Bonfyre Is Back As The Official App For Everywhere Else Conference, And We’ve Got Two Tickets To SXSWi To Give Away

Bonfyre, is back as the official app for the Everywhere Else Conference. Everywhere Else Cincinnati kicks off Sunday night with a welcome party open to the public.

St. Louis startup Bonfyre is a social engagement app that allows you to share thoughts, updates, information, and photos across a closed social network and then outward to your normal social channels including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

At Everywhere Else Memphis last February we used Bonfyre, and the attendees of the conference stayed in the Bonfyre and kept interacting well into the summer.

Bonfyre will allow entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors, panelists, and startup support to keep up with all the conference go-ers in the event’s own channel. In addition to Everywhere Else, Bonfyre was also been the official app for last year’s PowderKeg conference, OneSpark in Florida, and even for St. Louis Rams games.

Bonfyre keeps things going in an easy-to-understand and engaging platform. For Everywhere Else Cincinnati we’ll have two different Bonfyre’s. O will be limited to information about the conference, scheduling, maps, and important information from the conference staff. The other will be the Bonfyre the entire group will use. That’s where the fun begins.

Bonfyre and Nibletz have teamed up to give away a pair of SXSWi 2014 passes (passes only) for March 2014. The interactive passes will give you access to the entire interactive conference tract at SXSWi and many of the awesome parties. The passes have a value of over $1400! We will be looking for the most engaged and interactive Bonfyre user throughout the course of the conference.

So go download Bonfyre in the iTunes app store or the Google Play Store and then scan the QR Codes below to get into the Bonfyre’s. We’ll see you this weekend.

Use this QR code to get into the Info Bonfyre for Everywhere Else Cincinnati:

Use this QR code to get into the Engage Bonfyre for Everywhere Else Cincinnati:

Bad Ass Startup Chicks: Cara VonderBruegge With St Louis Startup Bonfyre [video][onespark]

The sunny skies of Hollywood California, celebrities, and power events, with a startup, that would be the ultimate goal for many people who love startups and working for them. Well for Cara VonderBruegge, who worked in that exact position at the Los Angeles office of Living Social, that wasn’t enough.
Blasphemy!

VonderBruegge (don’t even try and pronounce it), was looking for something more and wanted to move back to St. Louis, closer to her family. From a distance, off in Los Angeles, VonderBruegge saw the explosion of growth that St. Louis’ startup scene was having and she wanted to be there.

While the world knows that Living Social hasn’t been in the best financial place lately, after a series of layoffs it looked like VonderBruegge and her LA based position had survived, and it had. However in a by-chance meeting with Ray Gobberg, co-founder of Bonfyre, they struck up a good conversation. Gobberg explained that he worked at a startup in St. Louis and VonderBruegge told him that she worked for Living Social, itself still a startup.

By chance VonderBruegge called Gobberg just to catch up right when they had a project manager opening, and boom, the job was hers. So she did the reverse, packed up her car and moved to St. Louis.

While an official events coordinator may be in the works down the road for BonFyre, VonderBruegge has her hands full with several other “top secret” projects for the BonFyre crew, and she’s instrumental on their events side too.

VonderBruegge has been on the job for about six weeks and we got a chance to catch up with her at OneSpark in Jacksonville. VonderBruegge knows her stuff, startups, events, networking and Bonfyre. Her bright personality is definitely a perk for the mostly male dominated Bonfyre team.

Check out our interview with our latest “Bad Ass Startup Chick” below, and check out Bonfyre here.

See more of our Bad Ass Startup Chicks here.

Bonfyre: The Official App For Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

With everywhereelse.co the startup conference a little over a week away we want to make sure that everyone knows what app to use to keep up with all the action at the biggest startup conference in the U.S., whether you’re at home or at the event.

Bonfyre is the official app for everywhereelse.co the startup conference. Download the app today from the iTunes app store then join the Bonfyre for everywhereelse.co. You’ll be able to keep up with the schedule, panels, speakers, startup village and everything happening in Grind City February 10th-12th.

Bonfyre debuted their most recent version of their app at DEMO in Silicon Valley last fall. They also partnered with the Powder Keg conference in Indianapolis.

Just as they did with PowderKeg, Bonfyre will allow entrepreneurs, startup founders, investors, panelists, and startup support to keep up with all the conference go-ers in the event’s own channel.

Nibletz has been reporting on Bonfyre since last year. They’ve raised $750,000 dollars so far led by the St. Louis Arch Angels and Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, who sits on Bonfyre’s board. To date, the St. Louis startup has partnered with the NFL’s St. Louis Rams for three games.

Not only that but one lucky person that downloads and registers for Bonfyre for the conference will walk away from Memphis with a brand new iPad Mini (16gb wifi only). It’s that easy.

Check out Bonfyre for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference here

If you don’t have your tickets for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference we don’t know what you’re waiting for, luckily it’s not too late.

Partnership With St. Louis Rams, Paying Off For Startup, Bonfyre

St. Louis startup Bonfyre is socially engaging and powering events in ways that other social event sharing apps just haven’t been able to perfect. When you think about an actual bonfire, you know the big huge ones, everyone at the bonfire may take away something different from that event. If you’ve ever been to enormous bonfires like the ones at Bonaroo in years past, hundreds and hundreds of people could be at the same event and share totally different experiences.

The same thing goes for any large event. Football games make a great case use for the Bonfyre application. Here you have tens of thousands of fans that are watching the same game, with different favorite players, different favorite teams, and in different places throughout the stadium. In this day and age all of those people are sharing to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networks. Everyone has a different perspective and different shares. Bonfyre is bringing that all back together.

The St. Louis, venture backed startup was founded by Raymond Gobberg and Mark Sawyier. They’ve received $750,000 in venture capital from Arch Angels and Cultivation Capital. It’s another St. Louis startup that Rick Holton is all fyred up about.

Bonfyre was fortunate enough to get into a partnership with the St. Louis Rams early on. Now Bonfyre and the Rams have been through their third sponsored game. The St. Louis Business Journal, is reporting that during the game between the St. Louis Rams and the Minnesota Vikings, fans used Bonfyre over 17,000 times. 20 percent of those participants shared 1800 chats and photos.

The Rams are taking advantage of Bonfyre’s social network and outreach and they’ve baked ticket giveaways and behind the scenes photos and chats with players into the game experience via Bonfyre.

“The app allows us to further connect with our fans to help increase the value of their experience before, during and after a game,” Brian Killingsworth Rams Vice President of Marketing & Branding for the Rams told the Business Journal.

Linkage:

Check out Bonfyre here

Here’s more startup news from “everywhere else”

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference is the largest startup conference in the U.S.

St.Louis Startup: BonFyre Brings Social Network Back To Campus, Attracts Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey

Last month we brought you the story of LockerDome a social network for amateur athletes based in St.Louis. LockerDome was able to attract some key investors and advisors. One of those is St.Louis native Jim McKelvey who just happens to be the co-founder of the widely popular mobile payment startup, Square. McKelvey co-founded Square with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

Another social networking startup has also received backing and advice from McKelvey. McKelvey sits on the board of Off Campus Media LLC, the paurent company to the BonFyre app.

BonFyre was founded by Mark Sawyier, a graduate of Washington University. The app is a social media and location sharing app aimed at college students looking to plan what’s next with friends, find out what’s hot and save money around campus.

One of the main concepts behind Bonfyre is to take the social network back to students. We all remember the days when Facebook was exclusive to students with a college email address. While everyone wanted to join this exclusive club (and we all eventually did), the exclusive college nature of Facebook at the time, made it more about sharing social events with friends and then getting out and doing stuff together.

More after the break