Our first Austin Tech Happy Hour of the year is coming up this Thursday, February 3rd at Molotov. Perhaps you recently read about the happy hour when Mashable posted their national list of 24 professional organizations and events for social media strategists? Either way you should come out and relax and network with 250 of your fellow Austin technology industry enthusiasts. Event management for Austin Tech Happy Hour, Feb 2011 powered by Eventbrite Sponsors Zynga [...]

When is the first SXSW panel going to be? Apparently it will be at 12:01am on Friday March 11th. That’s basically one minute after Midnight on Thursday night. Part of the Larry Chiang Entrepreneur Experience will be an 11 minute happy hour (the Reverse VC Pitch Party) on Thursday night late, followed by an after party with a VC panel. For all you entrepreneurs (you must have a SXSW badge though) who are looking to [...]

I asked Michael Schaecher from AirBnB to give us an update ahead of SXSW, and the big housing crunch! I’ve heard that hotel rooms filled up faster than normal for 2011. Here is one solution. 2010 was an exciting year for us at Airbnb. Our concept is simple: people make money renting our their space to those who need a place to stay, and we now offer a diversity of listings, from an entire apartment [...]

Entreave is an Austin-based high tech start-up specializing in services for the online job space. Entreave has recently secured an undisclosed amount of funding to continue developing its match-making platform and information portal. “This gives us the runway to refine our platform and gain customer traction,” said Vamsi Mohun, the founder of Entreave. Entreave plans to raise more capital over the next few months. Entreave is developing a proprietary match-making platform that will enable companies [...]

mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich In December, after spending a little time identifying the other people and companies in the greater Austin area that were working in the mobile space, I borrowed a page from the work by the ATX Equation and posted a map of the Austin Mobile Scene. Others added more companies, people, events, and other elements of the scene to the map. And, while I’m sure it’s missing many, it’s become a [...]

In just under two months, when over 30,000 attendees come to Austin for the Interactive portion of the famous SXSW conference, there will be a new event to watch:  Das IronGeek.  To be held Tuesday, March 15, 2011, Das IronGeek puts competitors through a series of challenges. But in this case, the competitors are among the 1,500 press and bloggers influencers who attend SXSW, and the challenges come from a few of the 200+ companies [...]

PetsMD Inc., a leading provider of online veterinary healthcare content and services, announced today that Raul Calvoz has joined the company as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors. “Raul’s contribution to PetsMD as a member of our Advisory Board for the last year has been outstanding,” said Tina Cannon Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer. “His entrepreneurial online experience as Vice President with Travelocity has been invaluable in helping to sharpen [...]

In September of 2009, the company Joel Trammel co-founded, NetQoS, was acquired by CA for $200M in cash. In February of 2010, he was on a Texchange  panel where he discussed the purchase of the company, and his ongoing role. My memory is far from perfect, but I remember asking him about his ongoing role with CA, and he said something to the effect of “I have no current role, and my status is undetermined.” [...]

In case you missed the lead story on the CBS News with Katie Couric the other day, Austin was featured as a city that has not only survived the downturn, but has thrived. Companies featured include Bazaarvoice, Calxeda, and the Austin Technology Incubator. Read the full print story here, or check out the video of the newscast.

mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich Barely a week into the New Year, the American Dialect Society brushed away any doubt that 2010 was a watershed year for mobile technology by voting “app” the Word of the Year, as reported by NPR and other media outlets. More interesting than the fact that it beat out “nom nom nom,” the cheery affirmation of cookie love by childhood favorite Sesame Street character Cookie Monster, was that the 1998 [...]