month before he realized he needed to talk to anyone and everyone who would pick up the phone. So he did.
That says two things. But neither of them is a soap-boxy “Local investors need to invest in more local companies!”
Santa Claus. What?
I’ve got a great analogy for this. This is like asking Santa Claus to quit bringing a bunch of presents every Christmas and instead just show up with one present on the 25th of each month.
I know. That one came to me in a traffic jam.
The frustrating thing about the RTP investment region is that we’ve got a bunch of investors and a bunch of startups but 95% of the time the goals of one do not match the intentions of the other, and vice versa.
When Avery and I discussed this, the lament wasn’t “Man, it would be cool if the local VCs would start investing their big bucks in early stage companies,” it was more like “Man, it would be cool if we had some apparatus here by which several early-stage companies could raise $100K on a standard term sheet.”
That’s the first thing. The second thing is a lot more hopeful.
Startup Investing Enters the 2000s
Adzerk’s path to funding is not unique. There have been a number of investments here lately that have involved money from the west coast, New York, pretty much everywhere, and it’s getting easier. During his fundraise, Avery left the area twice, and one of those trips was to shake hands with the lead before they signed the term sheet.
It’s a good tale, a no-BS founder product company with customers and revenue operates within a robustly-evolving support system to land seed-stage money and swing for the fences
Rinse and repeat, people.
Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for sports media startup StatSheet . He also owns consulting firm Intrepid Company (http://IntrepidCompany.com) and creative network Intrepid Media and runs the startup social ExitEvent (http://ExitEvent.com). Joe can be reached via Twitter @jproco and read at joeprocopio.com.
Tags: Adzerk, Adzerk seed round, Amercian Underground, CED Venture Conference, Durham, Internet Summit, James Avery, Joe Procopio, NC, RTP, RTP Startup Playbook, Startup Guys, Startups, Tech Jobs Under the Big Top
Posted in Carolinas, Columns, Events, Internet/New Media, IT, North Carolina, Tech Culture, TechLife | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
 Brian Solis When you hear experts discuss social media during interviews for stories or at events such as the Digital Summit or upcoming Digital East and Internet Summit events TechMedia puts on annually, you begin to hear a consensus evolve regarding best practices. Top Rank’s Lee Odden captured 35 such insights from a key note presentation by Brian Solis, summing up many of the best business approaches to social media marketing we’ve heard.
First, Solis says, keep in mind that social media provides and opportunity to do something more meaningful than just marketing.
He notes that social media provides tools to help you connect and engage and that each social platform is its own community. Where do you start? Ask “what makes your business special?”
It’s easy enough to go wrong. Why do people unlike brands on Facebook? Solis says the brands “post too often and posts are too promotional.” That’s exactly in line with what we hear from other experts. You can’t just sell, sell, sell in social media communities. “It’s not just about engagement, it’s about being engaging.” — Allan Maurer
Full story.
Tags: 35 business social media insights, Brian Solis, Digital East, Digital Summit, Events, facebook, Internet Summit, Top Rank
Posted in Business advice, Events, Facebook, Internet/New Media, social media | Comments Off
Monday, February 14th, 2011
By Allan Maurer
ATLANTA – Pandora, the popular make-your-own-stations Internet radio service, plans to launch a $100 million initial public offering of stock, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Reports say the offering is not expected for at least three months and the amount it plans to raise could change.
Joe Kennedy, president and CEO of Pandora, was a speaker at TechMedia’s 2009 Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC. TechMedia’s next event is the Southeast Venture Conference in Atlanta March 2-3, followed by its first Atlanta-based Digital Summit, May 16-18.
We interviewed Kennedy, who has been CEO of the company since 2005, prior to the 2009 event.
He told us that when innovation strikes in media, winners are those who see the unique possibilities of the new medium, not those trying to replicate existing media.
When it comes to Internet radio, says Kennedy, “Much of it simply took broadcast radio and transferred it to the net. Then we came along giving people the unique capability to personalize it.”
Pandora allows users to enter the name of a song, band, or performer to create his own radio stations themed similarly to them.
“So now, Internet radio is something different than broadcast radio. The challenge for everyone as new capabilities develop is how they can truly change the game rather than extending what came before.”
We’ve used Pandora for several years now and while it does have competitors in the space, it seems to be the best known. We use it even more now that we have a stand-alone Internet radio which includes Pandora (among other services) among its apps.
The digital media space is hot. Successful exits for venture-backed digital and social media firms with a strong user base are piling up. We spoke to Atlanta-based Greg Foster, a founder of BrightWhistle, a digital media specialist on the board of The Onion, another digital media firm in the news lately, and co-founder of online lead generation firm, BrightWhistle, which will present at TechMedia’s Southeast Venture Conference in Atlanta March 2-3. We asked Foster if all this digital media excitement is hype.
“Every market has the potential to be over-hyped,” he says. But he doesn’t think that’s true of the digital media space. “I think there is a simple explanation,” he says. “We’ve been going up this curve since 2006-2007, but the macro economic impact of the last few years had a huge effect. Now we’re taking up where we left off.”
In the intervening years, he notes, some of these companies “Continued to build business to a critical mass.” Now, he adds, there is a convergence of ad dollars flowing to the space, sophisticated targeting with Twitter and Facebook, the ability to use people to influence decisions, online reputation management. “All these things are creating enormous opportunities,” he says.
“The really big news for digital media companies is that the IPO market opened a bit.” That’s borne out by Pandora’s move toward an IPO, which follows the successful IPO of online content producer Demand Media last month, and LinkedIn Corp.’s filing for an IPO last week.
“That’s great news for the early stage market in digital media,” Foster says. “It compels buyers to spend more and drives up valuations. Buyers have to compete with the threat of a company going public. That’s where you want to be.”
That seems to be working already for established players.
AOL bought The Huffington Post for $325 million, Yahoo bought Associated Content, and the secondary market for shares in Twitter and Facebook seem almost over-heated. “We’ll continue to see big acquisitions,” says Foster.
Cool Iris funded
Another popular digital media firm, Cooliris, which has had more than 35 million downloads of its 3D wall, essentially a visual browser, has raised $9.6 million in third round funding from its existing investors.It is also launching a new service, LiveShare 1.2, a way to communicate online or mobile devices via live, shared photo streams.
They include: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, The Westly Group, and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Venture. It previously raised more than $20 million.
“With over 35 million downloads of our iconic Cooliris 3D Wall, we’ve established a good beachhead in media browsing, and now with our newest release of LiveShare we are transforming the group media sharing experience,” commented Soujanya Bhumkar, CEO and co-founder said.
Cooliris is a quick, fun way to see the latest videos and hottest photos and trending stories on the web, but we don’t use it as much as we do many other services. Its Gallery app for the Android mobile operating system and other visual browsing and sharing platforms may increase its popularity, though.
LiveShare is now available free on iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7, as well as at www.liveshare.com.
Email TJS Editor Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournal South dot com.
Tags: Atlanta, Brightwhistle, Cooliris funded, digital media hype, Digital media on a roll, Greg Foster, Internet Summit, Joe Kennedy, NC, Pandora CEO, Pandora files for IPO, Raleigh, Southeast Venture Conference
Posted in Carolinas, Georgia, Internet/New Media, IPOs, IT, Marketing, Money, North Carolina | Comments Off
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
 Wayne Sutton RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NC – Wayne Sutton, a well known Research Triangle, NC-based social media expert, is joining TechMedia as Director of Digital. Sutton will focus on developing content for Tech Media conferences and act as a social and community ambassador.
With over 10 years experience in technology and the social media sector Sutton, helps individuals, startups and businesses succeed in understanding how to communicate online via brand strategy, social networks and mobile marketing.
TechMedia is TechJournal South’s parent company. It puts on the annual Southeast Venture Conference, the Internet Summit in Raleigh, Digital East in the Potomac region, and the Deck Party networking events in the Research Triangle and elsewhere in the Southeast.
“I’m excited about joining the TechMedia team and looking forward to helping to educate, network and build the region’s technology economy through events and media,” Sutton said.
Sutton has provided counsel to business leaders ranging from Inc 500 companies, founders of small start-ups and representatives of nonprofit organizations to CEOs of large and small corporations. Sutton is an active content creator and his blog SocialWayne.com has been recognized as one of the Top 50 Social Media and Technology blogs of 2010 and ranks among the AdAge Power 150.
Sutton has been active in the Triangle, NC community as an event organizer of Ignite Raleigh, Triangle Startup Weekend, Triangle Tweetup, the Social Media Business Forum and the past Triangle Social Media club chapter president.
As an entrepreneur Sutton has cofounded a various startups and spoken at technology conferences and events such as SXSW, Social Media Breakfast, BrandCampU, Triangle American Marketing Association, TIMA, PRSA, FutureM/GEOM, Pubcon Austin and Blog World. Staying current with the ever changing trends in the technology community, Wayne loves blogging, educating and inspiring others.
Tech Media’s Scott Hedrick said, “We’re thrilled to add Wayne to our growing team, and believe he’s a great fit for where our organization is going”
Tags: Digital East, Director of Digital, Internet Summit, Scott Hedrick, Southeast Venture Conference, Tech Media, Wayne Sutton
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
By Allan Maurer
 Alan Fitzpatrick CHARLOTTE, NC – For a time, the video telephone – a staple of science fiction from the pulp magazines of the 1920s to Kubrick’s “2001,” and beyond, were, along with flying cars, one of those sci-fi predictions that just didn’t happen. Now, with smartphones, PCs, and a host of other devices capable of both video and telecom along with the broadband service supporting them, that may be changing.
Alan Fitzpatrick decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge last year to form his start-up MailVu because he saw the much-hyped online and tele-video era actually coming into being as Internet infrastructure caught up with those picture-phone dreams of sci-fi.
A 22-year veteran of the telecom industry, Fitzpatrick notes, “The technology and idea has been around for years, but the infrastructure is available now for anyone to use video anywhere.”
His MailVu service, launched this year, features an easy-to-use interface that lets people record a video message of up to 10 minutes and send to anyone on virtually any device. “It’s the quickest, easiest and fastest way to send private video messages,” he says.
Fitzpatrick, CEO, and his co-founder Addy Kapur, both veterans of ACN, launched MailVu earlier this year, self-funding it. The current consumer-facing free service is partly a way to attract users and provide value, “Then monetize it when you have traction.”
The economics of creating an Internet start-up are so different from the boom years when it took millions to open a company’s doors that many entrepreneurs are following similar models. They launch with an initial product, create a user base and technology then roll out products they sell.
MailVu is no different. Fitzpatrick says it has just started selling business plans, mostly to customers who asked for a version of the company’s technology they could brand or modify for business purposes. “It’s nice when customers come to us,” he says.
MailVu was a demo company at the recent Internet Summit in Raleigh, where he says “We were pleased with the reception we got.”
Next year, Fitzpatrick says, MailVu will seek a $500,000 seed funding. “That should take us to profitability,” he says.
That’s different from the Internet boom years, too. The first Internet firm I worked for, dbusiness.com, spent $17 million in two years and still folded up when the bubble burst.
Fitzpatrick is enthusiastic about the potential for the potential of digital video. “Companies like Skype have really made the market with 500 million users worldwide and 40 percent using video. A Cisco study said online video will increase 34 percent compounded annually through 2014.
“We saw what the market was doing while at ACN and decided, ‘Let’s get into this space ourselves,” Fitzpatrick adds.
The MailVU service does have some unique features, such as the ability to recall a video or have it self-destruct after a certain number of views. “We believe there will be a backlash against the public nature of social networking,” says Fitzpatrick. “People will want privacy.”
While there is lots of talk about a new Internet bubble forming, Fitzpatrick says that may be true on the West Coast, where funding criteria are different. Here on the East Coast and the Southeast in particular, he says, “There is a more conservative approach. Here you need a good business model. User growth is great, but you need a solid business behind it to get funded. So maybe Southeast companies will have a longer lifespan because they’re build more on business fundamentals.”
As for MailVu, “What you see now is the tip of the iceberg,” says Fitzpatrick. “We didn’t design this to be a video mail company. That’s just our first product.”
Tags: Abby Kapur, ACN, Alan Fitzpatrick, business video, Internet Summit, MailVu, online video, video mail
Posted in Carolinas, Company Profile, Internet/New Media, North Carolina, Telecommunications | Comments Off
Monday, November 29th, 2010
By Joe Procopio
Man! Why did I use up all my clown phone jokes on the Droid X column? The Galaxy tab situation is ripe, RIPE I tell you, for a plethora of this kind of thing:
 Models courtesy of Prestige Worldwide And while calling the Droid X a clown phone was just a way to poke harmless fun at the (viable) oversized handset trend, there is actual substance to said comparison when it comes to the Galaxy.
On first glance, and even over several slapstick-style double takes, the Samsung Galaxy tab is a giant Android handset. Same buttons, same interface, same apps, same screens. It also runs current Android 2.2, which we know isn’t optimized for tablet performance, so for the early adopter, the Galaxy really is a giant Android smartphone that can’t make calls.
Although why they didn’t support basic mobile phone is a puzzler. Give me a headset and there’s no reason why I wouldn’t make calls on the device. In fact, that very capability would allow me to leave my mobile at home in the exact same scenario that would make me choose to leave my laptop at home and bring along only the Galaxy.
Business Lite
That’s the scenario I’m referring to. I think the iPad has been in existence long enough to make this concept self-explanatory, but I’ll summarize it just to make sure. My mom reads this column, you know?
I got my hands on the Galaxy exactly five minutes before leaving for this year’s Internet Summit. The device was absolutely perfect for the event. I could take notes, write, follow the tweetstream and add to it, check my mail, even do some light work.
The Galaxy allowed me to accomplish way more than I could with my smartphone, and I didn’t miss any functionality from my laptop – based on the fact that I knew ahead of time that I wouldn’t be doing anything labor-intensive at the conference.
Except groaning at puns. A whole lot of Internet puns.
The Third Device Niche
That opens up the third device niche. My laptop replaced my desktop long ago, allowing me to work anywhere. My smartphone replaced a razor thin slice of said laptop functionality, allowing me to go to some meetings, events, and weddings without lugging around a bag. The tablet expands that thin slice dramatically.
So unless I’m in my home office or my office office, I can keep the laptop on my desk or at least in my car (it’s in the trunk so step off, thugs!), and just bring the Galaxy. Thanks to the cloud and the size of the device, I can even get work done.
Android vs. Apple?
If you’ve read me before, you know I just want everyone to shut up about Android versus Apple. These arguments usually make New Kids on the Block versus Backstreet Boys screeching contests sound nuanced. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of that reference being relevant again. Also depressed.
Anyone in their right mind has to give Apple props for inventing the gadget with the funny name that was the wrong size and didn’t do anything new. Once everyone realized that this was way more than just a really cool multimedia player, the third device niche became a real possibility.
The Galaxy ups the ante in two ways.
One: The entry of a second established player into the niche creates competition, which creates choice, which creates mainstream acceptance.
Two: The Form Factor.
Having used both devices in my day-to-day, I can say without hesitation that the 7-inch Galaxy is a much better size for my (and to repeat as a preemptive strike before the comments start getting all flamy) MY third device niche.
It’s actually not a clown phone, it’s a little tiny iPad.
Let me explain. Much like the iPad and iPhone, it takes about ten seconds for an Android user to figure out how get everything they need out of the Galaxy. It’s the same device, true down to the OS, with some cool add-on functionality to take advantage of the bigger screen.
But unlike the iPad, I can hold it vertically and type, like I would hold my smartphone (well, not exactly, but I can do the thumb thing). It’s big enough for apps and video, big enough to use on a desk and type, and small enough to fit in a jacket pocket.
However, beyond that, the differences are just flavor.
But how great is it that amidst the dawn of the tablet wars Microsoft finally released a working smartphone? Momentum!
Android + Apple vs. Amazon
This is the real battle now. The addition of Android to the tablet mix creates a kind of a Venn diagram of what you can do in the third device niche, where the limits are, with the common area being what should become the norm.
And if “Read E-Books” is in that common area, you can draw another little tiny circle around that and label it “E-Reader.” Yeah, they do other things. In fact, the Nook is basically a skinned down Android tablet, but that actually makes my point stronger.
Again, Apple created the market, Android expanded it, and the two together force the Kindle into obsolescence. Or at least shrink its niche market way down to basically people who read a lot and straight-up technophobes.
Building products for either one of those groups is pretty much a sign you’ve wandered off the cutting edge.
Chick Magnet?
This is not a groundbreaking device on its own. When my friends first brought their iPads to conferences (and who’s the man now?), they were inundated with attention. This did not happen with the Galaxy. The looks I got were either along the lines of “damn, that’s a big phone” or “wow, that guy has HUGE hands!”
I’m paraphrasing.
As Android has done before, it provides the alternative, nicely done, with a lot more freedom and all the issues that come along with that. It’s reportedly selling like crazy, so when the tablet-optimized Android OS is released, the Pad Wars will heat up again.
The cool thing is that regardless, you and I win.
Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for StatSheet. He also owns consulting firm Intrepid Company (intrepidcompany.com) and creative network Intrepid Media (intrepidmedia.com) He’d like to reiterate that he’s ready to be an Apple fanboy as soon as they return his phone calls and potentially creepy emails. He can be reached via twitter @jproco.
Tags: column, Internet Summit, Joe Procopio, Samsung Galaxy review, Viewpoint
Posted in Carolinas, Columns, North Carolina, Reviewed, Telecommunications, Viewpoint | 6 Comments »
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
By Allan Maurer
 Jeanette Gibson, director of social media marketing at Cisco, one of many women who participated in the 2010 Internet Summit RALEIGH, NC – I was standing in line for coffee after I checked in at Tech Media’s Internet Summit last Wednesday and noticed there were two women in front of me, one along side, several behind me and a significant number in the traffic heading to event programming rooms. Now I’m not complaining. But I first noticed this trend of increasing numbers of women at our earlier Digital East event in Tysons Corner, VA in October. Only a few years ago, many fewer women attended tech-centric events such as these.
So, I turned to one of the women in front of me and said, “There are more women at these Internet events every time. Do you think that’s because of social media?”
She thought for a second as she stirred cream into her coffee. “Well,” she said, “marketing, period.”
Later, several women noticed there were more women at the Summit and mentioned it in tweets (the event made Twitter’s top ten Trends, Thursday, as its tech savvy attendees cranked out hundreds of tweets every few minutes during presentations).
Of course there have always been women in tech, many at high levels of executive responsibility and not a few with technology skills second to none. Participants in the event included women in top positions from Cisco, SAS, Newsforce, Red Hat, Microsoft, and others, not to mention PR, marketing and law firms. But women in attendance were considerably more scarce only a short time ago.
Then it struck me. I’ve heard many Internet and marketing thought-leaders at these events say that in the not-too-distant future, the Internet would cease to be something talked about separate and be just an accepted, every day part of all significant marketing, and for that matter, of life in general. That is indeed what I think is happening.
I do believe that social media, with its emphasis on connections and human relationships, has drawn many more women into roles that are often Net-centric. Whether true or not, women are certainly perceived as handling relationships better than men, so many are tapped to handle the rapidly emerging social networking strategies of PR firms, Fortune 500 companies and startups alike.
But the real change, I suspect, is that as predicted, the Internet and technology are now becoming so integrated with marketing and the ways we do business that is just essential to us all as infrastructure.
The rapid and continuing emergence of mobile as a platform of choice contributes to that.
Mobile is the future
I was amused during a late Thursday discussion on stage, the moderator asked Anthony Napolitano, Director of Sales & Business Development, StumbleUpon, what the future holds. “Mobile,” he said, then after a brief pause, he added, “Profound.”
Everyone, of course, sees mobile opportunities everywhere, and that was one of the hottest topics at the event, how to harness a business to the emerging mobile commerce engine.
At our second Internet Summit a year ago, someone tweeted that he “Never saw so many Blackberries flip open at once,” when a presentation started. At this Summit, however, we saw fewer people working on phones and many more working on Windows-based netbooks and small laptops, Mac laptops, and the occasional iPad.
We hear that iPads were in abundance at the West Coast Tech Crunch conference earlier in the fall. Is that a West Coast/East Coast difference? We saw a handful at the Summit, often provided by employers, we learned when we asked. They looked like great devices to check email or write short tweets, but they are not, one person told us, “The easiest thing to do work on.”
Email TechJournal South Editor/writer Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.
Tags: Anthony Napolitano, Cisco, Digital East, Internet Summit, iPads, Jeanette Gibson, mobile, Stumble Upon, Tech Crunch, women at tech events
Posted in Carolinas, Events, Internet/New Media, North Carolina | Comments Off
Friday, November 19th, 2010
By Joe Procopio
 Joe Procopio I’m often asked why I attend so many events, not just locally, but anywhere. This is an especially odd phenomenon when you consider the fact that I generally don’t like people.
My answer is always the same, and it’s not particularly groundbreaking, but I’m shocked that more techies and business folks and marketing wonks don’t understand this. It’s not about the theme, it’s not about the location, it’s not about the speakers, it’s not even about the content.
Well, it isn’t and it is. All four are key factors in a successful event. If you’ve got a good theme, like “the Internet,” and a good location, like Raleigh, and you throw in a mix of high tech giants and high buzz entrepreneurs talking about the current and future state of the web, then you’ll get the primary reason why people show up.
The Attendees.
I know I just said that you need people get people, but this is the conundrum of any good event, just like it’s the conundrum of any good party. And that presents the depressing notion that real life is a lot like high school – if you don’t have the jocks and the cheerleaders, you’re not going to get everyone else.
Luckily, at the kind of events I attend in real life, we’re talking about the jocks and cheerleaders of the nerds. These happen to be much better people, for one thing, and for another, it doesn’t take a whole lot to get them super motivated.
If you can get a dozen people to show up and blab about Ruby for three hours, you can get a few thousand to show up to hear what the dude behind Playboy.com has to say about making money on the web.
Sorry, easy joke.
But they also happen to be you.
You Get an A for Effort, Poindexter
In my last column, I talked about how Brad Feld, when asked how we should go about maintaining a successful entrepreneurial community, answered that we needed a shared desire by a whole bunch of people (an allusion to all of us in the room) to see said community happen.
So when you attend a 3-hour discussion about Ruby, it’s usually because you want to be more better at Ruby. When you attend an event like Internet Summit, where the conversation swirls around the future of the Internet, it means that you not only want to be a part of said future, but you might also want to help create it.
Full Disclosure
These words that you’re reading appear in TechJournal South, another part the digital kingdom owned by TechMedia, the company that puts on Internet Summit. I want you to be aware of that so you can read the next part and qualify it… however you want. Don’t care.
The Internet Summit is, without question, the highlight event for techies and friends of tech in the RTP, maybe the entire Southeast. And it’s not due to the theme – let’s face it, a discussion of the future of the Internet is like a discussion of the orange of “Hey Jude.”
It’s not about the location. It’s in Raleigh, but it could have been anywhere. Last month’s Digital East was in DC, and it was essentially the Internet Summit of DC. It reflected DC like Internet Summit reflects the RTP, but it doesn’t define the event. NASCAR, college basketball, and Superchunk are probably doing a lot with the Internet. They weren’t there.
It’s not about the speakers and the content. Sometimes, speakers were under-prepared. Other times, they were about 9 months behind the curve. A few times, they just hyped their own company. See, I’m not defending the badge.
It’s not about the content, and even if it were, all that content got tweeted out. If you weren’t there, search Twitter for #isum10. You just got the whole thing.
1500 Reasons Why
But all of those things together brought 1500 people out of the woodwork, both from here and from very far away, to talk about the current and future state of the Internet. And they talked about it by asking questions, either by Twitter or just asked the old fashioned way (they one where you raise your hand and stuff).
They talked about it by networking in the lobby and the open area out front and the terrace and the reception and the after-party and the after-after-party.
Did you go to the after-after-party?
They’ll also keep talking about it, based on the exchange of business cards, Twitter follows, Linked Ins, and Facebook friends made.
And speaking of the future of the Internet, does anyone still use Facebook?. There you go.
Goldmine
That’s why I go to all these events. I can always pick up on something, some problem to solve, some inspiration that unlocks some idea (like a column, or maybe a company), or just a general understanding, a finger on the pulse of 1500 people who kind of know what they’re talking about or are at least learning.
That alone is worth the price of admission. And it wouldn’t happen without the right theme, the right location, the right speakers, and the right content.
Well, that and a whole lot of hard work. But that’s another column.
Joe Procopio owns intrepidcompany.com and intrepidmedia.com and puts his writing up at joeprocopio.com. He also recently joined StatSheet to head up product engineering. He can be reached via twitter @jproco.
Tags: #isum, Columns, Internet Summit, Joe Procopio, NC, Playboy.com, Raleigh, twitter
Posted in Carolinas, Columns, Internet/New Media, North Carolina | 3 Comments »
Thursday, November 18th, 2010
 Chip Perry - President and CEO, AutoTrader.com RALEIGH, NC – More than 1,400 people are hearing from top Internet thought-leaders at the third annual Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, with Chip Perry, president and CEO of Atlanta-based AutoTrader.com delivering the first morning keynote presentation. Paul Lee, managing director of Playboy Enterprises will follow Lee.
Simultaneously at the content-packed event, sessions on Online Advertising, Mobile Apps and Platforms, and Enterprise in 2011 are ongoing in early morning presentations.
Other topics covered throughout the day include Maximizing Email Marketing, CIO/CTI Viewpoints, Usaility and Cutomer Experiences, and Advertising and the Real Time World. Many more presentation follow during the afternoon segment.
The event is trending in the top ten on Twitter this morning. And already, the Twitterstream at (#isummit10) is abuzz with tweets from attendees. We noticed during the first day of the event and at others that the take-aways from the Twitter stream nearly always reflect the same points we jot down as a journalist.
From AutoTrader’s Chip Perry this morning, we’re seeing the following take-away tweets:
The Internet is now the primary way people shop for cars.
Internet is an influencing medium. AutoTrader, for instance, helps dealers influence their buyers rather than driving them directly to a sale.
The important thing to know is your customer’s buying habits.
From Paul Lee of Playboy talk:
Playboy adds 4,000 Facebook fans a day and is currently at 3 million.
Playboy has launched a search for “Miss Social Media.” The contest has turned into a “virtual economy” in which girls make entrepreneurial efforts to win votes.
From a presentation on Mobile apps:
30 percent of apps are free.
Ads drive revenue in free apps.
Mobile apps are perfect partners for review sites.
It takes as many marketing dollars as development dollars to make a successful app.
The best way to make money with a fee app is advertising with an in-app purchase option.
Data is online currency.
Eyes move in an F formation online. (This is important in web site design and the way content is presented).
Top ranked apps rated by downloads may not be top grossing. More expensive apps make more money with fewer downloads.
Other takeaways from today’s and yesterday’s sessions:
Mobile is becoming more and more integrated with social media.
Offline and online marketing need to work together.
Research shows people spend an equal amount of time online and watching TV.
The fastest growing user segment on Facebook is women over 45.
Bloggers should use an editorial calendar and post consistently.
Don’t create an audience for a blog and then fail to deliver content.
Think of writing company blog posts as industry publications.
Company’s must have a social media policy in place outlining what employees can and cannot say.
Great entrepreneurs take risks, but they measure and test early and often and adapt their strategies.
Churchill said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
 The Internet Summit, an annual event, is presented by Tech Media, parent company of TechJournal South, and Raleigh venture capital firm, Southern Capitol Ventures.
Tags: AutoTrader, blogging, facebook, Internet Summit, mobile apps, NC, Playboy, Raleigh, twitter
Posted in Carolinas, Events, Internet/New Media, North Carolina, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 12th, 2010
RALEIGH, NC – With only a few days until the event, the Internet Summit 2010 is nearing capacity and says fewer than 40 seats remain available. The event expects record crowd for one of the nations largest web conferences, which brings more than 100 digital thought-leaders to the Raleigh Convention Center November 17-18th in Raleigh, NC.
Speakers represent top Internet, Media and Information Technology brands such as Microsoft, Google, SAS, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, ABCNews.com, the Discovery Channel, Yelp, IBM, Cisco, Red Hat, Playboy, StumbleUpon, Autotrader.com, Mashable, ChannelAdvisor, ShopLocal, SkyMall and Lenovo among others.
They’ll be discussing topics such as social media, mobile marketing, search, analytics, cloud computing, big data, geolocation, usability, design and online advertising among many others – attendees walk away from the Internet Summit armed with the latest knowledge in Internet Marketing and business development best practices.
In addition, with numerous networking opportunities at the conference, attendees will develop instant relationships with key industry resources.
Tags: ABCNews.com, autotrader.com, ChannelAdvisor, Cisco, Google, IBM, Internet Summit, Mashable, Microsoft, NC, Playboy, Raleigh, Red Hat, Salesforce.com, SAS, ShopLocal, SkyMall and Lenovo, StumbleUpon, the Discovery Channel, Yahoo, Yelp
Posted in Carolinas, Events, Internet/New Media, North Carolina | Comments Off
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
 RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – Here’s a Veteran’s Day story we like: November 13, Kramden Institute will donate 250 computers to children of enlisted men and women stationed at Fort Bragg who do not have computers in their homes.
In many cases, the computers will connect children with their parents who are serving abroad. The children have been nominated by their teachers to receive the computers so they have access to technology and can achieve their full academic potential.
The PCs that the military families will receive were refurbished by volunteers from the computer manufacturer, Lenovo. Lenovo is Kramden’s founding sponsor and continues to partner with Kramden to bridge the digital divide by connecting deserving students with recycled and refurbished computers. This is the third time that Lenovo has sponsored a Give-A-Thon for families of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen from Ft. Bragg.
The Give-A-Thon will be held Saturday November 13 at the Reserve Center at Ft. Bragg (BLDG A-6292 Lewis and Pratt St.) from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. To learn more, call 919-293-1133 or go to www.kramden.org.
Kramden will have a booth at the upcoming Internet Summit Nov. 17-18.
Tags: donating computers to children of soldiers, Fort Bragg, Internet Summit, Kramden Institute, NC, RTP
Posted in Carolinas, Events, North Carolina | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
 Suzanne Gordon - VP and CIO, SAS By Allan Maurer
CARY, NC – Chief Information Officers often find themselves charged with helping companies save money through technology, downturn or not. Even an organization such as Cary-based SAS, which sells business intelligence and analytics software so successfully that no one heard of major layoffs due to a downturn.
The company has, of course, had relatively minor layoffs due to reorganizations and did institute a hiring freeze except for R&D and sales. But it also brings technology to bear to create savings, such as focusing more on video conferencing than travel.
SAS CIO Suzanne Gordon says she keeps her 300-person staff focused on aligning IT resources across the company “So we don’t have to reinvent the wheel everywhere,” she says.
She supports sales by frequently talking with other CIOs about how she, herself, uses SAS to manage the company’s IT infrastructure, balance resources and ensure high-quality service to internal and external clients alike.
Gordon, who was named a ComputerWorld Premier 100 IT leader in 2003, is one of more than 100 Internet and technology thought leaders participating in the upcoming Internet Summit, which has fewer than 100 seats left for its third annual event at the Raleigh, NC convention center Nov. 17-18. She’ll be part of the event’s CIO panel, which will consider ways companies have used technology to save money, among other topics.
Gordon tells us, “A lot of what we have done is to standardize things.” That includes going right down to the the laptop employees might use. That makes maintenance much easier.
Since SAS is a global company, it has global agreements with firms such as Microsoft, hardware vendors and so on. That means company offices in various countries don’t all need to spend time negotiating their own contracts and SAS gets better prices because of ordering in quantity.
Also, she notes, “A lot of people are spending more money on storage. Optimizing that means, she says, considering, “What are we storing? ARe we storing it on the right level of equipment? We look at that data with our own SAS analytics to see where we can do better and save money.”
Buying from as few vendors as possible is also a money-saving strategy. “You might want to buy from two so one doesn’t have a monopoly,” she says. “But the more vendors you have, the more people you need to support them.”
Over the last year, she says she has been working with the SAS R&D department to speed up software testing using virtualization technologies. “When we started it wasn’t even virtualization, but recent iterations have been.” She adds, “I’ve been in this business a while and cloud technology reminds me of being back in the mainframe time-sharing days.”
Another way SAS brings advanced tech to bear on its problems is by using Grid technology. “We take a difficult problem, especially from cusotmers, and run steps of it in parallel. Something that used to take days to do takes minutes or even seconds. We have been working with developers to set up that infrastructure in the most efficient ways.”
That sort of high performance computing saves customers, especially banks and retail firms, a lot of money by helping them make decisions quickly.
Gordon is a big advocate of using the SAS analytics software within SAS itself.
She is also “Very much a people person. I’m more about relationships and working better in collaboration. I blogged about that as I worked with IT people around the world, whether from Japan, Germany, India, Brazil or the US. People attracted to the IT profession are very similar. It attracts the same type of personality.”
What personality is that, we asked?
“They’re people who want to fix things. They’re constant learners. They love new technology and new things. They’re a great group to work with because making things better or fixing things makes them happy.”
While she blogs when “I have something to say,” she isn’t crazy about Twitter. “I find it hard to say what I want to say in a Tweet.”
Gordon notes that SAS has just built a new data center, including one to host some customer data. Even there, efficiency and environmental concerns are taken into account. The new data center uses reclaimed water for cooling.
Gordon clearly loves her job. “Working in a software company like SAS is great,” she says. “You have a whole building full of experts. If you need help, you have 1,000 people who love to solve problems. You’re never at a loss for people who known certain technologies.”
Tags: CIO, Internet Summit, SAS, saving money via technology, Suzanne Gordon
Posted in Carolinas, Events, IT, North Carolina | Comments Off
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
 In its first report on the use of “geosocial” or location-based services, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life project finds that 4% of online adults use a service such as Foursquare or Gowalla that allows them to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby. On any given day, 1% of internet users are using these services.
This is the second survey of the Pew Internet Project to ask about such “geosocial” or location-based services. The current number shows little change from the first time this question was asked, in a May 2010 survey, when 5% of adult internet users said they had used such a site.
Key findings:
- 7% the adults who go online with their mobile phone use a location-based service.
- 8% of online adults ages 18-29 use location-based services, significantly more than online adults in any other age group.
- 10% of online Hispanics use these services – significantly more than online whites (3%) or online blacks (5%).
- 6% of online men use a location-based service such as Foursquare or Gowalla, compared with 3% of online women.
These numbers suggest that location based services are just at the very beginning of whatever impact they may have. New figures from comScore shows smartphone use is steadily increasing, and location-based services may see a concurrent increase in use.
Localization and location-based services are among the topics that will be discussed at the upcoming Internet Summit in Raleigh Nov. 17-18. Chad Reed of Seattle-based Pelago, makers of location-based service Whrrl, is slated to join more than 100 other Internet thought leaders and up to 1,500 attendees at the event. See: Whrrl along into the real world with Pelago’s mobile app
Tags: Chad Reed, Foursquare, Gowalla, Internet Summit, location based services, mobile, Pelago, Pew report, telecom, Whrrl
Posted in Carolinas, Events, Internet/New Media, North Carolina, Studies, surveys, reports, Tech Culture, Telecommunications | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
 RESTON, VA – Online retail spending reached $32.1 billion in the third quarter, up 9 percent from a year ago, according to digital measurement firm comScore. This growth rate represented the fourth consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth following a year of flat or negative growth rates.
“Retail e-commerce growth in the third quarter remained solid at 9 percent, a fairly positive indicator for the upcoming holiday season,” said comScore chairman.
Other highlights from Q3 2010 include:
- The top-performing online product categories were Books & Magazines (excl. digital downloads), Computers/Peripherals/PDAs, Computer Software (excl. PC Games) and Consumer Electronics, indicating a higher willingness of consumers to spend on in-home entertainment.
- The top 25 online retailers accounted for 70 percent of dollars spent online, up 5.5 percentage points vs. year ago. Online “pureplay” retailers accounted for 58 percent of dollars spent online compared to 42 percent among multichannel retailers, unchanged vs. year ago.
- 41 percent of online retail transactions included free shipping, down marginally from last year.
“However, we continue to preach caution due to the continuation of high unemployment, which is creating very divergent spending patterns between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots.’ Even Americans who do have jobs still aren’t confident enough to spend freely and many are still pained by their loss of wealth since the financial crisis struck in 2008.
“That and a higher consumer savings rate leaves less money for spending. Until the economy begins adding jobs at a meaningful rate, the lack of spending power among consumers will continue to be a drag on purchasing, with many consumers indicating their intention to cut back on gift buying this holiday season.”
Other highlights from Q3 2010 include:
- The top-performing online product categories were Books & Magazines (excl. digital downloads), Computers/Peripherals/PDAs, Computer Software (excl. PC Games) and Consumer Electronics, indicating a higher willingness of consumers to spend on in-home entertainment.
- The top 25 online retailers accounted for 70 percent of dollars spent online, up 5.5 percentage points vs. year ago. Online “pureplay” retailers accounted for 58 percent of dollars spent online compared to 42 percent among multichannel retailers, unchanged vs. year ago.
- 41 percent of online retail transactions included free shipping, down marginally from last year.
Several participants at Tech Media’s upcoming Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, Nov. 17-18 will be addressing the e-commerce space, including Channel Advisor CEO Scot Wingo.
Tags: comScore, Gian Fulgoni, Internet Summit, Q3 2010 online spending up 9 percent, Scot Wingo
Posted in Carolinas, Events, Internet/New Media, North Carolina, Potomac, Virginia | Comments Off
Monday, November 1st, 2010
By Allan Maurer
 Chad Reed AUSTEN, TX – Feel as if you are in a social rut, with no adventure in your life? Pelago, a Seattle-based company has an app for that: Whrrl 3, which uses an Amazon-like recommendation system to help users expand their local restaurant, entertainment and shopping choices.
The company, backed by the blue-ribbon West Coast venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Bryers iFund, and Bezos Expeditions, T-Venture, Trinity Equity Partners, and Reliance Technology Ventures, is certainly in the right place. Everyone from Facebook to Foursquare and Gowalla, to name a few, are chasing a piece of the mobile recommendation market.
Founded in 2006 and boasting an executive team from companies such as Amazon, Yahoo, and RealNetworks, Pelago has a differentiator.
Whrrl adds another dimension to its choices that make it different from the others, says Chad Reed, director of Field Marketing and Sales for Pelago. Reed is one of more than 100 Internet thought leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists participating at the 2010 Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, Nov. 17-18.
“There are three major things our product and our brand is built on,” says Reed. “First, it’s all about connecting people with friends in the real world and getting them away from their computers. It’s a social-location-based game with a real-world purpose.”
Reed said that in the company’s interviews with a sample of users of location-based products, people said over and over that that were tired of doing the same thing over and over again every Friday night.”
So, to do that Whrrl lets users create “Societies” of like interests.If you “check in” at a hotel, park, restaurant, bar, or museum, you connect with the local branch of your society, which may guide you to a new experience. “They’re real world interest groups with the same passions.”
Reed says one of his Societies is the Whrrl Wasabi Society, which about Sushi. When he goes to Vegas, he usually goes to the same Sushi restaurant, but now when he checks into The Little Buddha, he’ll see recommendations for all the other sushi restaurants within 25 miles and what people in the society say about them and their recommendations.
“Over 4,000 users have created Societies,” Reed says. “Everything from Mexican food to mountain biking.” People using the app move up levels as they make recommendations and people do them, going from Rookie to Insider to VIP to Maven and finally to Trend Setter. As they move up that ladder, they also gain more chances to win Society Rewards, prizes which might be something such as $50 worth of free gas from a specific outlet.
“If people don’t make relevant recommendations,” says Reed, “They (the recommendations) go away.”
But the app’s recommendation engine, modeled on Amazon’s, in which an algorithm tracks the things you do and like. It can say, “If you liked restaurant A, you may like restaurant B,” and so on, the way Amazon does when you check in.
Reed says, “Users are really loving it. It’s meaningful to them. They want to get out of a pattern and try new things and we give them a tool to do that.”
Reed says it’s a rich app with more features than those of competitors’ products, “But we feel as if we’re just scratching the surface.”
He notes that Pelago expects to make some significant announcements this month.
Tags: Chad Reed, Internet Summit, location-based recommendations, mobile apps, NC, Pelago, Raleigh, Whrrl
Posted in Carolinas, Events, Internet/New Media, IT, North Carolina | Comments Off
Friday, October 29th, 2010
By Allan Maurer
 Jeff Ragovin - Chief Revenue Officer, Buddy Media NEW YORK – By now most big brands know social media can give them a boost or cause them trouble, but managing social campaigns can prove daunting without savvy help. That’s one reason Buddy Media has had so much success with its social media management system, which is already used by Johnson & Johnson, Borders, Crate & Barrel, Ford Motor Company, Donna Karan, Armani Exchange & GNC, among other top clients. Just today the company added an additional $5 million to the $25 million C round the company announced earlier in October.
The company is laser-focused on Facebook at the moment, says Jeff Ragovin, chief revenue officer, who is one of more than 100 top Internet thought leaders participating in the upcoming Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, Nov. 17-18.
“At this point, we’re working with over 300 brands and in every vertical,” Ragovin says. They include universities, consumer brands such as Coca Cola, entertainment companies such as ABC and NBC, and many retailers and fashion firms.
Buddy Media, which launched at the same time as Facebook, has created a thriving niche for itself, Ragovin says, explaining, “We help brand marketers control everything in Facebook from a single platform. We help them schedule updates, track engagement, set up filters, and create customized tabs where people can engage with the brand.”
It includes a robust set of analytics.
Finding out what works on Facebook can require some expertise. Ragovin describes how an ABC soap opera, “General Hospital,” which he says “I’ve never seen in my life,” had made 30-40 status updates on its Facebook page without stirring any customer engagement. So Buddy Media suggested, they change the tone and talk about what was going on in the soap with status updates such as “Should Luke and Laura have had sex last night?”
That kicked responses up from about 10 comments to 10,000.
Buddy Media also helps brands use polls to test out certain ideas. Budweiser, for instance, asked fans which of three bottles for their Bud Light Golden Wheat they preferred.
One site Ragovin says is using Facebook well, with the help of Buddy Media, is Borders. We went to the Border’s Facebook page and “liked” it a week or so ago, and have received several enticing offers from the book seller since. “They’re training people to come to their page every week for those offers,” he says.
One Borders campaign that worked well, he says, was focused on National Dog Day, of all things. Borders asked people to upload a photo of their dog to the Borders Facebook page and within a few hours, 919 did. “They weren’t selling any books, doing that. They were creating a community,” notes Ragovin. Not to mention that their messages now go to 919 new Facebook feeds.
The average person may have about 130 friends on Facebook, each of whom may now see that Borders activity, with the potential of “Creating a whole new chain reaction.”
Buddy Media started working with Borders in July when they had 140,000 fans. “They just broke 400,000,” Ragovin says. “Their page is taking off.”
The Buddy Media platform costs about $3,000 to $5,000 a month and the company also sells strategic and creative services.
Ragolin says he’ll be talking about how people can take advantage of certain Facebook features when he attends the Internet Summit in a few weeks.
Tags: Buddy Media, facebook, Internet Summit, Jeff Ragovin, social media engagement
Posted in Carolinas, Internet/New Media, IT, North Carolina | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 29th, 2010
DURHAM, NC – Back in 2003, Ned Dibner mentioned to his father Mark that some students at his school did not have computers at home and together, they decided that summer to build computers for needy students. That idea, which began in their basement, evolved into the Kramden Intstitute, a Durham-based non-profit that has awarded more than 6,000 computers to students secondary schools identify as hard-working but lacking what has become a nearly essential learning tool.
This is achieved by collecting donated computers, refurbishing, and reusing computers thereby extending their useful lives and reducing e-waste and with the help of more than 3,000 volunteers so far.
Kramden is partnering with Tech Media on one of its Computers for Kids campaigns at the upcoming Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, Nov. 17-18, where it will have a booth. (See: ‘Computers for Kids’ Campaign launched by the Kramden Institute and the Internet Summit).
Kramden’s Executive Director Carrie Clark tells us both Ned, who is now in college at Elon University, and Mark, who is chairman of the Institute, remain active. Kramden, by the ways, is Ned and Mark spelled backwards.
She says the Institute expects that 1,500 to 1,800 volunteers will work with them this year and it is on target to award 2,000 computers this year.
It holds regular events, every Wednesday at its Durham office (4915 Prospect Drive, Suite J) and monthly, including every third Saturday for Geek-a-Thons at its office or sponsored events off-site that use five shifts of volunteers to refurbish 180–200 computers by the end of the weekend. On Nov. 13, Kramden will be at Fort Bragg for the third time, awarding 250 computers to students with parents serving in the military.
Tags: Computers for Kids, Fort Bragg, Internet Summit, Kramden Institute, Mark Dibner, Ned Dibner
Posted in Carolinas, Events, North Carolina | Comments Off
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
By Allan Maurer
 Vikram Sharma, CEO, ShopLocal CHICAGO – While ecommerce has grown explosively in the last few years, the Internet is also hugely influential in driving store sales, which remain a still much larger portion of the retail sales pie. Large retailers have grown increasingly aware of “How influential the Net is in driving store sales,” says Vikram Sharma, CEO of Chicago-based ShopLocal. “Digital media is very powerful in helping retailers reach consumers.”
People spend 33 percent of their media time online and much of it is shopping related as they look for information, bargains, reviews and recommendations. But, “Only 6 percent or 7 percent of retail buys actually occur online,” Sharma notes. The other 92 percent happens where it always has, in stores.
So, Sharma says, retailers are asking, “How do I use the Net to drive traffic to my physical store?”
ShopLocal is having considerable success bringing one of the most successful print marketing tools into the digital age. “The advertising circular is the number one marketing vehicle of all time.. So our core business is built around helping stores reinvent the circular,” Sharma says. He points out there are many new ways other than print to get it to people as they change their media consumption habits, digital screens, phones, Facebook, all localized and targeted and personalized.
Bringing circulars into the digital era
ShopLocal creates a database that allows retailers to place their store circulars online in such a way that consumers can access those for their local stores. ShopLocal already has a myriad of top retail clients doing this: J.C. Penny’s, Best Buy, CompUSA, Super Target, OfficeMax, Radio Shack, Staples, Lowes, Dillards, Macys, Sears, Walgreens, and many more.
We tried it out a few days ago and found digital circulars from most of the stores we buy from regularly. It really is convenient and easy to use, particularly if you’re looking for something in particular, which, Sharma notes, most of us are, most of the time.
In addition, the database that ShopLocal creates for the circulars allows it to build ad units that can run anywhere online, such as Yahoo, and target ads for specific products to consumers. By tracking a consumers online activity, they may know he is looking for shoes and offer an ad for shoes, not 200 items, Sharma says.
“Everyone is in the market shopping for something or other all the time,” he notes. “The trick is to find out what it is and do personalized targeting whether through a banner ad, email, or phone apps.”
ShopLocal can put retail circulars on iPhones, iPads, in kiosks in stores or “Anywhere people may be. It’s a way to present the information comprehensively anywhere people may be rather than requiring them to show up at a newspaper or company site.”
Sharma has been at the helm of ShopLocal since 2005. His roots are with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), a major retail and grocery research firm, where he served as President of the Data Systems Division. While at IRI, he led the development of the company’s revolutionary scanner-based InfoScan service and served as a member of the management team that led the company’s growth to make it what is now a multi-million-dollar industry leader.
Sharma is one of more than 100 Internet thought leaders, experts, executives, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists slated to participate in the upcoming Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, Nov. 17-18. He’ll be discussing all the ways top retailers are using digital media are using to promote their brick & mortar stores.
Using social media
ShopLocal has recently introduced another way for its retail clients to reach customers where they hang out online: social media.
When someone rolls a mouse over an item on a circular for retailers using the new feature, they can share it with friends on Facebook or other social media. ShopLocal is also introducing a button for retailer fan pages on Facebook that lets visitors go to their weekly ad or circular.
The company has been talking to Facebook directly about some of these initiatives. “”They think this is a great idea,” Sharma says.
He says ShopLocal is talking with some firms that don’t use circulars to advertise, but still want to get into local marketing, such as Pepsi. Each local bottler for the Pepsi company may want to tweak ad messages with a different price or a different creative approach. “We created a utility to let the bottlers alter the ads. When they run nationally, it pulls the local information for the market in which it runs, using the same database we created for the circulars.”
Sharma notes, “We run an aggregated site www.shoplocal.com that carries all our client circulars AND also host individual micro-sites for the retailer (typically named retailer.shoplocal.com) that launch from a link on the retailer’s site and present their circular.
To see a couple of examples:
www.homedepot.com/ click on the LOCAL AD link
www.staples.com/ click on the Weekly Ad image
Tags: advertising circulars, Chicago, driving online shoppers to stores, ecommerce, facebook, Internet Summit, NC, Raleigh, ShopLocal, Vikram Sharma
Posted in Carolinas, Events, Internet/New Media, Marketing, North Carolina | Comments Off
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
 RALEIGH, NC – Cloud computing and virtualization firm rPath has raised a $7 million equity round from four investors, according to a regulatory filing. The Raleigh-based company sells applications to automate software system construction, deployment and maintenance across physical, virtual and cloud environments.
The company’s chief marketing officer, Jake Sorofman, has contributed occasional viewpoint pieces to TechJournal South and other media (see: Rising from the IT Muck).
The company disclosed the raise in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has between $1 million and $5 million in revenue, according to the filing.
Talking to CIOs in advance of Tech Media’s upcoming Internet Summit, which includes a CIO Roundtable event, we hear that many firms have turned to cloud computing and virtualization technologies to do more with fewer resources during the economic downturn. Once cautioned, however, that cloud computing is not necessarily inexpensive itself.
The “cloud” does let smaller firms access more advanced applications once available only to the largest players, somewhat leveling the playing field in terms of IT.
Email TJS editor/writer Allan Maurer: Allan at Techjournalsouth dot com.
Tags: cloud computing, financing, Internet Summit, Jake Sorofman, NC, Raleigh, rPath, virtualization
Posted in Carolinas, IT, Money, North Carolina | Comments Off
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