Author Archives: Steve Guengerich

About Steve Guengerich

Steve is managing director of BroadBrush Ventures and a member of the founding management team of Appconomy, Inc. Steve is an award-winning writer, with his ninth book "Think Lobal > Act Glocal" available on Amazon.com at http://bit.ly/awKABU. In addition to the mobileTech Tuesday, Steve writes "The BroadBrush Update" at http://www.Guengerich.com on tech innovation and society.

I’m a little Dewey: Honoring the spirit of Dewey Winburne

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mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich

Chances are, you may have never heard of Dewey Winburne, especially if you are somewhat new to Austin. I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time to help change that possibility, in a small way.

Because, regardless of whether you never met Dewey Winburne before he died in 1999 or have never even heard the name before, Dewey is a symbol for Austin and its tumultuous, joyous, sometimes depressing, yet eternally optimistic tech start-up ecosystem and the collateral acts of goodwill that thrive alongside the entrepreneurial journey.

I won’t go into Dewey’s life, partly because I personally never met him during his years of greatest visibility as an ambassador for SXSW, and partly because I can’t imagine ever being able to do as good a job as the tribute website that has stood in his honor for years: http://www.patrickcurry.com/dewey/  But, it’s a life that merits a few moments of reflection, which I hope you will take to honor his memory, by following the link.

For several years, carrying forward a tradition of honoring Dewey’s memory, the SXSW Interactive organizers have circulated a call for nominations that goes something like this:

Greetings and happy early October from SXSW-land.

I am writing because you are a past honoree for the Dewey Winburne Community Service Awards, which have traditionally recognized Austin-area technology-related do-gooders…

As a past Dewey honoree, we would love to hear your ideas about your friends / peers / associates / followers / heros who are doing good work through new media in Austin, as well as in other communities around Texas, around the nation, and around the world.

What kinds of people are we looking for? This person might be a teacher who is using new media in some amazing way. Or, this person might be a software developer who has created an app that helps improve the living conditions of a particular area. Or, this person might be a community organizer who has a particularly innovative strategy with regards to technology.

There are numerous other kinds of people who would be a great candidate for the 2012 Dewey Awards. Indeed, just so long as this person works at a grassroots level to better society through the power of new media, then you are on the right track with your idea.

Yes, I receive this email because I’m a past Dewey Winburne Award finalist. In other words, I’m a little Dewey (see below). But, you don’t have to be a past finalist or award recipient to nominate candidates for the award. In fact, in the 2012 SXSW plans are efforts to make the Winburne Award one for a global audience.

Help make it so, by passing on the story of Dewey Winburne to others, by nominating a deserving candidate, and by attending the 2012 Awards ceremony. You don’t have to be a nominee to be a little Dewey yourself.

= = =

The title of this post “I’m a little Dewey” has an added, double meaning for me as it is the last one I’ll be writing as a regular contributor for AustinStartup. Not to get overly misty-eyed or sentimental, but the friends I’ve met through the tech start-up scene in Austin have meant a lot to me.

Now, as I head to China to help my own start-up, Appconomy, accomplish what we hope are great things, I look forward to getting involved in the start-up scene and adding new friends there. When I’m not writing about the mobile scene for Appconomy, I plan to chronicle observations via my personal blog (guengerich.com).

I’ll also be introducing readers to one or two of the more popular Chinese social media, if you care to follow along – hope to hear from you!

= = =

From the generosity and good record-keeping of the SXSW organizers, here is a full accounting of Dewey Winburne Community Service Award honorees (finalists and recipients) – the next time you see one of these women or men, take a moment to say “thanks” or – better yet – ask them what they are doing in the community!

Ileana Abounader, Brenda Adrian, Jim Allan, Shahed Amanullah, Stephen Amos, Meredith Beal, Tricia Berry, Anthony Bertucci, Bianca Bickford, Janet Blake, Silona Bonewald, Dennis Borel, Stacy Bouwman, Donny Branam, Lisa Byrd, Andres Carvallo, Gary Chapman, Jeanine Christensen, Sue Cole, Pierce Collins, Jayne Cravens, Julia Cuba,

Laura Donnelly, Thea Eaton, Dave Evans, Jennifer Evans, Joe Faulk, Teresa Ferguson, Tiffany Galligan, Juan Garcia, Rodney Gibbs, Lisa Goldman, Danny Gomez, Mona Gonzalez, Sheri Graner Ray, Steve Guengerich, Bobbie Guerra, Richard Halpin, Wendell Handy, Sheena Harden, Tim Harrell, Rondella Hawkins, Josie Hughes,

Kat Jones, Leroy Jones, Kathy Keller, Karen Kreps, Joyce Lauck, Jon Lebkowsky, Walter Lenoir, Herman Lessard, Adina Levin, Nick Lewis, Rich MacKinnon, Dario Martinez, Jan McSorley, Lisa McWilliams, Gordon Montgomery, Melanie Moore, Maria Morissey, Rachel Muir, David Neff, Joanna Nigrelli, Pat Pound, Roberta Przybylski,

Alicia Rascon, Armando Rayo, Connie Reece, Sam Robertson, Monica Roesch, Chip Rosenthal, Sharron Rush, Keith Rutledge, Dave Sanders, Carl Settles, Randi Shade, Trent Sharp, Dr. John Slatin, Leroy Smith, Harvey Smith, Ken Starks, Roger Steele, Sharon Strover, Dale Thompson, Angela-Ja Touza-Medina,

Allen Weeks, Adam Weinroth, Melvin White, Monica Williams, Stefan Wray, Richard Yu, and Kevin Zeppernick.

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Where New Mobile Ventures Come From

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mobileTechTuesday, by Steve Guengerich

I just completed my second year of teaching the New Ventures class for the Digital MBA program at St. Edwards University. It will be my last time to teach the class, as I expect to be out of the country next year. (More on that later.)

Serving as a professor for a University-level class has been a long-time interest of mine. I got the bug to teach several years ago, after doing one-shot lectures as a guest speaker.

So, when the opportunity to be an adjunct presented itself for this program, thanks to the support of Director Russell Rains (in the photo, at left), it seemed like the perfect fit.

I wasn’t disappointed. The experience for me, and hopefully for the students, has been great for several reasons.

First, it’s given me a chance to impart at least a little bit of what I’ve learned the past couple of decades in and around start-ups. Lessons like explaining the difference between product marketing and product management. Or focusing on the key items on a term sheet, a financial model, or a cap table.

Second, it’s provided me a platform for introducing people in my interpersonal network of professional colleagues who I think are among the very best at what they do in Austin for supporting tech start-ups. People like attorney Ryan Gravelle at KHRG and CFO services expert Dave Donovan at Bridgepoint Consulting, who came in and guest lectured for the class.

As I told my students more than once during the term, half the value of the class – by my design – was the opportunity for them to meet and hear from these and other Austin-area professionals so that the students, like me, could add the Ryan’s and Dave’s to their networks.

Third, and last, it permitted me the chance to participate, up close, with 8 three-person teams of MBA candidates, each starting from scratch, working with them to produce the most compelling, real-world venture they could imagine.

Being steeped in the mobile & app industry as I am, the one technical parameter that I required in the venture concepts they developed was that they had to embrace some aspect of mobility in their final product or solution. (The other two parameters were: had to be “real world” – no pitches to invent the Star Trek transporter – and had to target a potential of growing significantly in 3 years…no small “lifestyle” businesses allowed.)

What the students developed was great! And, for anyone that keeps returning to the start-up world, that’s the payoff – the diversity and ingenuity and passionate commitment to ideas that small teams of people display when they get excited about a product. Here’s quick list of what they came up with:

  • BandLens – kind of an Instagram for concerts and other live event videos, comprised of user generated content (UCG)
  • Beyond Solos – professional musical accompaniment for classical music, on the go
  • Dandy – an alternative marketing option for tradeshow exhibitors and marketers at any event
  • Dash n Dine – like an Urbanspoon, but for pick-up/delivery, and with more merchant value
  • Filter.FM – a better music search engine, without the overhead of a Pandora
  • Hello House – server and app technology that simplifies the sale of foreclosed real estate
  • HomescreenTV – TV the way people really watch
  • Video Voodoo – easy UCG videos for brand builders and marketers

In the final analysis, after the students presented their pitches to the seven-person investor panel that came in to score them (including, among the judges, Austin Startup’s editor Bryan Menell), the most gratifying part was to see how far they had all come in shaping their ideas over the term.

I highly encourage anyone who has an interest in sharing what you know with future generations of entrepreneurs to get involved in the St. Edwards program or others, like UT-Austin’s new 1SemesterStartup.

For me, the only alternative I’ll have for keeping involved in such a program next year will be if I can find an accommodating program in Shanghai, China. Because, as early as January, I’ll be leaving to spend the next year in Shanghai as an American member of Appconomy’s leadership team to help get our operations up and running there.

As readers may have seen in yesterday’s AustinStartup post and other media, through a combination of hard work, relationship building, and the usual intangible elements, Apponomy was pleased to announce the backing of new and returning investors for a $10 million round of funding. To make good on our investors’ commitment and belief in our model, we’re committed to rapidly “standing up” our business in China.

With every new door opened like this one, it becomes time to close other doors. In this case, one of the doors I have to close is my multi-year run as a regular columnist for AustinStartup. Thus, next Tuesday will be my final regular column.

Hopefully, I’ll still have a chance to make an occasional post from Shanghai. One thing’s for certain: China officially may be a communist state, but the entrepreneurial spirit there flows strongly, as evidenced by this write-up in The New York Times DealBook about one of Appconomy’s new investors.

So, have a terrific Christmas, coming up this weekend, and if you get the chance, come back next week during a break from the holiday feasts and football for one final mobileTechTuesday.

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Mobile and the Austin Chamber

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mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich

Tech start-ups, at least in my experience, have a notoriously conflicted relationship with traditional business networking groups, like our city’s Chamber of Commerce.

The conflict comes because, on the surface, what each needs from the other is hard to come by. The Chamber needs financial support (membership fees, etc.) and volunteer time – both of which start-ups can ill afford.

Conversely, the tech start-up needs targeted access to early adopter customers and very specific, often highly skilled and experienced, people – neither of which is really the Chamber’s core business per se’.

However, the nurturing of a local/regional ecosystem that accommodates the needs of both can be highly mutually beneficial. And in that regard, I have to hand it to the Greater Austin Chamber’s Technology Partnership as it works to foster such an ecosystem.

Led by Susan Davenport, the Technology Partnership is a virtual organization started a bit over a year ago by the Chamber to develop a strong vision and strategy for our technology sector.

A central understanding by the Technology Partnership is that the Austin tech economy has shifted away from a manufacturing core towards that of a technology innovation sector.

In the Technology Partnership’s words “the implications for this shift affect every aspect of the known factors contributing to high-tech business location decisions, including but not limited to the following:

  • Access to Capital
  • Support for Entrepreneurial Development
  • Quality of Place
  • Established Technology Infrastructure
  • Educated and Talented Workforce
  • Presence and Accessibility of Research Institutions
  • State and Local Commitment/Supportive Policies”

To ensure that the Chamber’s efforts are appropriately directed to address these factors, the Technology Partnership has formed several special interest groups (or SIGs) for areas like Life Sciences, Gaming and Mobile, among others.

Since early this year, a number of founding execs from various mobile companies in Austin have met together, with Chamber reps, to talk about our position on the priority of these factors, as well as our companies’ individual needs. To their credit, the Chamber hasn’t placed a “must be a paying member of the Chamber to participate” roadblock to the mobile start-ups that have attended these meetings.

The dialog and networking has been great. At the very least, it has provided a constructive forum where, in my view, smaller companies that have struggled for attention from the traditional business establishment are able to share more about their hopes for their companies and our city. And, in that way, it’s an effort that has already generated a nice ROI.

If you’d like to know more about the Mobile SIG or the other Technology Partnership components, Aisha Javed has been a contact for meetings and information.

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Mobile Education Is?

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mobileTechThursday, by Steve Guengerich

Mobile education is cool. In April of this year, Disney executive producer Starr Long spoke coyly but confidently at AMD’s GameOn Texas! Conference about Disney’s mission to make “educational” games the coolest, best games. (Games, by the way, that run on AMD-powered tablets and laptops, one would hope.)

Mobile education is hot. Tuesday, mobile platform maker Knewton, announced a significant partnership with education publisher Pearson. Pearson also led a $33 million funding round for Knewton.  It will be interesting to see how other publishers, like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which has had a significant regional presence in Austin over the years, will respond to Pearson’s moves.

Mobile education is controversial! Parents are conflicted. Kids are addicted. And administrators, as I could have predicted, are struggling with being nimble in an environment that is heavily influenced by politics, cultural norms, bureaucracy, inertia, competing stakeholders, etc. Just look at the dust-up this week from the UT Regent’s adoption of myEdu.

Mobile education is disruptive. Bob Metcalfe, who has quickly established himself as a center of gravity in the Austin tech scene, identified education as among the three big industries be disrupted by mobile, video, and embedded apps.

Mobile education is Austin. One look at all of the companies on the Austin Mobile Scene map – involved in mobile gaming, mobile learning and education, or contract mobile app development for others that are targeting education – is all it takes to know that the community has a strong capability in mobile education.

When confronted with the data, it’s clear that mobile education is an irreversible trend. More than two years ago, New York Times writer Steve Lohr reported an SRI-produced study that concluded “Online education beats the classroom.”

Here was the comment I left in the article’s ‘reader replies’ that has turned out to be the all-time, top referring page to my personal blog:

If you resonate with the study’s conclusions, then consider that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. Imagine what we’ll begin to see when the generation that’s been “bathed in bits” begins building learning communities?

Imagine a mash-up of stumbleupon (randomizing), plus freerice.com (rewards/incentives), plus websites only slightly tweaked to deliver the core content required by states’ NCLB-mandated standards. The most successful (digital) charter school in history.

And, to take it a step further, now layer in the ability to be the personality that you want to be while learning, but still retain a social element through your digital self.

What is mobile education?  Mobile education is the future.

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This is not a smart-phone and I don’t care

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(c) BroadBrush Ventures LLC 2011mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich

I attended Dell World 2011 last week and it was pretty remarkable on a number of levels. On one level, I reflected on Dell’s maturation as an enterprise.

While the majority of what we write about in AustinStartup.com are new hardware and software ideas being brought to market, it’s easy to forget a couple of things. One, that Dell itself – presently 41st on the Fortune 500 list of largest companies – was once an Austin startup, way back in 1984. Two, that the majority of startups would like nothing better than (a) to be acquired by a big company like Dell or (b) to become a big company like Dell.

On another level, it was interesting to observe the evolution of Dell’s position. For those unfamiliar with the classic description of company position by Geoff Moore in Crossing the Chasm, note that position is a noun, not a verb. A position is something a company has, not something it does.

So, it was very interesting to see the lengths that Dell speakers and workers on the exhibit floor went to reinforce the merging position of Dell as the “new HP” (my words).

Gone are the days of Dell consumer devices dominating the spotlight – the MP3 players, bargain-priced plasma TVs, and Dell Streaks of the world. Sure, they are still there, but now mainly referred to as “end points” or “nodes.” (By the way, did I forget to say this was an IT-centric crowd?)

In their place are two big messages, at least that I took away from Dell World 2011:

First message: that Dell is emerging as the pre-eminent end-to-end computing solutions company on the planet – more than IBM, more than Cisco, and definitely more than anything you will ever see from Apple!

One of the many examples of this IT-centric, end-to-end, “big iron” preeminence was the demonstration modular data center that Dell showed on the exhibit floor.

Some facts about the modular data center (shown in the photo above): contains 1,920 servers, 138 terabytes of RAM, multiple petabytes of storage, and is 100% free air cooled. Stick that in your iPhone 4S pipe and smoke it!

Second message: that when it comes to “end points,” Dell loves PCs. No, you don’t understand: I mean Dell LOOVVVVEEESSSSSS PCs!

Over and over you heard this phrase – “We love PCs” – during the two days of guest keynote and Dell corporate speakers. Michael said it. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft said it. Paul Ottelini of Intel said it, although he also liked referring to Intel’s reference platform of the future, which Intel calls “the Ultrabook.”

In fact, Intel believes there is still so much room remaining for next generation PCs, that it has opened a $300 million fund to spur innovation with the “suppliers to the suppliers” of ultrabook devices. In other words, the fund isn’t meant for the Dells or even the next hot tablet start-up. Instead, it’s for the companies creating the power supplies, graphics controllers, and wireless adapters for those future devices.

The beauty of these kinds of investments, for those of us focused on the mobile and app world, like I am at Appconomy, is that such innovations will only serve to benefit the larger industry as a whole.

And, that’s a big reason why I enjoyed being at Dell World, seeing the energy and enthusiasm up close of companies like Intel, Microsoft, and especially Dell, working hard every day to stay on top of the tech mountain.

If you were at Dell World 2011 or attended any of the events & activities, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

SXSW Eco, ArtPrize and GigaOM: 7 Days, 3 Events Apps

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mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich

The past week has been a whirlwind of travel and events: from San Francisco to Grand Rapids to Austin.

Along the way, I’ve had a chance to try out apps for each event, using my trusty iPhone 3GS – yes, I’m one of those who skipped 1st gen iPhone 4 and am likely to be a 4S purchaser!

Here are some impressions of the event apps, working backwards, with a few screen shots from each.

Running today through Thursday is SXSW Eco. The Eco app is pretty much a copy of the core scheduling functions that you last saw in the SXSW 2011 app, so it should be very familiar to you.

Once the database loads, navigation is pretty swift, although I did encounter a point where the database refresh hung (see screen 4). It would be nice if the target area for indicating favorites – that little gray star at the right of every row – was a wee bit bigger.

I also would have liked to see some transactional capability in the app, like if the authors had wanted to make a coupon available for their book signings, etc. But, overall, the app is clean, easy-to-use, and works. Thanks Southby guys and @Xomo.

This past weekend, I spent an awesome time in Grand Rapids on the pivot weekend of the 3rd annual ArtPrize. Look for more about ArtPrize on my personal blog – in a word, it was ridiculouslyawesomeandinspiring!

The app for ArtPrize, developed by @AtomicObject, is very nifty. ArtPrize is less of a schedule-driven conference and more of an experience. So, the app still has to provide many event-like functions – venue locations, bios of participants (in this case, artists instead of speakers), and maps.

But, it also has to provide more unique functions, like voting and background information on the competition. Because, at the end of the 3 week festival, the top vote getter of ArtPrize receives a $250,000 award!

I liked the choice the developers made to get you into the app right away, saving wait times for when you choose to loading larger data, like images of the art work. In general, I found the app UI very attractive and intuitive, with super-fast response time.

If I had any critique, it would be to also provide a transactional capability to the app, by enabling artists to offer their work for sale through the app. In fact, speaking with the organizers, the prospect of providing artists more opportunities to promote their involvement is a big topic on the list as they compile their debrief list for next year.

Finally, a little over a week ago, my team and I from Appconomy participated at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference. GigaOM doesn’t have an event app (at least, not one that I could find), instead relying on the primary app for the organization, which has an event section.

In prior conversations with the GigaOM team, I already knew they weren’t thrilled with their own app – it’s in need of a serious upgrade and they know that. But, it would have been nice to have at least been able to get to a mobilized web version of the 2011 schedule for the conference.

Instead, I couldn’t even *find* the conference when I searched for it – obviously a search feature glitch of some kind. In general, the app UI is solid and easy to navigate around. But, I’ve never been able to get it to save my Login credentials as a GigaOM Pro subscriber, which is something it appears to offer.

So, definitely more work to do at the home office for this one – especially since the conference itself is one of the premier thought leadership events in the mobile space! I expect to be “wowed” in 2012 guys!

So, that’s my 3 events apps in 7 days. Have you had a favorite or most dreadful event app experience to share? Please leave a Reply or add your thoughts in the Comments section, below.

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Mobile and the ‘internet of things’

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mobileTech Thursday, by Steve Guengerich

I just returned from GigaOM’s annual Mobilize conference, held Monday and Tuesday this week, at the UCSF Mission Bay conference center in San Francisco. With this week’s post, I wanted to focus on two sessions that caught my interest as a potential area of opportunity for Austin’s mobile entrepreneurs.

The first session was a solo presentation by Mike Kuniavsky, CEO of ThingM, on the subject of “The internet of things to come.” It was a good introductory session by Mike, a noted author and consultant in the field, which you can watch courtesy of Livestream and GigaOM.

The core of Kuniavsky’s presentation was a discussion of six major drivers enabling much greater velocity and volume of innovation in the field. His list of these drivers includes:

  • Object-oriented hardware
  • Cheap assembly
  • “Anchors” in the cloud
  • Social electronics design
  • Arduino
  • Low volume sales channels

I won’t go into an explanation of these drivers – you can watch the video for the details. Suffice it to say that his opinion is the companies and technologies that are represented within each of these drivers comprise the innovation ecosystem for the internet of things.

The panel discussion on the “Infrastructure for the internet of things” was a great follow-up to the overview. In it, the panelists discussed both tech and non-barriers to success.

In particular, I thought the remarks by Bo Begole, Principal Scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), were insightful. Bo spoke about two barriers that need to be overcome, both of which can and should be tackled by mobile app developers.

The first barrier is the need for some sort of intervening filtering system, perhaps in the cloud or on a mobile device. The need for this filtering is imperative because, at present, these smart devices have no subtlety: they unilaterally demand attention. Without the ability to sort out all of the notifications, alerts, and other signals that a roomful of smart objects sends, people can and will be overwhelmed with information interrupts.

Bo mentioned a project that inside PARC called Meshin that is still in development, but getting close to being spun out. Meshin’s Android-only app has been available in the Android Marketplace for a all of a week, so it’s brand new.

While Meshin’s ‘center of gravity’ is primarily email, Bo said that there is ample reason to believe, based on PARC research, that an extension of the app’s design paradigm could be applied to the internet of things.

The second barrier was the need for a way to detect and then administer a collection of smart objects. The answer is some sort of unified interface. Another PARC example that Bo cited tackling a version of this problem is an offering from a spin-out called PowerCloud.

While it is mainly focused on detecting and administering wi-fi access points, there’s a good basis to believe the PowerCloud approach could be extended to a more diverse environment of smart objects.

In my personal experience, I’ve seen a couple of examples of technology that each tackle a part of this problem. On the detection side, Scott Kirkwood of Kirkwood Labs pitched a deal at the Clean Energy Venture Summit a couple of years ago that performed auto-detection of devices.

On the administration side, I’ve been working with a company called GoodRobot, led by Alan Majer, with whom I presented a session at SXSW Interactive earlier this year.

Alan’s team has been working on a technology for administering a collection of smart things in the home, with the ultimate goal of providing a simple to build and use control panel.  You can see an example of a prototype that works nicely on tablet, but is still handy from a smart phone browser.

So there you have it: a different kind of mobile opportunity, but one that no doubt will get here sooner than we think. I welcome your comments, questions, and examples of other companies or technologies.

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China, Austin and Mobile Development

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mobileTechTuesday, by Steve Guengerich

Yesterday, Austin-headquartered Digby announced that 7GeGe.com, leading Chinese specialty retailer of fashionable and contemporary apparel, had selected Digby to launch a mobile optimized website for 7GeGe.com before year’s end. Digby’s partnership is a microcosm of the greater opportunity that Austin mobile developers and app makers should be thinking about with respect China.

At a macroeconomic level, there’s no surprise as to why China is generating more interest than ever. It already surpassed Japan earlier this year to become the world’s second largest economy. To get a closer look, the Greater Austin Chamber is hosting a fall trip to China early next month – part grand tour / part economic development reconnaissance – from October 6-14.

From a mobile perspective, there should be even less of a surprise as to why China should be of tremendous interest to mobile companies. As reported by Chetan Sharma in his research from the first half of 2011, China is in a race with India for the first nation to reach 1 billion mobile subscribers, with each cumulatively adding 75 million new subs every quarter. Globally, China is #1 in mobile subscriptions, #2 in mobile revenue, and #3 in data revenue.

But there are some significant obstacles to success with mobile in China. It takes more than a sister city relationship, which Austin has had for more than a decade with sister city Xishuangbanna, China.

It takes a real understanding of and investment in the technical, political, economic, and cultural differences. To provide a primer for understanding these differences, one of the sessions from the recent ATX Startup Week ‘unconference’ was dedicated to developing mobile apps for China.  View the Slideshare of the presentation below.

This presentation was developed app developers Mike Roeder and Brandon DuRette, intended to convey general knowledge about producing apps for mobile device users in China.  For more information about their presentation, you can reach Mike and Brandon via their twitter handles, @donkeyhighway and @bdurette, respectively.

If you want to dive into the tech and mobile scene in China, then take a long, hard look at the events coming up in the next 6 months, beginning with TechCrunch’s first Disrupt international conference, scheduled in Beijing, China for October 31.  Then there is Demo Asia, next February 29 (Demo China just wrapped last month). 

To get a sense of “movers and shakers,” you may want to scan the people involved in the Dalian, China World Economic Forum - some call it the “Summer Davos” – which wrapped up just last Friday, September 16.  And, again, from a more pure mobile and tech perspective, a valuable source of people and companies is the Great Wall Club which also publishes the MobiSights blog, a consistently good daily source of mobile news and analysis about China.

ICanHazATXStartupWeek? It’s a Wrap!

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mobileTechTuesday by Steve Guengerich

Last week, September 6-10, was ATX Startup Week (that A, for Austin, TX y’all). Championed by Jacqueline Hughes and directly inspired by Boulder Startup Week, a robust programming schedule was built around Capital Factory’s 2011 Demo Day, with support from a number of anchor sponsors.

A few personal observations from the week – some that are mobile-related, some not:

The five “Class of 2011″ Capital Factory companies were remarkable in their understated-ness. By that, I mean they were easy to understand, with value propositions that made sense, and accessible to customers regardless of their technical sophistication. Nothing sexy…but then, neither are oil wells or auto dealerships, but Red McCombs seems to have done pretty well for himself with them.

In fact, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the five – Storymix, SwimTopia, SpeakerMix, Helpjuice, and GroupCharger – is how they eschewed the SoLoMo attributes that seem to form the baseline for most consumer apps these days. More power to them; it will be interesting watching them over the coming year. (For more coverage, read the reverse-chron comprehensive blog post by our friends at Launch.is) 

But, as interesting as the DEMO DAY pitches were, I’ll have to say that the keynote presenters were even more compelling. (Regrettably, I had to leave at lunch and couldn’t stay for the third keynote or the afternoon “speed” pitches.) Both Bob Metcalfe and Brian Sharples made terrific presentations. Witty, authentic, totally engaging – I really can’t say enough about their remarks.

I highly recommend that you keep your eye open for an opportunity to hear either speak in the future and to watch for the Capital Factory’s edited versions of their videos on Youtube in the future, like they’ve done in the past. I would have paid just to hear the keynote speakers – they were that good.

Lastly, the ICanHazMobile&Gaming unconference – held Friday afternoon, hosted at Appconomy’s offices – was a terrific afternoon of programming. A meaty array of subjects was packed into four hours by expert presenters from GameSalad, Famigo, Texas Gaming Incubator, Mobile Monday Austin, Appconomy, Mutual Mobile, TabbedOut, and Bootstrap Austin.

Livestreamed by the Austin bureau of RCR Wireless, the event was sold out days in advance and was a great example of what a charming and determined group of organizers (high five to @AppconomyOlga, Rachel, Jacqueline!) can put together with no budget – one of the things I love about Austin’s collaborative spirit.

Like I said, there was a whole bunch more that happened during ATX Startup Week, including open office hours for entrepreneurs with principals from Silverton and AV, a City Hall start-up bazaar, primo networking at co-work spaces and at pub crawling, geek kayaking, etc!  So, if you have a favorite moment or a big take-away you want to share, leave us a comment below.

And make sure to congratulate Jacqueline – see everyone again next year!

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Tech Elephant Mating Fosters New Mobile Species

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mobileTechThursday, by Steve Guengerich

What a week, huh? First Google buys Motorola Mobility. Then, slipped in there quietly, Time Warner Cable buys Insight.  And finally, HP announces that it’s getting out of the PC business, ceding mobile to Apple and letting Dell battle Lenovo and the other APAC manufacturers for what’s left of the laptop business.

Not much air left for announcements like the reportedly $40 million acquisition of the UK’s largest coupon site by Austin’s Whaleshark or, for that matter, strategic but tiny-by-comparison deals by companies like my own, Appconomy, which completed the acquisition of mobile, West-coast-based commerce company, Yoohoot Media.

The week reminds me of a very prescient slide that Mary Meeker, she of KPCB, used in the summation of a slideshare deck published in February of this year.

Her slide, more aptly titled than my post, addresses technology wealth & destruction cycles. The illustration highlights that new companies often win big in new cycles while incumbents often falter.

Personally, I’m encouraged by the opportunity that these cycles yield in new ideas, solutions, and (ultimately) the products and services that take hold and carry us forward to a better way of life.

In my last post, I wrote about the greater Austin accelerators and related resources that serve as the breeding ground – to draw from the title – of new ideas and companies in our community. To stretch the metaphor just one bit further, we’ll soon have a mating season of sorts upon us for new ventures in the Austin area as well.

Some of the highlight events of the Fall 2011 season, where exciting new companies are spawning, include:

There’s no doubt that big changes are afoot in the software, hardware, and communications. It’s as exciting a time as ever to be a participant in these fields. We’ll look forward to seeing you at some of these events and others in the coming months.

As always, please add your comments, programs and events in a reply, so we can highlight other programs as well.

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