Google’s Marissa Mayer

Waves of buzzing and chatting roared, as the largest ballroom filled with SXSW-goers looking to hear a keynote from Marissa Mayer, the product gatekeeper of Google and head of mobile gelo-location team, that would hopefully release a fresh reality-shattering product.

Unfortunately, it felt a lot more like a look back at what Google has been up to over the several months. Mayer explained a few geo-location services in the mobile marketplace that have been gaining some traction, like, google places, hotpot and google goggles. Despite lacking insight to where we’re headed, Mayer made an interesting comment about the potential power of where we are now, ”ours phones are like cursors between the digital and physical world.” Cursors that augment or diminish our ability to explore our surroundings.

SXSW: Rock Stars!

It seems the times are a indeed changin’ here in Austin at SXSW. No longer are rock stars required to play music, but instead write source code and create websites.

Being a first time attendee at SXSW is needless to say an eye-opening event - as the saying goes, there is so much to do with so little time. While attending panels, events, networking sessions, and parties are all great, the truly fun thing to do at SXSW is strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know or someone you really admire - the rock star. This tactic alone has been the most valuable take-away so far on this trip - having someone important take the time to actually listen and care does make a difference. Within the past 24 hours alone I have been able to randomly meet founders of some really awesome and impressive companies – but I really shouldn’t name drop (Reddit and Foursqure, cough). Although it is a struggle to keep the groupies away when speaking, I was impressed with all their honesty and friendliness - there is a real pay-it-forward demeanor here.  

SXSW also provides a great platform for people to take what they want while still making the most of their experience. I have received great ideas for Broodr while attending panels, but better advice direct from founders themselves. The moral of this post is not to be intimidated by anyone or anything while at SXSW. It seems that the people here really are rock stars in the truest form (brilliant yet humble, and crazy and constantly on the move) however, they are also easy going and easy to talk to.

While I do hope Broodr  become a hit, I realized the rock star lifestyle may not be for me - especially after the thought of grown men chasing me around (kinda creepy)!

 

Startups Startups Everywhere…and all come with a drink

Offices at Gowalla

SXSWi is famous for its geeked out parties and last night was an awesome kickoff to the festival. I signed up for the Austin Startup Bar Crawl and met up with a few friends (Liz from the Syracuse Student Sandbox, John from DeviceKnit and James and Shawn from Levlr) to explore the startup offices of this hospitable town. A number of startup businesses opened their doors to the early birds of SXSWi, letting us explore their awesome collaborative work spaces.

The first stop had ice cream. What more could you ask for? Well, ice cream, beer and some Dutch entrepreneurs.

The second stop at Conjunctured, a “coworking space” in Austin, had a dunking booth, but, as the host pointed out, everyone was more interested in the pizza he ordered than dunking him in a tank full of water. The space was located in an old house in which the pretty much every room but the kitchen was converted into office space. It was here we met a guy developing a way for people to get group travel rates by allowing users to create “trips” people can join. This allows young travelers to book hotels, etc. together, get a discount rate and travel cheaper (I’ll update when I remember what it’s called).

Then we all missed the bus, so we missed a lot of the other places on the Startup Tour, but we ventured over to the Gowalla offices on the other side of downtown Austin. Bikes hang from walls and the location-based service gave us a lot of swag, including a beer cozy that works like a snap bracelet from my childhood. 

More offices in Gowalla

Liz and I ran into the Head of Recruitment and HR for Gowalla, who talked about her methods and some challenges she faced in finding developers. According to her, it’s more important for the company to recruit people who get the culture of Gowalla, even if they don’t have as much experience.

The Gowalla party was the place to be last night for entrepreneurs and startups. Everywhere we looked, someone was talking about their exciting new venture and it’s near impossible not to feed off their excitement, or maybe that’s all the free green tea I drank at Gowalla.