Events Archives - Page 30 of 44

Jessica Alba To Headline SXSWEco 2012 October 3-5 In Austin Texas

The producers of South By Southwest are preparing for their next SXSWEco event. The three day event will be held from October 3rd through October 5th in Downtown Austin. While it’s a bit smaller than the huge music, film and interactive festival held in March, it’s by no means a small event. In fact there are over 130 different talks, panels, work groups and special events during SXSWEco. Oh, and don’t forget the parties.

One of the headline keynote speakers will be actress Jessica Alba. Back in March, Alba, a Golden Globe nominated actress, launched her baby safe startup company called “The Honest Company”. The startup seeks to replace baby products laiden with harsh and untested chemicals, with natural products that are baby safe like diapers, household cleaners, soap, sunscreen, laundry detergent and even dishwasher gels.

The Honest Company went to town with a $27 million dollar venture round which included some of the heaviest of hitters. Investors in Netflix, Twitter, Living Social and Zynga all participated in Alba’s first round.

The folks at SXSW Eco have put together “An Honest Conversation With Jessica Alba and Christopher Gavigan”. Gavigan is Alba’s co-founder in The Honest Company.

Other highlighted speakers this year include: Lance Hosey (“The Shape of Green”), Annie Leonard (“The Story of Stuff”), and Senator Byron Dorgan with Jigar Shah. Distinguished Speakers include: Professor Michael Mann (Earth System Science Center), Tamar Adler (“An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace”), Juliet Eilperin (The Washington Post) and Bill McKibben (350.org).

Some of the other panels include: “Energy Challenges on the U.S.- Mexico Border,” “The Intersection of Art + Sustainability,” “New Urbanism: Why Reshaping Cities is Green,” “Rust Belt to Fresh Coast: Milwaukee’s Quiet Revolt,” “Behind E-Waste: The Good, Green & Shocking Truths,” “The End of the Golden Age of Automobiles?” and “Risks and Rewards of More Texas Wind and Solar.”

Linkage:

For more information on SXSWEco click here

St. Louis Startup Connection October 25th

St. Louis is preparing for the next Startup Connection event on October 25, 2012 at the St. Louis Science Center. Arch Grants, Executive Director, Sarah Spear reported in a guest post at the St. Louis Business Journal that the one day event continues to grow.

This year over 50 area entrepreneurs will show off their startups and compete for a variety of cash and prizes totaling more that $20,000.

The sponsor list, supporter list and prize list are like a who’s who of the thriving St. Louis startup ecosystem. It’s this synergy in the ecosystem that’s had Cultivation Capital’s Rick Holten all fires up for months.

The startups features at Startup Connection will be competing for the following prizes:
• People’s Choice Award — $2,500
• BioSTL Awards — $2,000 and $1,000
• Cultivation Capital Award — $2,000
• Mueller Prost PC Award — $1,500
• AEGIS Professional Services Award — $4,000 Legal Credit
• Hostirian — $4,000 Hosting Credit
• Systematic Revenue — $4,000 Subscription Credit

Startup Connection is held twice a year. This fall event will be at the St. Louis Science Center, October 25 from 4:30 to 8:30pm.

Linkage:

Here’s the web page for Startup Connection

Source: St. Louis Business Journal

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” we cover St. Louis better than the home team, click here!

We Caught Up With Charlotte Startup Rawporter At The DNC 2012

While we were at the DNC 2012 we got the opportunity to crash at the Rawporter crib in Uptown Charlotte. Rawporter co-founder Kevin Davis, recently relocated to New York to help grow the citizen journalism startup. Rob Gaige, the other Rawporter co-founder remains in Charlotte to continue their grassroots efforts in their hometown.

For those of you who aren’t aware, or for those of you who hear the name Rawporter on our videos, Rawporter is a social e-commerece platform for citizen journalism.

On Tuesday evening in the thick of an enormous rain storm, and just before the evening session at the DNC where First Lady Michelle Obama brought the house down, I actually got to join Gaige and Davis for a meal at the Dandelion Market in Uptown Charlotte (that’s their downtown), which is the restaurant where Rawporter was born. It was while eating at Dandelion that Gaige and Davis witnessed a horrific car accident. Like any event like this in 2011, people quickly emerged from every establishment on the block with their smartphones, and immediately started shooting pictures and videos.

Davis and Gaige both noticed that it wasn’t until after the emergency personnel had left and the wreckage was almost cleared that the news trucks began to arrive. When the Rawporter duo got back home and watched the news, sure enough there were no pictures or videos of the actual wreckage.

Sure national cable networks like CNN and Fox News, encourage their viewers to send in videos, but there had to be a way for citizen journalists, and the average people to get their videos to news outlets. In effect there needed to be a crowdsourced video news platform. So Rawporter was born. Davis and Gaige also decided to add another spin and make an e-commerce platform for the buying and selling of these videos and photos.

On the e-commerce side it was quickly discovered that Rawporter was a great way for bloggers with a small staff, or even newspapers and other media outlets with bare bones staff and bare bones budgets, to utilize the platform for great content.

Now news editors and the like can sift through and buy uploaded files, but what’s even better is they can commission a Rawporter user to actually do the work they need. For instance, if there is a convention or conference that the news outlet can’t get to, they can post an “assignment” with what they are willing to pay and the Rawporter community can bid for the assignment. Rawporter even facilitates the transaction.

Naturally with the Democratic National Convention in their back yard, it was an excellent venue to show off their product.

The Rawporter team also pitched at DEMO this past spring and Chicago TechWeek back in July.

Check out our video interview below:

Linkage:

Check out Rawporter here

Here’s more of our DNC 2012 coverage

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Politico Hosts Energy & The Presidency Panel At DNC2012

Politico hosted a great panel for lunch today. The panel was called “Energy & The Presidency” and talked about clean energy, solar energy and wind energy which are cornerstones to President Obama’s energy plan for the next four years. The panel included: Kevin Book, the Managing Director at Clearview; Carol Browner, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Congressman Ed Markley; Former New Mexico Governor and Former Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson; and the Former Governor of Colorado Bill Ritter Jr.

As you can see Politico provided a powerful line up of speakers who carrier Obama’s message of finding other forms of cleaner, sustainable energy going forward. Conversely, as Congressman Markley pointed out, Mitt Romney’s campaign has just received $6 million dollars from big oil and his energy plan includes oil above all else.

The Republicans have taken to the airwaves to confuse the people when it comes to energy, the costs and the savings. Kevin Book mentioned that “It’s hard for people to see the monetary effects of these energy changes through ads”.

While education is always a big part of bringing home any initiative and the statistics under the current president include a 50% drop in the price of solar energy. Also, before the end of the year 15,000 more megawatts of power will be added to the grid this year and that will come from solar and wind energy exclusively.

If you’re a frequent reader to nibletz or our former site you may be very familiar with Congressman Markley. While Markley sits on the energy committee, and has since 1976, he is very active in the world of privacy and data and also a strong advocate for startups. In fact the entire state of Massachusetts is as well.

Former Secretary Of Energy Richardson pointed out that global energy demand is going to increase 47% over the next five years, so regardless of previous election cycles, energy is very important this year.

Not only is energy an important issue because we need it, it will also fuel jobs for many years to come. From the corporate world, cleaner energy companies will need to hire workers to build infrastructure, wind mills, solar panels etc. On the startup front, even the government is watching the great ideas that are coming from the CleanTech and green space.

Linkage:

More coverage of the DNC

Uber Hits Mega Capacity In Charlotte At The DNC 2012 And Issues Uber Users Credits

As our long time readers know Uber is the only Valley based startup that we cover on nibletz.com we do this because they are building out their business across the country and around the world, and each new Uber city is treated as it’s own business. We’ve got great ties to Uber in Washington DC, and New York as well as in San Francisco.

So picture this, we were at the huge StartupRockon, Startup America party last night featuring The Roots and Uber started tweeting away from their special Uber DNC Twitter account. Uber isn’t officially in Tampa or Charlotte but they’ve put together “pop up” Uber shops for both the DNC and the RNC (last week in Tampa).

Anyway, back to the story. I was standing in line and I was actually next for a Taxi when low and behold a small group of people runs out in the street and jumps my cab. When I confront the gentleman in the group about taking my cab he politely tells me to use Uber and gives me one of their “black cards” that we’ve come to know and love here. Well, ok I’ll take that $20 Uber trip and use it in DC or New York. As for tonight though, I found it alarmingly odd that the Uber team was getting in a yellow taxi.

As I had found out earlier in the day Uber was extremely backed up. Around 2pm on Monday afternoon I was able to get an Uber ride with minimal effort and a mild 40 minute wait. Last night though at midnight we started getting messages that Uber was way over capacity and they were sorry.

An email from Max arrived in my box with an additional credit for trying to use Uber last night and failing miserably.

Of course the story here is the great job, no make that phenomenal job Uber has done looking after their customers (except for jacking my taxi last night). It’s that same die hard enthusiasm for their customer base that has them fighting cities around the country so that they can deliver an uber good Uber experience.

As for getting Uber at the convention, it may be tough, but this morning I waited two hours for a cab so do whatever you can and stay hydrated.

Linkage:

More DNC 2012 coverage from Nibletz here

Follow Uber’s pop up shop here @uber_dnc2012

Here’s Uber’s DNC 2012 page

LiveBlog: Startup America Panel At The DNC 2012: How Government Can Foster Startups

1:22pm: Igor Jablokov: startups are becoming the R&D cauldron for big established businesses now. Rather than keeping in house R&D and upsetting Wall Street big companies are vetting startups that they could acquire with the new technologies they want/need

1:20pm: Chopra: Obama challenged America to double their exports. EdTech startups are having more success overseas. Other countries are hungry for education and EdTech. “We are more accustomed to selling Boeing overseas rather than having entrepreneurs sell EdTech overseas”

1:15pm: What role does government play in demand: Polis: Sound economic stewardship, restoring our fiscal integrity, getting rid of the special interest loopholes, new trade policies

1:09PM Scott Case: Tells Chopra he is only the second elected official he has ever spoken to as the CEO of Startup America Partnership, that has said “why don’t we build our own companies” rather than “what factories can we get to come here”

1:06PM: Martinsville is going to invest in entrepreneurship locally stemming from Startup America. Chopra visited Martinsville, a community with double digit unemployment and found that entrepreneurship and talent is all about making a job just as much as it is about getting a job.

12:59pm: Dan Roselli: The stimulus act isn’t the government rolling up a dumpster full of cash. He and his business partner used the Stimulus Act to help buy and revitalize the building that now houses the PPL. When it’s not home to bloggers and online media for DNC 2012, Packard Place is the incubator for incubators and 5 floors of startups, entrepreneurs and founders.

12:56pm: Cowell on the innovation fund in North Carolina. Policies like founders tax credits can help founders and spur entrepreneurship. NC is the the 20th state in the US that is offering an “innovation” type fund. Government isnt typically good with these kinds of funds, so they want to outsource and have a public/private partnership. NC uses Credit Suisse as a third party officiant of their fund and gives them an “arms length” distance from the fund itself.

12:54pm: Scott Case question “Where do you see the line” in regards to where government is part of startups. Chopra is talking about policy barriers that make it harder for startups to break into markets. Healthcare data ecosystem counts over 200 new products or services that utilize health data.

Video Interview With Charlotte Startup: WeRX Winners Of The StartupRockon Contest At The DNC

Just prior to the StartupRockon kickoff part at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte North Carolina we got to meet Amir Khoshnevis the Chief Strategist for Charlotte startup WeRx.org. They were one of the three finalists for the $5,000 StartupRockon grant contest. The winner was announced just before The Roots took the stage.

WeRx.org is an innovative crowdsourcing platform that would definitely be considered in the social entrepreneurship space. Khoshnevis and his co-founders discovered that people are paying way too much for their medication. Of course we’ve known this for years but what the WeRx team found was something that will blow most people’s minds away.

Take Lipitor for example. In it’s generic form the WeRX team found some pharmacies sold the drug for $11 and on the high end, $180 and that’s right in the Charlotte metro area. The unfortunate reality is that most people who require medication may do a limited cost comparison, and if they do they check the few pharmacies close by. If they can’t afford the cost of the medication close by they often decide to not take it. This can ultimately lead to death.

As another example Khoshnevis and the WeRx team found that in West Charlotte diabetes medications cost two to three times as much as they do in the Ballentine suburb of Charlotte. Why? Because the demographics skew more diabetic in West Charlotte.

So what did they do about this problem? They created WeRx which is a platform that allows people to crowdsource prescription prices. WeRx encourages those taking medications to input what they paid for it. Then then end users can geo-discover the best prescription prices and make the trip to another pharmacy to get the best price.

Ultimately the idea is to build such a large platform that big pharmacy companies bring their pricing system back inline with each other.

WeRx gives those that report prices a feel good “pill heart” so they know they’ve done their part to help people find the medications they need and hopefully drive the cost of prescriptions down.

This idea was so good that the startup that launched just last week, won the $5,000 StartupRockon grant contest. There win was announced Monday evening at the StartupRockon party featuring The Roots.

An ecstatic Khoshnevis tracked me down by the bar so proud that such a socially important startup won the contest. They plan on putting the $5,000 right back into the company that they’ve been bootstrapping since inception. Check out a video interview below with Khoshnevis just prior to the start of the party:

Linkage:

Check out WeRx here at werx.org

Here’s more DNC 2012 coverage brought to you by rawporter.com, and kiwi.ly

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” and we’re on a sneaker strapped road trip “everywhere else” more info here.

StartupRockingon With StartupRockon At The DNC

It’s been a festive night in Charlotte North Carolina. While many started partying like a democrat Friday evening, StartupRockon and StarutpAmerica along with MassChallenge have kicked off their presence at the StartupRockon party tonight featuring national recoding act The Roots.

The party has had some great people from startup ecosystems throughout the country, Luke Rafenstahl the Mayor of Pittsburgh is a huge startup advocate and he arrived early for the festivities.

Our awesome social media liaison for the StartupAmerica partnership Anna Eisenberg along with Kathleen Warner the COO of Startup America and the partnerships Communications Director, Chris Roche have been talking innovation all night.

The Publisher of Hypervocal, and founder of StartupRockon, Lee Brenner has done an exceptional job of organizing these events in a short amount of time. Brenner pointed out on stage this evening that this is just the startup of StartupRockon at the Democratic National Convention. More programming including panels with StartupAmerica CEO Scott Case and Huffington Post Publisher Arianna Huffington kick off tomorrow morning.

As for The Roots they’ve been tearing the roof off the mother sucka tonight kicking off the party with a tribute to The Beastie Boys MCA and the godfather of DC GoGo Chuck Brown. A Roots version of Paul Revere complete with vocals from MCA and a mad GoGo swing kicked off their set.

We’ll be here all week reporting all the startup goodness from the must attend political event of the last four years the Democratic National Convention.

Linkage:

More of our DNC 2012 Coverage Here

DNC2012: National Comedian Tone X Needs Help Getting Obama Tickets VIDEO

I remember the feeling like it was yesterday, standing in line at the Obama Inauguration freezing my butt off at 4am on K Street in DC. People everywhere were still looking for tickets to get up close and see Obama get sworn into office. Or perhaps you were looking for an Obama ticket 4 years ago at the DNC.

Well critically acclaimed national comedian ToneX turned to @startuptechguy and @nibletztweets to spread the word. He is a sharp dressed, articulate brother that wants to be in the house Thursday night to see Obama deliver his address to the delegates.

With a plea like this we’re sure if you know someone you’ll help him out. You can tweet to him at @tonexcomedy or just drop us a line at info@nibletz.com and we can get a message to Tone’s people.

ToneX brought the house down at the PPL headquarters at the Packard building downtown which is serving as our center of operations today for our DNC coverage. We’re headed to the big StartupRockon party next. It’s refreshing to be here. Here’s ToneX is message, and he approved it himself.

Linkage:

More nibletz DNC coverage here

Nibletz Is At The DNC And We’re Using Nashville Startup: KiWi

The Obama Administration continued to pave the way for Startups all over the country with the creation of Startup America, the passing of the JOBSAct and many other initiatives that have been it in place to help entrepreneurs and startup founders across America.

Thats why it’s our honor to cover the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte North Carolina. We’ll be partnering with Startup America and the guys at StartpRockon.com to bring you guys everything there is about Startups at what’s sure to be one of the best DNC’s of our time.

We’ve got some great access to bring the best coverage for Startups across America.

We’ll be representing one of the best states “everywhere else” for Startups and entrepreneurs and that is Nibletz home state, the great state of Tennessee. Not only that but starting Tuesday we’ll be using one of the exciting new startups that just graduated from JumpStart Foundry’s 2012 class, KiWi,

We got off to a rough start with KiWi after their founder ad libbed at the end of his presentation. Since then KiWi and it’s co-founder Jayme Hoffman has come highly recommended by Michael Burcham, Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney,

Hoffman and his team couldn’t catch a break after demo day as they’ve been working tirelessly since then to make sure we’ve got something great to use at the Democratic National Convention.

KiWi is like Instagram except instead of photos you are taking short videos. The UI is extreme

As for Demo Day, Hoffman had said that he would be looking for term sheets in Nashville for thirty days. It came off to me that he was giving Nashville an ultimatum, give us a term sheet in 30days or we’re leaving. That was far from the case. Hoffman was trying to convey that things have been moving so fast for the KiWi team that an opportunity for local investors to get in at the ground level may not exist in 30 days. Of course we may speed that process along this week.ly user friendly. Filter selection is topnotch and from capture to share, the experience is fast and fluid. It’s actually not nearly as clunky as SocialCam.

We’re looking forward to the next few days here in Charlotte representing our home team: LaunchMemphis,LaunchYourCity,Launch Tennessee and Startup Tennessee.

Exclusive DragonCon 2012: Kevin Eastman Talks About The New TMNT VIDEO

Kevin Eastman Co-Creator Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (photo: Nibletz LLC)

Kevin Eastman one of the creators of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise over 28 years ago, had a panel to himself

at DragonCon 2012 and to the delight of many in the audience he spilled the beans on the upcoming new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Series that will debut on September 29th at 11:00am on Nickelodeon with a special 1 hour episode. The panel attendees got to see the new opening theme song and a couple of scenes from the new Turtles series.

Eastman pointed out that a lot of people who loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as kids, now actually have kids that are “turtle age”. Despite being a cartoon about ninja turtles, the original comic series was dark and meant for adults. Of course as the franchise grew up in the late 80’s it was evident to Eastman and co-creator Peter Laird that the Turtles morphed into a kids and now what we would call tween epidemic.

The new Turtles comic books will be geared toward grown folks but the cartoons will try and fit a happy medium for all to enjoy.

Eastman had sold his rights to the franchise to Laird in a process that started in June of 2000 and concluded in 2009 however Eastman was hired on to consult the new third animated series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eastman joked that in the animation studio the new animators referred to Eastman as Obi-Wan and that there were animators working on the new Turtles that grew up with the originals.

The new series will feature Jason Biggs as the voice of Leonardo, Rob Paulsen as the voice of Donatello, Sean Astin as the voice of Raphael and Greg Cipes as the voice of Michaelangelo. April O’Neal is of course coming back for this series as well and will be voiced by Mae Whitman.

Eastman also revealed that his first Turtles graphic novel in 25 years is due to the publisher by September 10th and if he hits his deadline it should be released sometime in October on the heels of the premiere of the newest series.

One of the best reveals in the panel was that Eastman’s youngest son Shane became aware of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when he was three or four and started playing with some of the toys his older brother Peter had. Shane was so excited about the Turtles and didn’t understand that his daddy drew the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eastman had remarked that for two decades people had told him that their kids grew up with the Turtles and he never got to see that first hand until his son fell in love with them. Shane went on to be Raphael for three consecutive halloweens. How cool is that.

Check out our exclusive video below where Eastman talks about how he is really excited about this new series with the Turtles that he and Laird started nearly 30 years ago.

Linkage:

More DragonCon Coverage here

Here’s DragonCon’s official Website

And here’s the site for the brand new Ninja Turtles

Felicia Day Announces The Guild Season 6 Wrapped & Ready At DragonCon 2012

During The Guild full cast panel at DragonCon 2012 today Felicia Day announced that they just finished up season six of the hit web series two days ago. The entire cast was on hand for the Q&A which met more to the casts experiences and quirky experiences more so than leaks and spoilers for the upcoming season.

One of the only spoilers was that Jeff Lewis’ baby son makes a cameo appearance this season and Lewis has another baby in the oven.

Day announced that this years season will be available on the Geek & Sundry YouTube channel which plays host to Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop and Day’s own vlog called Flog.

One of the most fun audience questions in the panel is what character would each actor be if they did a body swap show. Day, the shows creator and producer, seemed to like that idea as well. we could see her wheels turning.

Sandeep Parikh was the comedic highlight of the panel. He kicked off the fun and games by trying to answer an audience members phone. He also answered questions about his tv mom and whether or not that was his real mom. Had we gotten a chance to ask Parikh a question we would have no doubt complimented him on his work in Office Space and the Harold & Kumar flicks.

The complete cast is on hand for various panels and autograph sessions on the infamous walk of fame all weekend long. Day said that DragonCon was one of her favorite shows. This year many Day fans were disappointed when she didn’t make an appearance at SXSW. DragonCon and SXSW are typically staples in her hectic con and appearance schedule. Day also said that this was only the second time in five seasons that the entire cast was able to be on a panel together.

Linkage:

Here’s more of our DragonCon Coverage Here

Anthony Michael Hall Talks About Playing Bill Gates: DragonCon 2012

Anthony Michael Hall gets excited about his story about playing Bill Gates In Pirates of Silicon Valley (photo: Nibletz LLC)

Childstar turned sci-fi favorite Anthony Michael Hall was the featured panelist at DragonCon 2012 today in a panel called “An Hour With Anthony Michael Hall”.

The flagship ballrooms at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta were filled wall to wall with people of all ages. Many middle-aged folks loved growing up with Anthony Michael Hall in the John Hughes films that made him famous like Sixteen Candles and Breakfast Club.

The question and answer panel was a prequel to the upcoming panel that will feature the case of Warehouse 13, Hall included. Hall played a wheel chair bound villain in four episodes of the SciFi channel hit show.

During the Q&A Hall fielded a variety of questions that encompassed his entire professional career. The facilitator jokingly mentioned Pretty In Pink but had found out earlier in the day that wasn’t a Hall flick. He was of course asked about the transition in his career from teen star to career actor, which he lightheartedly responded he had 25 years to work on it.

Hall avoided the type casting plague after the first three Hughes’ films and even went on to hold the leading role in USA Network’s Dead Zone. He also directed an episode of Dead Zone which inspired him to start a company called Manhattan Pictures where he will serve as the filmmaker.

He has a film coming up called “The Lost Shield” which he will hopefully begin shooting in New Orleans shortly. He’s been developing the idea for the last four years and has investors on board and ready to go. He’ll also be headed to Salt Lake City in the coming weeks to start filming a movie called “Friend Request”. Obviously it has something to do with Facebook. Hall plays a single dad who’s also a cop, and has to find a killer that’s using the fictional social network “MyBook” for his targets.

One of the best questions during the Q&A wasn’t about any of that work though. It was about portraying Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in the iconic film Pirates of Silicon Valley. Most of our readers are well aware of the film and have seen it multiple times (as have I), however most critics talk about Noah Wylie’s portrayal of Steve Jobs rather than Hall’s role as Bill Gates.

It was definitely a different role than Hall had ever played. He worked intensely with an acting coach for 6 weeks during the film and killed it in the audition with a good pair of glasses, a “seer sucker” dress shirt and did the “Ted Koppel” thing with his hair. The greatest part of this story, as you’ll see in the video, is what he did to nail Gates’ voice. Watch the video below for more:

Linkage:

Checkout DragonCon’s Website here

Here’s more of our DragonCon2012 Coverage

Startup Founders, Devs & Designers (aka Geeks Like Us) Love DragonCon, We’ll Be There

In our previous geekery, techie and mobile lives two of our favorite events to cover have been ComiCon and DragonCon. Let’s face it most startup founders, developers,designers, entrepreneurs and coders are really geeks at heart. If you haven’t been to DragonCon before it’s the ComiCon of the east coast and despite it’s size it still has that alluring feel of a convention that hasn’t sold out to big business.

If you’ve been to ComiCon in the last five years or so you’ll notice a huge amount of commercialism. The grass roots comic book and pop culture convention feel has drifted away. That’s not the case for the four day event held in Atlanta every year.

We’ve got an entire team that will be blogging, posting photos and broadcasting live on AOL and Slacker radio all weekend long to bring you all the delicious DragonCon action. We’re going to hit the best panels on the culture side and also some of the tracks that will undoubtedly provide great content and information for those of us building businesses.

DragonCon covers so many different parts of current culture it’s hard to believe they do it in just one weekend. Attendees will be able to mingle with celebrities from their favorite sci-fi programs, web programs, and even comic book heroes. There are tracks and panels on writing, art, comics, pop culture, gaming, sci fi, and even the Skeptics track which I personally love.

Heck last year there was a panel on WKRP in Cincinnati which Howard Hessman and Lonnie Anderson where there as the speakers.

This upcoming weekend will feature a decent break from our day to day startup coverage but we’re all going to go back to our roots as geeks, comic book readers, sci-fi lovers, Dr. Who fans, gamers and much much more. There’s a huge commonality between the DragonCon/ComiCon go-er and those of us in the startup world. Sure we were a little off as kids and teenagers but now we’re building products, software, and businesses.

So join us all weekend long for a great trip through DragonCon and if there’s something you want to see specifically email info@nibletz.com

For those of you familiar with our coverage of DragonCon and similar events on our other sites, this year we’ve got StoryMark an Atlanta startup on board as the the photo sponsor. That’s only fitting because DragonCon is in Atlana however we’re going to use their unique app to post a ton of photos in our social media channels and here at nibletz.com with audio clips. As the days get later and later though, please be aware that they serve alcohol by the bucket at this event.

StoryMark is a great photo app partner their app allows you to record a :30 second audio excerpt that gets embedded in the finished photo product. So now you don’t have to write out a long azz caption when you’re not sure what’s in the photo. It’s also perfect for families and loved ones to send great photos back and forth.

We like to kid with the founders of StoryMark and just point out that every photo sponsor we’ve had at DragonCon,ComiCon, NYCon and CES has gone on to get acquired (Instagram), AcquiHired (LightBox) or a huge investment (CoolIris).

So enjoy your weekend and make sure you bookmark nibletz.com for DragonCon coverage. Don’t worry we’ve also got some amazing startup stories this weekend. And, finally if you’re an Atlanta startup we are doing office hours in limited brunch time sessions if you want to meet up for that just email info@nibletz.com