Forbes

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NY-based startup, Launch.it was chosen to manage the startup news onslaught at the Consumer Electronics Show next month. According to VentureBeat, the company’s platform will act as a central platform for exhibitors to publish news, and distribute contact information at the Eureka Park CES and provided analytics about visitors. Users also have access to a Facebook comment feature, the ability buy and test services and can let media and investors follow their news updates.

Trace Cohen, president and co-founder of Launch.it told VentureBeat, “Our big vision is a free self-publishing platform to unlock the news. We want to be the biggest searchable database [of news] … almost to disintermediate Google.”

Launch.it will eventually offer a centralized place for the thousands of companies at CES, not just Eureka Park. The company has partnered with Ultralight Startups and ShowStoppers. Launch.it currently runs news sites for 300-400 companies.

VentureBeat

Brooklyn Beta (Photo credit: marc.thiele)

Craig Shapiro, startup investor from Silicon Valley, relocated to NY in 2011 and launched his seed pool for startups known as the Collaborative Fund. While on the East Coast, Shapiro met Cameron Koczon, founder of Brooklyn Beta. According to Ad Week, the two became friends and started the Brooklyn Beta Summer Camp. The program just finished its 12-week accelerator program tailored for aspiring digital entrepreneurs. Shapiro is the key adviser to the camp, which is run out of Fictive Kin, a small digital company that produces apps. Koczon’s team runs the camp and Koczon himself chose five startup teams from over 300 submissions, giving each $25,000 in seed money from nine local sponsors.

The teams in the first session differed from one another, from a B2B fashion marketplace to a video-making mobile app. Throughout the 12 week program, the startups visit Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn to critique each other’s work. At the end, there are two demo days in front of some of NY’s biggest tech personalities. The goal is to raise more money from these VCs to keep going after the $25,000 runs out. However, by the end of the twelve weeks, Shapiro had revealed a twist– that he felt as though the startup bubble may soon burst. He said, “It’s made for a lot of excitement, but it hasn’t created a lot of sustainable businesses. In 2013, the pendulum will be moving back toward the middle after a period of overexuberance.”

Here’s a breakdown of the program, week-by-week:

• Weeks 1 and 2: During the week of July 18 the five teams meet in a bar in Long Island City. Koczon opens the discussion by describing himself as an “Airbnb hobo,” saying that he regularly travels to various US cities for brainstorming events and hackathons. All of the groups are then asked to sign contracts, which gives Brooklyn Beta 6% stake in return for the $25,000 investment. the teams introduce themselves to one another. Koczon tries to motivate with encouraging words.
• Weeks 3 and 4: The teams meet at startup Sticker FM‘s Bushwick Brooklyn warehouse space in early August. After catching up, the teams start to discuss updates on their progress and next steps. The teams give constructive criticism to one another about logos and other aspects.
• Week 6: In mid-August the groups convene at Skillcrush, one of the startups, headquarters in Manhattan. again the teams give each other advice and criticism following up from the previous meeting.
• Weeks 9 and 10: Now in early September, the teams close in on their finishing product development and start to prep for the demos. A few groups have switched their names. Shapiro and Koczon discuss increasing Collaborative Fund’s involvement.
• Week 12: Demo days are rapidly approaching. The teams work on their narratives for their presentations.
• Demos (October 10-13): There are 300 attendees at the Brooklyn Beta conference, which the demo days are a part of. Many walk off the stage successful.
• Post-Program, Weeks 13 and 14: The second demo day presentations were cancelled by Koczon and rescheduled as individual presentations. At this point, Shapiro is the camp’s primary investor, giving $50,000 to each team.

Ad Week

Image via CrunchBase

Recently both Outbrain and Codeacademy have opened new office spaces in NY, according to the Commercial Observer. Outbrain, a provider of strategic website enhancements, has signed a 25,000 square foot lease at 39 West 13th  Street. The company has signed the lease through 2020 and will be taking the entire third floor in the building. “It’s a good fit for a creative tenant like Outbrain—just an amazing space with great infrastructure… It just had that look and feel that the tech-type of tenants are seeking,” said Scott Brown of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, who represented Outbrain.

Codeacademy is opening its first office on the entire fourth floor of 49 West 27th Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Broadway.  Codeacademy is an online educational platform that offers free coding classes. Before leasing the new space, the startup was based in AOL’s office at 670 Broadway. “Now they are expanding, they are going to hire a lot of people,” said Bernard Weitzman, senior managing director of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank who represented the tenant.”

Commercial Observer 

Commercial Observer

English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhattan, New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On November 14th, the Brooklyn Venture Community will be holding an event called, “The Brooklyn Startup Scene: Brooklyn CoWorking Spaces & Their Entrepreneurs.” The Brooklyn Venture Community is a meetup group with over 250 Brooklyn-based entrepreneurial and freelance members that serves as a support and platform for the Brooklyn tech community. At the event tomorrow, founders or managers of co-working spaces throughout Brooklyn representing various entrepreneurial communities and neighborhoods, will each give a brief presentation. The presenters will include:

1. Bat Haus CoWorking (Bushwick) – Bat Haus is a work community founded on openness, fun, and a respect for peers. It operates like a clubhouse. Every member helps make decisions about how the space is operated. Knowledge and know-how adds to the a collective pool (meaning that while you do your own work, you have neighbors who are more than happy to share some advice, a little hands-on help, or, if nothing else, conversation and a cup of joe when time allows it). Bat Haus believes that openness and the sharing of resources far outweigh the alternatives.

2. Dumbo Startup Lab (Dumbo) - The DUMBO Startup Lab is a community hub for entrepreneurs, designers and innovators focused on tech & web development providing cowork space, host classes and events in a beautiful 2,300 sq. ft. corner loft in Dumbo.

3. The Yard (Williamsburg) – Private work suites in Williamsburg (overlooking McCarren Park) designed to inspire creativity, collaborations and connections.

4. The Secret Clubhouse (Williamsburg) – a recently launch coworking space in Williamsburg that lives up to its name! Also home of the North Brooklyn Breakfast Club.

5. Brooklyn Creative League (Park Slope/BoCoCa) – Brooklyn Creative League was founded to give independent professionals, small-shop companies, and nonprofits the tools they need to get their work done: affordable, green, shared workspace and a community of professional colleagues — someplace to meet with clients, host a conference call, and make a pitch

For more info and to RSVP, visit http://www.meetup.com/Brooklyn-Venture-Community/events/83235392/ OR http://brooklynventurecommunity.eventbrite.com

NYU student Matthew Epler and his Grand Old Party project. (Photo Credit: Lauren Keyson)

By Lauren Keyson

Speakers at the Visualized Conference in Manhattan Times Center in NY on Friday showed how powerful data can be if it’s visually created. The event’s message was that images and drawings and interactive capabilities of data can be turned into thrilling art projects that resonate better with individuals than with flat numbers and information.

Data can also be controversial and even a bit insane. Matthew Epler, a NYU student, was invited to present his idea of emotion in data because of his ‘Grand Old Party’ project that was created in the last semester of school.  “It’s about taking voting data and putting it in the form of rubber butt plugs — essentially it shows the popularity of Republican candidates for the GOP amongst Republican voters. I wanted to take an extreme stance and make it funny and loose and something that people would talk about. In the end you can make something beautiful, but if people aren’t going to talk about it, and they just flip the page and go on to reading the next article, then you haven’t done much.

“I think it’s the same as television,  he continued, it’s something you can start a conversation about without knowing anybody and say, ‘Hey, did you see that one thing it was ridiculous’ — and if you look closely there really is good information there — -it doesn’t provide less information than anything that’s done in a standard way.  But it allows for people to engage in more serious conversations that they may want to be in, but don’t feel like you can just talk about that at dinner.”

Hyperakt is a small design studio in Brooklyn that takes hard abstract numbers that are often trapped in Power Point presentations or excel spreadsheets, and turns them into stories people can understand and make actionable.  “We help change makers tell their stories and expose truths about all kinds of different social issues,” said creative director Deroy Peraza.  “For example, Voices of Youth has a platform that allows kids and adolescents to exchange conversations about all of the issues that UNICEF covers, everything from health to war crimes to sexual abuse to climate change.”

Katy Harris, Fathom Information Design, collects data on a global level for the Millennium Developmental project, a micro site that starts out with a basic image, “The more you interact with it, the more information you can get. But if you do nothing else with it, the front of the site answers the simple question ‘How are we doing?’

“Data isn’t dry,” said moderator Chrys Wu, strategist, cook and coder who founded @NYCRubyWomen.  “There a lot of emotion about it, and a lot of desire to help people understand things. There is this context of understanding and meaning that runs through every one of the speakers presentations, even without me saying people are getting this.”  She gave the example of generative artist Cedric Keifer, creative director at Onformative, who explored the space between human movement and what is possible as an expression of data by recording a dancer with a series of connects then translated her movements into data and started manipulating that into art.

Maral Pourkazemi, conception and graphic design discussed the Iranian internet and how it has been blocked by the Iranian government.  “Through data I was able to tease out what the Iranian government and the internet actually look like.  We showed it in the context of Persian rugs, so you’re seeing something that is at once artful and at the same time connects the human piece of it. It’s not just text messages, or blogs, posts and social media being put up on lot, but rather that there is a human being who is doing that, and their life could be at risk.” In the fifth iteration of her design, she showed the number of people who have been killed because of what they’ve been doing.

Speakers Sven Ehmann (Gestalten), Maral Pourkazemi (Small Media Lab), Ciel Hunter (The Creators Project) (Photo Credit: Lauren Keyson)

By Lauren Keyson

The Visualized Conference was held at Time Center in Manhattan on Friday to explore the evolution of communication at the intersection of big data, storytelling and design.  The event inspired with new ideas on how to make a bigger impact when visually sharing the story of a data set, whether for personal use, business, education or social innovation.

The exhilarating two-day event brought together thinkers and social innovators from around the world who are trying to change the way people understand and interact with data. The attendees gained insight into designing data-driven narratives that connect with audiences and that visualize the human experience.

Each speaker had a different take on data and storytelling. Kevin Lyons, SVP Analytics, Exelate, explained how combining art with technology and data analytics can be amazing.  “I’m amazed at the importance of art and how it can play such a big role in making some very difficult and complicated topics more understandable in a way that resonates better with individuals and impacts their emotions”

Shan Carter, graphics editor, New York Times, talked about three lessons to be learned from print design that can be used online and through interaction. “You shouldn’t use interaction to hide your data, you can expose things upfront, and you can use interaction to multiply the lessons that we’ve learned with print paper.”

Ciel Hunter, creative director, The Creator’s Project, talked about the role of data in artwork experiences and how data or visualization can strike an emotional connection with an audience. “I’m really interested in the threshold audiences have for types of technologies or types of visualizations or storytelling — and what context you need to provide to match with the audiences awareness. Sometimes simple can be produce more wonder and excitement than something more complicated.”

The message that Maral Pourkazemi, visual researcher, Small Media Lab in London, showed the audience was that through data is there is change. “With knowledge you can make change, and through design you can make the invisible visible — and that is a huge benefit of being creative.” She showed how she had mapped out the Iranian internet, “which is something so very surreal and so far away for someone like you and me, but it is worth visualizing it.  You get a feeling of how the internet could look like in a censored country which is practicing censorship and filtering. Though data you can understand it a little bit better and ask more questions that leads you to knowledge.”

Sven Ehmann, Gestalten, in Berlin Germany told the audience that he wanted them to continue to innovate their visual languages.  “Think about your own audiences in regards to telling a great story but make sure people are actually really hearing you.  Maybe they are not taking enough from the story to change their lives, their behaviors, their own attitudes to the world. If you look at nutrition facts on food packages, there is information about the level of sugar and fat calories on it, but it doesn’t really tell you anything that is for a specific reason. As someone who deals with visualization, maybe even the topping that you have on a bagel or doughnut can actually indicate that same kind of information a very different way.  It’s just thinking about the moment of taking the food, the experience of it, of how you want to encourage or distract it somehow.  Some people in design and data visualization are so much in love with their little story and their little data set, that this moment of creating meaning, relevance for someone else is probably a little underestimated.

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook rescheduled its Gifts event for November 15. This is the second attempt by the company to host the event since Hurricane Sandy. It was originally scheduled for November 1, according to CNET, but will still take place at FAO Schwartz in Manhattan. Hurricane Sandy caused power outages and transportation issues, forcing many companies to reschedule their events, including Google, which rescheduled it device launch.

Facebook gave minimal details about the event, but is expected to provide information about its Gifts Service retail partners. The Gifts option went live in September, and lets Facebook users give each other actual gifts via the social network. The company also recently announced that users can donate to charities with the Gifts feature, choosing from one of the 11 nonprofits that Facebook is partnered with.

Speaker Michael Richter, NY Rangers All-Star and Silver Medalist (photo credit: NY Venture Capital Assoc.)

By Lauren Keyson

That the NY tech community continues to be effervescent was an overriding message at yesterday’s Third Annual Ingenuity Conference at New World Stages in center of off-Broadway. The goal of the event’s organizer, the NY Venture Capital Association, was to promote the entrepreneurial ecosystem of NYC and the NY area. “The NY tech scene is unequivocally the number two tech community in the nation now, and maybe in the world,” said David Pakman, partner at Venrock and event co-chair.  “It’s an ascendant geography that is doing really well and is a vibrant scene of both entrepreneurs and capital.”

Hundreds of attendees came to learn from other entrepreneurs, companies, thinkers. The information was provided by VCs and tech luminaries like AOL’s CEO and chairman Tim Armstrong who founded multiple companies of his own — two that sold to AOL and Yahoo.  He talked about how he equips the companies he buys with three key benefits: Guns, meaning brand power and equity; Steel, in the way of infrastructure; and Money.  He looks for CEOs and visionaries who will take the abundance of resources they are given to perform even better and faster than they had previously done.

His lesson for the audience was simple: sell products, not features.  He said that when he evaluates potential opportunities, he looks for things that he can sell rather than simple features or add-ons to make something appear more valuable than it is.  Attendee Chris Luken, product director at RetailMLS, described it best, “I might be able to have a subscription product where I could keep adding extra bells, whistles or features to it.  But if I know that I can instead create a brand new product with similar feature sets, I can now potentially sell it to two different audiences with two different buying habits and capture more share of wallets across the greater industry.”

One of the most powerful messages came from NY Rangers Hall of Famer Michael Richter, a three time NHL All-Star and an Olympic Silver medalist.  His current venture is Healthy Planet Partners, a project finance fund which finances and manages the deployment of renewable energy technologies and energy saving retrofits for sports facilities. He talked about discipline, teamwork, performance, potential and what it takes to be a winner. “You have to have this balance of pushing the envelope or you will never improve or reach your potential, which is really the point of playing,” he explained. “If you play it safe, that’s where you’re going to be. You are never going to reach those heights. One long distance skater on the 1980 Olympic team fell all the time in practice, but his theory was that if you’re not falling, you’re not trying. Pushing the envelope kept him moving further and further along the lines – if you don’t push you’re envelope, you are never going to improve.”

His other big message was about self-discipline, which he believes translates to almost every endeavor in life. “You have to have discipline. And if you’re prepared to have success, then every bit of your training and preparation has to be massaging yourself in that direction. I can’t expect success at a big sales meeting Monday morning if I am not prepared now.

“You really have to take care of your own responsibilities if you are in a team or business setting — or really anything – and the corollary to that is that you need to learn to apprentice yourself to new things. This is a different world that we live in – you don’t go to work for GM at 20 and stay there until you are 65. You’re going to have to learn different skills and you have to be open to the idea of learning as you age.”

Hackathon (Photo credit: rooneg)

In a response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy various organization of the NY tech community are organizing a 48-hour hackathon next week on November 7-8, which will focus on challenges arising from Hurricane Sandy and to raise money for relief efforts. Money will most likely be donated to the Red Cross and the event may also hold a blood drive. Participants include members of New York Tech Meetup, Entrepreneur Week, and New Work City.

For more details, please see the link below.

Tech Cocktail

The signup for the database can be found in the link below.

NYTM

MIAMI BEACH, FL – OCTOBER 25: A pedestrian’s umbrella is turned inside out as high winds hit it as the outer bands of Hurricane Sandy are felt on October 25, 2012 in Miami Beach, Florida. After passing over Jamaica and eastern Cuba Hurricane Sandy is expected to hit eastern Cuba and head into the Bahamas Thursday and Friday, there is a tropical storm warning in place for coastal Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties and the Atlantic waters off southeast Florida. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

As a result of Hurricane Sandy, the D: Dive Into Mobile Conference and Google’s Android event today have both been canceled. The effects of the storm are expected to start as early as this morning in NY and Governor Cuomo has declared a state of emergency. The Dive Into Mobile Conference, presented by All Things D, will be rescheduled for a later date and anyone with a ticket will be able to use that ticket to attend. At Google’s event, the company was expected to reveal the next version of Android. Google has not yet said their plans on when or where they will hold the rescheduled event.

ABC News

All Things D

NEW YORK, NY – MAY 21: Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page speaks during a news conference at the Google offices on May 21, 2012 in New York City. Google announced today that it will allocate 22,000 square feet of space in its New York headquarters to CornellNYC Tech while the university completes its new campus on Roosevelt Island. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Recently, NYC Digital hosted its second annual Engage NYC: Digital Media in Government summit. The event took place at Google‘s headquarters in New York. Presentations covered topics like digital communications and the state of the digital city in addition to an awards ceremony for outstanding work in digital media.

William Floyd of Google and Rachel Hoat, the City’s Chief Digital Officer, started off the event and surprised their guests with a keynote speech from David Karp, founder of Tumblr. Karp spoke about NY’s digital presence. Additionally, a new panel discussion called “Strategic Digital Media and Your Agency” was introduced and covered challenges for government in dealing with social media. Next, Hoat and Digital Communications Director Ivy Li presented on the city’s progress in digital over the last year.

Representatives from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Tumblr also spoke about social media strategies. Facebook’s Policy Manager Katie Harbath talked about virality of content and Facebook’s Timeline feature. Twitter’s Director of Business marketing, Glenn Otis Brown, presented on the growth of Twitter and the site’s new features. Google’s head of Media Outreach, Sally Simms, discussed various Google+ features. Tumblr’s Director of Outreach, Liba Rubenstein, talked about the site’s NY presence.

NYC Economic Development Corporation

Peter Moustakerski of Voila Chocolat shares his homemade product. (Photo Credit: Lauren Keyson)

By Lauren Keyson

Several entrepreneurs came to iEvening’s “Are You Fundable?” event last night to get feedback on their products. All of them involved technology or the internet.  A lot of advice for the timid and not so timid presenters included the need for grit – the need to stick to their guns and argue their case even in the face of rejection.  Alan Brody, CEO of Convean and organizer of the iEvening event, felt that there were two fundable possibilities out of the group.  One was Keepskor, simplified game creation because it helped ad agencies make games. “The competitive environment warrants examination, and CEO Tristan Louis will have to drill down on that, but he is a proven serial entrepreneur.”

Brody also liked a company called Memorist that had “memory volts” and was a way to store valuable documents. “Theoretically it’s fundable because there is a huge need for this.  But in order to make it work, they need to warrant it and do several demonstrations that show it’s safe. “

There were also a few unfundable startups. One was a make-it-yourself chocolate business called Voila Cholat from founder Peter Moustakerski. The other was Rodawg.com, high-class packaging and paraphernalia for marijuana.  The CEO Josh Gordon explained how his startup was making smoking products for the medical marijuana marketplace. “I figured out how to leverage the cultural acceptance. We created a brand with better packaging for medical industry — we provide a more professional way to promote product instead of in a baggy.”

According to the feedback, both were in danger of being lifestyle businesses, which Brody explained had their own unique problems. “Neither of them had defensible products.  They both have the possibility of reaching a mass audience, but the chocolate company needs to find a way to reveal some knowledge of chocolate that hasn’t already been tapped, and the marijuana company needs to show that they are offering extraordinary, early-stage access to a potentially explosive marketplace.”

He continued, “An investor would look at Gordon and say, ‘I’ll keep an eye on him because he is young enough and an obvious ambassador to an emerging marketplace.’  He has grit. He is pushing it and willing to fight. Moustakerski may have grit, but it’s not demonstrable in the chocolate world.  It’s out of his business zone and he is at an age where you expect him to be working with his business pedigree, which is finance.

Brody’s colleague Mayra Ceja, CEO of Tiger Cub Advisors, gave slightly different feedback to the two entrepreneurs, “Only 2% of people get funded by angels and VCs. You need to have a product that gives investors a 100x returns. Things that are not VC friendly — like food oriented products — need to be pitched to very specific types of investors.  And how do you pitch something that isn’t mainstream? There is a bias from investors and VCs – for instance, they don’t want to be associated with porn.”

John Ason, professional angel investor, had this to say about funding startups, “I’m looking for exciting new companies that can get into hyper-growth and I am looking for good ideas with passion. Passion is one of the key items I want to see in companies – something that I can relate to and get an emotional connection to.”

“Life’s a pitch,” added Ceja.  “The whole idea is that you are always pitching as a startup or entrepreneur – new product, referrals, investors –so be clear on why you are pitching. Most businesses are not fundable so you have to fight for yours, defend it.   Show them you’re passionate.”

New Work City hosted the first Startup Funeral and many attended including  Chris Siragusa, former CTO of  Kozmo.com, an online delivery service that famously failed. Over 100 attendees listened to the company’s mistakes, and at the end Siragusa and other participants were given small urns filled with candy. Newball said, “It’s hard to get people to openly want to talk about their failed startups. That was the hardest. People are afraid of being mocked for failing. If anything, it’s about mocking yourselves and making light of it and learning from it. This isn’t aimed to make people feel bad.”

Digiday

• Founder or Co-founder of an innovative organization (for profit or not-for-profit) with the potential to create significant, sustainable employment in NYC. Customary titles will be CEO, Chairman or equivalent of an independent entity.
• Have a history of extraordinary achievement, substantial leadership, and demonstrated global perspective.
• Demonstrate positive societal impact.
• Have no more than 20 years of work experience.

Nomination forms can be submitted online or downloaded in PDF or Word format.

NYC Ventures

DENVER, CO – OCTOBER 01: Workers continue construction of the set where the first presidential debate will take place at the University of Denver on October 1, 2012 in Denver, Colorado. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will square off against U.S. President Barack Obama in the first of three debates on October 3. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The political site The Hill has been preparing its primary data center in New York for tonight’s first Presidential debate. The Hill and other political sites have to be ready during the fast-paced political news cycle because certain events cause sudden flares of traffic or spikiness, according to Data Center Knowledge. In order to prepare for this kind of spikiness, The Hill retooled its infrastructure with a new architecture to improve its load-balancing and caching capabilities.

“The election season raises the baseline,” said CEO of The Hill Ari Spivakovsky. “I can tell you that the difference between peaks and troughs is an order of magnitude difference.”

DataCenterKnowledge

Image via CrunchBase

Microsoft recently opened its 24th American retail store at The Westchester shopping mall in downtown White Plains. The new store is on the second floor of the mall and opened to a line of people that stretched to the parking lot, according to The Bedford Daily Voice. Microsoft provided giveaways, raffles and even some tickets to a Lenny Kravits concert that celebrated the stores’ opening.

Before the opening of the new store, Microsoft presented checks totaling $1.5 million in software grants to local organizations. The local chapter of Junior Achievement received one million dollars, and the JCY-Westchester Community Partner and Nepperhan Community Center received $250,000 each.

The Bedford Daily Voice

Mia expects the business model for news to evolve with live streaming, as he said at the panel, “If live [streaming] is done well, it can be monetized. Publishers want to deliver [content] anywhere. It’s all about click and play.”

During the panel, Mia was joined by Joe Ruffolo, Senior VP of digital Media at ABC News, Roy Sekoff, president of HuffPost Live, Andrew Heyward, senior adviser of Monitor Group and former president of CBS. The panel was moderated by Merrill Brown, adviser to Streamworks and former editor in chief of MSNBC.com.

Xconomy

[Editor's Note: Streamworks is a client of Trylon SMR, owned by Trylon Communications, Inc., the parent company of NY Convergence]

Webby Award (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) added 20 new members to its list, including Tumblr Founder and CEO David Karp, NY Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne, LearnVest Founder and CEO Alexa von Tobel, SkillShare CEO Michael Karnjanaprakorn, and many more. According to the press release, the IADAS hosts the annual Webby Awards, which have just opened their call for entries, and are celebrating their 17th year. The awards celebrate the year’s best websites, apps, and other social media entities.

Those who enter the awards compete to win a Webby, and a chance to deliver their five word speech. Previous award winners include Skype, Funny or Die, and Pinterest. Additionally, this year a new Social category was added to the list of verticals.

Webby Awards

English: Looking south from Top of the Rock, New York City {| cellspacing=”0″ style=”min-width:40em; color:#000; background:#ddd; border:1px solid #bbb; margin:.1em;” class=”layouttemplate” | style=”width:1.2em;height:1.2em;padding:.2em” | 20px |link=|center | style=”font-size:.85em; padding:.2em; vertical-align:middle” |This image was created with hugin. |} NYC wideangle south from Top of the Rock.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tech@NYC is touring a group of the nation’s colleges and providing students with information about the thriving tech scene in NY. The NYC Economic Development Corporation is using the NYC Tech Talent Draft to introduce students nationwide about the tech and entrepreneurial opportunities that NY has to offer. More than 30 technology startups will be represented at the events, including: Behance, Birchbox, Meetup, Songza, and more.

NYC EDC

English: Wordmark of HTC. Trademarked by HTC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

HTC introduced their new Windows Phone 8x at a NY press conference today.  The new phone has a 4.3 inch display and a 2.1 megapixel front facing camera, according to Tech Crunch. The camera is capable of recording 1080p movies. The new phones come in multiple vibrant colors in a unibody plastic casing and there is a headphone port at the top and a micro-USB port at the bottom. Also, the phone has a Beats sound chip inside of it for the speaker and headphone port.

The device looks to come out in early November for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the US and for 150 carriers in the world.

Tech Crunch

Image via CrunchBase

Google is hosting a Big Tent conference session today, addressing the effect of the Internet on our society, at Midtown Manhattan’s Skylight West. This particular session will have a special focus on the arts, creativity, and culture, according to Variety. The conference is hosted with NY’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, and will feature a speech by Todd Asher, the first deputy commissioner of the office.

Other speakers include Michael Rapino, president and CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, David Drummond, Google’s senior VP of corporate development, Amit Snoot, group manager of the Art Project at Google, Shane Smith, founder of VICE, and many others. A full video of the presentation will be available on Big Tent’s YouTube channel and its Google Plus page. Last year’s Big Tent event in London attracted 300 attendees, and has since traveled to over a dozen cities around the world. Though presentations in NYC won’t take place in an actual tent, after the event Cirque du Soleil will preform in a rooftop tent at Skylight West.

Variety

Brooklyn Book Festival

The event will take place from 8:30-10:oo am on September 27 at Sullivan & Worcester offices at 1633 Broadway.

PluggedIn

[Editor's Note: PluggedIn Ventures is sponsored by Trylon SMR, owned by Trylon Communications, Inc., the parent company of NY Convergence]

DUMBO Arts Festival (Photo credit: Lynt)

This year, the DUMBO Arts Festival will include a wide range of technology-related installations and exhibits. The event takes place from September 28-30, and will include technology highlights like:

• Superhero: Participants are transformed into superheroes in this interactive projection mapping experience. Users have the opportunity to fly, shape shift, and throw light beams.
• Codex Dynamic:  This  large-scale video projection exhibit is presented on the Manhattan Bridge Anchorage and Archway. It features video artworks by internationally known video artists, and the exhibition is meant to transform space, time, and the users’ perceived reality. Curated by Leo Kuelbs and John Ensor Parker.
• ITP Residents’ Show: 10 artists from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of Art demonstrate communications technologies and how they might enhance, improve, and enlighten art in people’s lives.
• Neurime: A large scale instrument exhibit that can be activated by touch. It utilizes neural connections and features with 12 discrete audio channels.
• Universal Mobile Interface: This is an origami-based sculpture that uses live camera feeds to work with the interactivity of the viewer and surrounding landscape.

DUMBO Arts Festival

Software Freedom Day (Photo credit: Cidetys)

The Fifth Annual Software Freedom Day in NY will take place tomorrow from 6:30-10 pm. The event will be held at NYU’s school for Interactive Telecommunications at 721 Broadway.

Software Freedom Day is a celebration of the merits and successes of free software. The event will have a short program of speakers including:

• James Vasile of the Software Freedom Law Center on “Free Software vs Censorship and Surveillance.”
• Jon Stanley on the Fedora project
• “Wikipedia Takes Manhattan’ presented by Wikimedia NYC
• Occupy <3s Open Source presented by TechOps of the NYCGA

Software Freedom Day

Founder Jim Bruene (The Finovate Group) -Photo Credit: Lauren Keyson

By Lauren Keyson

One thousand people poured into the Finovate Fall 2012 to watch 64 entrepreneurs demo their innovative financial technology products to 1,100 financial institution executives, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.  The founders had seven minutes to present their fintech innovations, which included banking, investing, security and retail to the consumer. The largest and most represented field was mobile. The second most demoed area was social – such as Twitter and Facebook integration, followed by mobile payments, security, small business and sales/marketing/investing.

“There is so much stuff that is migrating into mobile,” said Jim Bruene, founder of Finovate. That was just huge. It just interacts with everything that people are showing.  But we really look for something new that people haven’t seen before, and that have impact. I created Finovate because I’ve been in the financial product area for a long time, I just wanted to see all the good stuff comes out quickly, and all the new stuff in one place. Being exposed to that is the ‘funnest’ part.”

Bruene did say a few companies stood out because they were completely new to him.  For example,  CK Mack had an innovative business model.  It’s a system that enables people to invest in the rental real estate market, mostly single-family houses.   Consumers can come in and put $100 dollars in a house here and another $25 there. Co-founders Linda Schictanz and Marcus Zoeller explained the product as a way of bringing the returns generated by rental real estate to the online investing market. “Our web platform opens the historically popular field of real estate to a broad audience, allowing unprecedented diversification and stellar returns.”

Another was Bolstr, a crowdfunding platform that empowers communities to invest in local businesses.  “It’s the first crowdfunding platform focused on adding liquidity to main street small businesses and the only platform able to legally operate pre-JOBS Act,” said founders Charlie Tribbett and Larry Baker. “We worked tirelessly along with our legal counsel to create a model that works within the current regulatory environment.”  How it works is that people can invest in say, a restaurant, and then they can participate in the revenue – they actually get a piece of the restaurants revenue until they get they get their return.

While several of the demonstrations had to do with traditional consumer banking, there was a new category called ‘youth banking.’  PlayMoolah is on a mission to change the way kids use money through fun technologies that allows them to experience money management in order to earn, spend, save and give. “Through real dollars, real action and real impact, we hope for kids to take control of their money and become empowered by using it to live their dreams and create value for society,” said co-founders Audrey Tan and Min Xuan Lee. Then there was Waspit, or “Banking 2.0.”  It combines traditional banking features with social media platforms to create more intuitive experiences for its users.

Virtual Piggy aims at the same under 18 demographic but it’s aimed at security.  It is designed to provide a secure mechanism, so youth can initiate purchases online that are parent approved, controlled and monitored.  The parents can establish parameters around what they can spend, but it’s still full service banking for the younger crowd.

There were also several companies that focused on using the phone to make payments more secure.  One of these was Locaid, which locates smart and feature phones, tables and mobile devices on wireless carriers. It allows mobile developers to locate devices for enterprise authentication, fraud management and consumer location.

The two-day conference ended yesterday with eight Best of Show winners:  Credit Sesame, Money Desktop, PayTap, ShopKeep POS, Dashlane, Dynamics,  eToro and LearnVest.

IgniteNYC attendees, with the speakers in the first row, sat with rapt attention. Photo Credit: Robert Gregson

By Lauren Keyson

Failure was the theme of the IgniteNYC event last night at the Tishman Auditorium at the Parsons The New School, and 14 speakers each told a story about how they failed but then rose out of the flames. Surprisingly, this topic turned out to be poignant, inspirational, sad — and extremely funny. It was a platform for speakers who had experienced failure and were not afraid to share it with anyone – and that they did.

David Carroll, associate professor of media design and director of design and technology at The New School talked about how the school is trying to incorporate the idea that ‘failure isn’t awful’ into the  pedagogy. “We are undoing that failure is bad, but that it’s important to learn from. We acknowledge that education is responsible for stigmatizing failure. The business and startup community really valorizes failure, but in academia it’s taking some time, and we’re in the process of reconciling success and failure. If you can learn from failure, then that’s a success.”

Ryan MacCarrigan, one of the organizers of the event, works at leanstartupmachine, whose tagline is Fail Fast, Succeed Faster. “You come into it high hopes, gun ho expectations, and you realize ‘this is not for me, what do I do?’ It’s okay to be in those situations in life. We need to have moments of failure so that we can really learn and internalize what happened and move forward.”

All the panelists had equally poignant stories, but they laughed about their failures and obviously learned from the experience and moved on.  Kyle Studstill, partner at Three Kings, said that he wanted to make things interesting, and that telling stories was a good way of doing that.  “We have this culture of ‘failure is cool’ now.  Over the past couple of decades, we have this compulsion to say ‘we fail faster’ and the like. One of the reasons this exists is because we live in this age of transparency, where we can talk about things we’re doing, not as failures as such, but we can tell a story about them. We can say ‘hey this made my life or product more interesting.’ We want to build something that expresses our ideas. Use the failure as a fact that you actually did something as a way to get value out of that thing you did, even if it didn’t succeed.

Kim Boekbinder has reinvented how tours are booked by selling the shows before booking the venues.  She did this through crowdfunding.  She came up with the idea when she had a bad tour. The venue had a capacity of 200 to 300 people, and there were only 18 people in the room. “I lost a lot of money, and it’s pretty sad to play to an empty room. I went and bought myself a couple of shots of whisky and thought about how I could change my life.”  Therefore, she set up a show in NY using Kickstarter.  She had a date – but no venue.  She told people online that she needed $1,000 to make it happen, and the show was funded immediately.

Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, professor at Baruch College and a TED fellow, does collaborative curating online and collects money through Twitter and Facebook. Her students collaborate with people around the world. They wrote an e-book on racism called Could You Be The Bigger Nigger, with middle and last word crossed out, and 4,000 people downloaded it.  However, her failure story was about how last year she got married to someone she met on Facebook, and it didn’t work out.   The lesson she learned from that year was about radical openness online, “If you’re going to take a big risk, you really need to plan – you can’t just follow your heart.”

MacCarrigan added, “One of the recurring themes is that if you fail, you can pivot your way towards success. You can learn from failure and achieve a successful outcome. If you’re having success after success, you probably aren’t learning anything valuable.”

NY Gaming Meetup panelist converse have a gaming conversation about music and games. Credit: Lauren Keyson

By Lauren Keyson

Last night at the New York Gaming Meetup in midtown at Baruche College, dozens of developers, musicians and artists met to discuss the difficult and complex subjects of getting the music rights for games. “There are a lot of game developers who are looking to incorporate music into their games and they need to secure the licensing rights,” said Brad Hargreaves, founder of general assembly and NY Gaming Meetup. He brought together a panel of people who bridge the world of gaming and music along with the moderator, Andie Simon, consultant for Electronic Arts (EA).  The developers at the event came away with the realistic understanding of the steps they need to take to secure rights to the music they want to use in games.

At the intersection of games and music there was Bill Wilson, VP of digital strategy for DigitalMusic.org, a trade organization that represents app developers and music services in their relationships with the labels, the publishers and the performing rights organizations. They provide education resources and the ability to “herd the cats,’’ for people with commerce companies developing new services.  They are part of a larger legacy organization called NARM, the national association of recording merchandisers that handle the relationship between the physical retail communities and the labels.  He believes the rights issues are very complicated, but not insurmountable.

“The trick is understanding who to go to and why, and avoiding some of the snake oil that’s out there,” he said. Understand that there are trusted sources for this stuff — and selfishly speaking, the trade organization is one way to find them. We are very much trusted nonprofit at the center of the commerce side of the business. Another major resource for gamers is to go to some of the indie aggregators who can do things more flexibly than larger content players can.  There is The Orchard that handles the asset management for a lot of the smaller indie labels — and that’s a convenient way to do a faster deal. If you’re a video company, there is a project started by Corbis called GreenLight which enables companies to use synced video.

“One of the reasons I’m here tonight is because these are the guys that are the new mom and pop stores.  Back in the day,  these are the people who might be opening record stores. Now they are the people who want to create these fantastic new applications because they love music.  We should be enabling them to help us and not gatekeeping them so much.”

Dave Pettigrew is strategic marketing and head of marketing and advertising for Warner/Chappell Music publishing that has  about 1-1/2 million copyrights and that licenses music every day of the week. They have done every iteration of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and all the Just Dances and Dance Central.  He gave his most basic take on gaming and royalties, “I’ve been doing video game licensing with music for the past 15 years. Basically, if it’s a music-based game, you’re looking at royalties, and if not, you are looking at a buyout.  You can actually make a living at gaming. If there is music, and you can get it in the right game, then there is even more.”

“It’s a Byzantine business, and gamers need to get a basic understanding of how this music business works; then they have to come up with a fun game” said Simon.  “Once they have done that, they really need to make sure they covered their Ps and Qs in terms of getting the music licensing.  Otherwise, they are going to find themselves struggling.  Read Donald Passman’s book,  Everything You Want to Know About the Music Business.”

Sinjin Bain, GM for EA Partners, talked about how music is the key for gamers. “It’s an important creative and emotional content component of the game.  It’s game design, it’s music, it’s story – and music cuts across the spectrum.”