events Archives - Serious Startups

Mark Cuban-backed RECESS Combines College, Tech, and EDM

In the old days, when you wanted to start a business in college you had a few options. You could start on the side, working between classes, maybe joining some business club. Or you could drop out and hope the risk was worth it.

Now, thanks to RECESS, you have an even cooler option. No more choosing between boring career fair and selling knives during the summer.

Spawned from Glowfest–an EDM concert series–RECESS brings together college kids, tech companies, and EDM artists in a crazy, packed day. The conference–deemed a “music and ideas festival” by the company–travels to college campuses across the country and essentially pops up SXSW for one day.

The day is split up into different categories, cleverly deemed the Playground, Study Hall, Pitch Competition, and Concert.

During the Playground, college kids experience a career fair on steroids. They can interact with successful tech companies like About.me, Dollar Shave Club, Doctor On Demand, and WillCall. Internships, jobs, and valuable relationships with startup founders and employees can be made on the Playground.

During Study Hall, the festival moves to a more traditional conference. Speakers come in to talk about startups and the future of the tech industry. This spring boasts some great speakers, including Scott Case and Jeff Hoffman, who have also spoken at the Everywhere Else conference series.

The Pitch Competition is billed as March Madness-style event where students can pitch their business ideas. They’re working their way to the final competition in Las Vegas later in the spring.

Finally, the concert. Because life’s been far too serious that day. Each event boasts a different show, and EDM artists like deadmau5, Diplo, and Krewella come in for the party.

“RECESS curates the best day of college by bringing together successful entrepreneurs, the coolest new startups and the hottest acts in music to campuses across the country,” said RECESS Co-Founder Jack Shannon. “Our mission is to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs that will change the landscape of tomorrow’s businesses while offering participating brands unprecedented campus access to activate students.”

The company is backed by investors like Mark Cuban. This isn’t his first investment in a live entertainment company; he made the biggest deal in Shark Tank history last October with creepy scare company Ten Thirty One Productions.

The traveling festival kicks off at University of the Pacific on March 21. Admission is free, and you can find the rest of the 6 tour dates on the company’s website.

Google’s Maker Camp Brings The Maker Movement to Teens Everywhere

Summer camp is an iconic American tradition. Even if you’ve never actually been to summer camp, you know the images: lakes, ropes courses, capture the flag, and campfires.

Oh, and arts and crafts, of course.

For the second year in a row, Google is bringing the summer camp arts and crafts experience online with Maker Camp.

Don’t be fooled, though. This is the 21st century, and we’re talking about Google. You won’t see any macaroni birdhouses. Instead, Google has partnered with MAKE Magazine to bring a lineup of intense hands-on projects over a period of 30 days. Each morning, a new project is posted on the camp’s Google+ page, complete with materials needed and instructions. Each afternoon features a Google+ Hangout with a “maker” as well as tips and tricks on cool projects. The week caps off with Field Trip Friday, a video series going behind the scenes of some pretty cool spots. For example, the first week took visitors to Oracle Team USA’s basecamp, where they build the boats that race in the America’s Cup.

This year, each week has a theme. This week’s theme is “Create the Future” and features projects like a light up hoodie and learning to solder. The field trip on Friday will be to NASA, which promises to be pretty cool.

If you’re thinking some of this stuff would be hard to pull of at home, you’re right. In many areas there are “campsites” with counselors facilitating the program. Most of the projects are fairly simple, though, so if you’re in an area without a campsite, it’s still possible for teens to do them on their own. But, teens like to socialize, so they can also hop on the Google+ page to chat with other kids doing the same projects.

“Maker Camp hopes to foster the DIY (do-it-yourself) spirit in young people. We want each camper to see how much there is that you can do and how much there is to explore all around you. Once you begin doing things, you’ll meet others who share your interests, and you can collaborate to work on projects together. We call that DIT (do-it-together),” publisher of MAKE Magazine Dale Dougherty said in a blog post.

Last week I jumped on the Maker Camp website with my 3 boys. Now, at 7 & 5 they are definitely under the age range Google is targeting, and I am certainly not one of those handy moms skilled in any kind of crafts. But, we attempted the “balloon blimp” project anyway. (And by “we,” of course, I mean “I.” Unless you count chattering and jumping on the bed as the boys helping.)

The project was simple enough and the instructions pretty clear. We did need to plan ahead to get a certain kind of balloon and a certain kind of straw, though, which would be hard for a younger teen at home while parents worked. Ultimately, we didn’t really succeed in our project, but that was because my own kids were too impatient to let me try different solutions to make it work.

For the industrious teen, though, the projects at Maker Camp are easy enough to do alone, but challenging enough to require some problem-solving skills. The experience would be enhanced, of course, if they can do it with a group of some kind. Because everything’s more fun in a group.

This whole endeavor is a stroke of genius on Google’s part. They are contributing to the DIY nature of the next generation, which gives them great press. But, this year the program is also intimately wrapped up in the Google+ platform. Last year, more than 1 million campers tuned in, and this year they are hoping for even more. That’s a lot of interaction on the world’s 2nd most popular social network site.

Maker Camp is only 6 days in, so there’s still time for teens to jump in. Check it out on the website or at Google+.

Memphis Prepares For Transformation To Risk City For Global Entrepreneurship Week

Next week thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs, startup founders, developers, eco-system partners and stake holders will participate in events across the globe as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. In fact, GEW officially kicks off later tonight as over 100 different cities get fired up over Startup Weekend.

Tennessee has a variety of activities going on across the state. One of Tennessee’s major metropolitan areas is transforming their city.

Memphis will turn itself into Risk City beginning Monday. Memphis has always been a city that turns adversity into opportunity and embraces risk as a path to progress. Just take a look at companies like FedEx, Holiday Inn and AutoZone. All three pioneers in their industry and when you look at them in the time and place they were founded, potential investors thought the entrepreneurs behind these Memphis based companies were nuts.

The same thing can be said about the blues and it’s off shoot, rock and roll music, which is often credited with starting in Memphis Tennessee.

In talking with a crazy conservative intern of sorts in Memphis it was mutually agreed upon that risk and aversion to risk were what separated the “startup founder entrepreneurs” and the “lets open a dry cleaner, entrepreneurs”. It’s that risk that is this years global entrepreneurship week theme in Memphis.

Don’t get me wrong, Memphis has had it’s share of of big risks, not pan out in the end. That’s why there’s a gigantic pyramid in the middle of the city, and an entire island that’s all but a ghost town these days. However new risk takers, entrepreneurs and startup founders are going to be the ones to reclaim the city.

To that end, the folks at LaunchMemphis has put together some great programming for all of Memphis to see what the startup and entrepreneurial culture is like downtown. Below are some of the activities going on in Memphis. The highlight of the week is “field day”, the Amazing Risk and a huge party all happening Friday night at Minglewood Hall in Memphis.

Also, with Risk City and Global Entrepreneurship Week kicking off, the applications for the 2013 class of Seed Hatchery are now open as well.

Pitch Perfect
Monday, November 12 from 2:00-5:00pm in the Launchpad
For those actively moving forward with their startups – like those involved with Office Hours, BOOSTcamp, 48 Hour Launch or the Launchpad – we will provide a panel of diverse experts to provide feedback on your latest pitch. Accompanying visuals like PowerPoint are encouraged.

Memphis Startup Meetup
Monday, November 12 at 6:00pm in the Launchpad
The Memphis Startup Meetup group offers a special GEW edition of their monthly meetup for anyone interested in and involved with a startup company- entrepreneurs, developers, geeks, tech enthusiasts, professionals.

Mentor Mixer
Tuesday, November 13 from 5:30-7:00pm at Alchemy
It takes a village to grow a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. We invite you to a casual cocktail event to learn more about the benefits of sharing your time, insights, experience and leadership with our founders and their startups.

High Octane Office Hours
Thursday, November 15 from 9:00am-3:00pm in the Launchpad
Memphis area business leaders join us in the Launchpad for an exclusive, high-powered set of one-to-one Office Hours for high growth potential startup companies. Like Pitch Perfect, these sessions are for those actively moving forward through our platform and process.

SpeedPitch
Friday, November 16 from 11:00am-1:00pm at Minglewood Hall
Similar to speed dating, LaunchMemphis introduces an event for those with fresh, bold ideas ready for some creative customer discovery. You get two minutes to pitch, then three minutes for feedback from business and community leaders. When the bell rings, you’re off to the next table!

Field Day
Friday, November 16 from 9:00am-4:00pm at Minglewood Hall
RSVP http://riskcityfieldday.eventbrite.com
Co-working facilitates conversation, collaboration and impromptu synergies- we hope your startup or organization will bring a team to our inaugural GEW Field Day. Wifi will be available, and food trucks will be around for lunch!

Field Day Mixer and Amazing Risk Finals
Friday, November 16 from 4:00pm-6:00pm

Risk City Soiree
Friday, November 16 at 8:00pm at Minglewood Hall
$5 cover, cash at door or http://riskcity.eventbrite.com
Join us at Minglewood Hall to conclude Memphis’ biggest Global Entrepreneurship Week to date, with our biggest party to date! As if a full week of activities fueling entrepreneurship and growing our innovation ecosystem wasn’t reason enough to celebrate, entertainment includes:

Finally as part of Risk City and Global Entrepreneurship week in Memphis. Anyone who attends any of the events above and brings a friend can get a FREE ticket to “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” just find an official Launch Memphis employee or volunteer and tell them you want your free ticket to “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” and introduce them to your friend and you’ve got it.

Linkage:

Launch Memphis

No one covers high growth technology in the South East, like we do

Everywhere Else conference

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

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

Interview With Canadian Startup Hashcaster

Back in June we brought you this story about Canadian startup Hashcaster. Hashcaster provides a curation, and measurement (analytics) platform for event coordinators to manage their social media graph. It really comes in handy when gauging the effect of marketing, press and media efforts on behalf of an event just about any size.

At Social Media Camp in June not only was Hashcaster used by the event organizers but they also received a “Coastie” for “Most Innovative Social Media Product or Technology”.

Event organizers everywhere are counting on social marketing efforts more and more everyday as traditional marketing has fallen to the wayside. Organizers need to be able to capture tweets, likes, and mentions and then aggregate them, and analyze them to make sure the cohesive message is getting across. They also want to know who their top influencers are and what kind of impact any paid social marketing may have had.

All of these things are why Geoff Clendenning and Paul Vet created Hashcaster.

Now social media dashboards are nothing new but this particular use case is. Hashcaster also takes into consideration that the social graph of a particular event is going to swell as the event draws closer. When you’re at a popular event, especially one with a social media focus, tweets, likes and mentions can come in a matter of seconds.

We got a chance to interview Clendenning about Hashcaster, check out the interview below:

Novotorium & SeedPhilly Call Lights Out For Summer Camp

We received some disheartening news this morning from our friends at technicallyphilly.com . Apparently Entrepreneur Summer Camp, a joint venture between Novotorium and Seedaphilly has been cancelled due to lack of Internet.

We’ve been big supporters of both Novotorium, SeedPhilly and the Philly tech scene, especially because our co-founder Cameron is based in Philly.

We are members of the Phily listserve and we’ve seen a mixed bag of talk about Philly’s startup community. There are those like Novotorium Mike Krupit who are big advocates of growing startups right in the city of brotherly love.

On the flip side the are those who wallow suggesting that there’s not enough funding available in Philly. Some of these folks actually commute to New York in hopes of having a more successful launch in the big apple.

As for Entrepreneur Summer Camp, both Novotorium and SeedPhilly along with others in the Philadelphia startup ecosystem put together a great bunch of programming that was to occur over the summer, with nominal fees for space, food and drink and overall costs.

After the first event though Kuprit found that there just wasn’t enough traction and interest from entrepreneurs, Startups and the tech community. We found from our analytics that all of the stories we’ve used to promote this series of events had a good deal of interest. Whats wrong with you people, support your local tech ecosystem if you want it to grow.

Kuprit is still feeling positive about this weeks “not a hackathon” 36 hour event. Rather than using the 54 hour hackathon style model, this event is for Startups a little further along to get mentor ship and help around the clock. Think of it as 36 straight hours of office hours.

Kuprit beefed up the prize money and this event is still on. You can find out more about the sleepover event here

As for summer camp Kuprit told technicallyphilly “Philly takes the summer off,” he said, comparing our scene to New York’s and California’s. “We need to raise the bar.”

Philly’s entrepreneur summer camp isn’t the only signature event on the east coast this summer to get cancelled. Earlier this month we reported that the Startup BeachHouse event was cancelled when the group putting it on we’re repeatedly denied beach house rentals because ignorant beach house owners thought the event would be like the show The Jersey Shore.

Linkage:

Source: technicallyphilly

Check out Novotorium here

Check out SeedPhilly here

Nibletz is the voice of Startups “everywhere else”

Chicago Startup: Safe Snips Wins TechWeek Launch Competition

Monday at Chicago TechWeek was Startup City day. 34 Startups from Chicago and everywhere else participated in an expo day and Launch competition.

The competition included $100,000 I’m cash and business services for the winning companies. The prize package included six months free space from Catapult, services from Microsoft, Motorola Xyboard tablets from Verizon Wirless, a year supply of Diet Coke, $5,000 dollars in cash and more.

The finalists in the contest were narrowed down by their startup overall. The panel of judge combed the exhibit floor early on in the day and then selected four finalists. A fifth finalist came from popular vote by attendees. Attendees of the Startup City expo were given a card when they went in and told to put their card in the jar of the startup they liked the best. We thought it was a good system but apparently flawed in talking with over 50 attendees none of them had even seen the booth for Biz Inject the startup that had supposedly won the popular vote. Even worse during the judges Q&A the founder had trouble conceptualizing his concept in pitch form….

The other four startups selected were great by our standards. They were all fresh innovative ideas, with great pitches. The other four finalists were GDine, Mouse House, SafeSnips and Pretty Quick.

GDine is revolutionizing the way people dine in groups. Using GDines platform users can enjoy similar benefits to “Restaurant Week” year round. Groups can choose menus from participating restaurants, split the check and pay in advance. GDine has already received $650,000 in funding, and released last March, The service is already available in Chicago and Ne York.

The company founded said that with only 30 restaurants on board in New York as well as the fact that they’ve only been in New York a couple months, New York is pacing to pass Chicago,

Mouse House I love it when I learn cool totally off the wall things. With Mouse House I did just that. This startup has revolutionized the way Mice ponds are tracked and kept up with in labs,

Traditionally mice are kept in groups in cages with index cards on the front of the cage and data updated by hand. Mouse House puts the information in an iPad app. This new app greatly cuts down on the time of the administration of keeping up with the mice and frees scientists up to spend more time experimenting.

Pretty Quick

this startup was founded by a former employee of also Loreal who discovered the problem she was solving when a plane she was to take from France back to the states was delayed 2 hours. As she said in her pitch, she had two hours to be by herself and do something for herself.

She wanted to get her nails done and find somewhere in the airport or close by to do that, and book an appointment on short notice.

Now here new startup makes it extremely easy to find salons and book appointments with a variety of options. Again a really great idea.

SafeSnips would fall into the medical devices category. The team behind SafeSnips has developed a technology that will be implemented onto surgical cutting instruments. Using near infra red technology SafeSnips will make cutting safer and less likely to accidentally cut arteries which can be fatal.

SafeSnips had one of the most innovative ideas. Since they are incorporating their technology into existing medical devices they don’t expect FDA approval to take very long.

On top of their innovative technology they had a great and enthusiastic pitch. During the Q&A session during the finals the pitchman for SafeSnips didn’t miss a beat while answering the questions. Obviously these factors played into SafeSnips being the winner of the TechWeek launch competition.

Linkage:

Find out more about SafeSnips here at their website

Here’s more our our Chicago TechWeek Coverage Here

Nibletz is the voice of Startups “everywhere else” and we could use your help, click here please

Philly’s Novotorium Hosting “Not A Hackathon” Entrepreneur Sleepover June 27 & 28th

Mike Krupit and the crew at Novotorium are holding a really cool event June 27th and 28th in Philadelphia. The event, that they’re calling the “Not a hackathon” Entrepreneur Sleepover. The event is not a “build a startup in 48 hours” type event. Rather it’s more like a weekend worth of valuable office hours to refine your startup, develop your product, work on your marketing and pick the brains of Krupit, and other great mentors.

Novotorium promises 36 straight hours of “eye popping, brain swelling, undulterated business progress”

There is a $20 participation charge which of course will cover things like fuel (food and red bull) along with other considerations. But not only that, there will be a $2,000 prize. Krupit told Nibletz.com the companies won’t do “pitches” but their progress throughout the weekend will be judged by the Novotorium and SeedPhilly team. Both Novotorium and SeedPhilly will meet with each startup individually.

The best part of the entire process is that everyone will be on hand all 36 hours, so if you’re knee deep into problem solving at 3am you’ll be able to get a mentor to help you solve your problem.

Krupit responded to criticism on the Phily Startup Leaders List Serv saying:

“We know that there are entrepreneurs are reluctant to attend hackathons or startup weekends because they don’t own what the community helps them produce. That’s why we called this a “Not-a” hackathon – to demonstrate its approach from another perspective. We added the cash prize as an incentive to those who maybe weren’t purely in it for the community, learning, and fun.

The $20 registration is a token to basically ensure that people show up. It’s even lower than other similar events.

This model isn’t for everyone – and we never intended for it to be. There are already a number of registrants, so I’m assuming some find it interesting. For those that do, we’ll build some good business models and product, build more community, and have a good time.”

We totally get it here at nibletz, as we said the best way to describe it is 36 straight hours of office hours type access to some of the best mentors in the Philadelphia area to help any startup who registers, work on their business.

Linkage:

Find out more about this event here

Find out more about Novotorium here and Seed Philly here

This is part of Philly’s Entrepreneur Summer Camp, more here

Nibletz, the voice of startups “everywhere else” could use your support, check this out

Startup America Partners With Startup RockOn For DNC RNC Events

Startup America and Startup RockOn have announced that they are partnering for some very exciting events this year.

Startup RockOn is a collaborative effort of fast growing Startups, Event Farm, HyperVocal, and Fighter Interactive. Together they are putting together mini festival style events at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on September 3, 2012 in Charlotte North Carolina and the Republican National Convention (RNC) August 27th in Tampa Bay.

The events will highlight America’s thriving startup culture, have interactive displays and sessions and feature musical performances, including the group The Roots who have agreed to headline the events.

Startup America CEO, Scott Case, stated, “As the RNC and DNC capture the attention of the country, it’s imperative to highlight the importance of startups to our national economy, and we’re incredibly excited to partner with EventFarm, HyperVocal and FIGHTER Interactive — three hard-working startups themselves — to do just that.”

The StartUp RockOn leadership team stated, “From a garage band to culture-shifting software, from next-generation media companies to 21st century energy solutions, the greatest American success stories start (and will start) through ingenuity, creativity, hard work and perseverance. StartUp RockOn honors the entrepreneurs of America’s bright future.”

Startup America is now 23 regional partnerships strong and has already hosted or partnered for a bunch of great events including a Startup America event at the Hilton in Austin during South by Southwest Interactive.

This new partnership will spur even more interest in Startups, entrepreneurism and technology in the United States, regardless of political affiliation.

Linkage:

Sweet Nibletz We’re On Location At E3

Despite a few hiccups in our travel plans we’ve made it safely to Los Angeles to cover the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), this year the theme is Innovation unveiled. We’re going to cover it for our gaming, tech and mobile sections and we’re going to take some time out of our schedule to focus on cool new gaming startups. If you’re a gaming startup in either hardware or software and you’re exhibiting at E3 please make sure you reach out to us at startup@nibletz.com and we’ll make sure to stop by your booth or meet up with you over the next 3 and a half days.

We’re looking forward to big announcements from Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony and many many more.

Nintendo made history Sunday by deciding not to wait and announcing their new Wii U Gamepad and Pro Controllers. We’re expecting more from Nintendo on Tuesday morning.

Make sure you let everyone know to follow our RSS feed, our Twitter Stream and our G+ page for the latest from E3 and especially our startup spin.

Google Unveiling “The Next Dimension Of Maps” On June 6

Google Maps has been the king of maps for a while now, due to its stellar service and incredible iOS and Android applications, but things haven’t been looking very good as of late. When Google decided to start charging for its Maps API’s (in high-usage situations) companies like FourSquare dropped it as its maps provider. Other startups and companies began to do so, and before we knew it Apple is about to release their own Google Maps replacement. This isn’t only because Google began to charge, but it’s also because Apple undoubtedly enjoys their independence, especially from Google.

In the midst of all of these issues, however, Google has still kept improving their Maps platform and applications, adding things like indoor maps and directions and integration into Google+. Now they have announced that they will be unveiling “the next dimension of Maps. On June 6 they are holding an event to showcase this, and it is still unknown what exactly the next dimension of maps is. There are possibilities of a literal meaning such as adding a new 3D spin to Google Maps, or it could be something completely unrelated. Either way, we will be covering it every step of the way so be sure to stay tuned for what Google has in store for the Maps service.

Source: Google

Startup America CEO Scott Case Offers 7 Tips For Relationships At TechCocktail Event in DC

Today was the big day of two Cases for Startups in Washington DC. It was day two of Capital Connection/TechBUZZ at the Omnin Shoreham Hotel. The 35 hour private investor conference highlighted 28 great Startups on Wednesday and equally as many later stage companies today.

Capital Connection features AOL Co-Founder and CEO of Revolution, Steve Case. He offered a great talk highlighting what he’s been working on as an entrepreneur and the strength of Washington DCs thriving tech and startup community.

Later in the evening we went just two miles down the road to TechCocktails Sessions event focusing on relationships and networking. The featured keynote speaker was Scott Case the CEO of the Startup America partnership and the founding CTO of Priceline.com.

Case opened up his talk by making sure everyone knew he wasn’t there to talk about dating. He did however talk about sex, gambling and getting lucky. In short that portion of his talk was about meeting his wife and having four kids (the sex). He then shifted to a story about his father in law who is a horse handicapper. He also talked about one of his friends, and their father, Ira, was also into horse racing (gambling). Then he explained how he was considering a move to the west coast and he got a call from Ira right before he left. Ira wanted to introduce Case to another one of his friends, who was ultimately the founder of Priceline.com (getting lucky).

With Case’s vast experience and the fact that he’s trying to become the most traveled man in the United States as CEO of Startup America, he’s met and networked with thousands of people.

Case brought up the fact that so many startups that he meets are so focused on product development that they forget about customer development. Customer development is totally different from customer acquisition. The roots of customer development lie in relationships and networking.

Case offered these 7 great tips for networking, specifically aimed at startups who sometimes forget about things like this:

1. Everybody has a story, understand what their story’s about.

2. It’s not about you it’s about them. Figure out more about the other person.

3. Find a way to say yes when people ask you for something. All the most interesting things in Cases life started by saying yes. You’ll find yourself falling forward and creates an opportunity for someone else to help you.

It’s very hard to say no to something when they’ve said yes to you

4. There are relationships when you won’t have something in common

5. Social networks aren’t a replacement for in person hand to hand make a relationship with them.

6. Use these tools to keep your relationships current. It’s not enough to go back 6 months. Use social networks to keep current between face to face interactions.

7. You have to be intentional about all of this. Allocate time and energy to networking. You can meet people almost anywhere.

Austin Startup: Cyfeon To Kick Off Disrupt NY Battlefield

The first company presenting in today’s TechCrunch Disrupt startup Battlefield is an Austin based startup called Cyfeon.

Cyfeon has only been beta testing for two months. They are a very early stage, non-funded startup. They’ve created a tool called “Answer Factory” that lets any business pull data from anywhere, anytime in any format to get better answers to queries. Answer Factory is the answer for the headaches that can come from big data.

“Businesses are being overwhelmed with the amount of data they have to rely on to make decisions,” Cyfeon CEO Brandon Smith said. “And they are missing important information that might help drive better financial or operational performance. We’re convinced there is a market for technology that makes use of all available data to improve answer quality.”

The Answer Factory dashboard allows businesses to pull data from any source at any time. The data being pulled can be structured or unstructured and then unified using the Answer Factory platform. Businesses without huge IT departments can benefit from Cyfeon’s drag and drop solution.

“Data isn’t worth anything if it cannot be effectively used,” said Cyfeon CTO Chance Coble. “When we started developing Answer Factory, we knew there were tools out there to provide answers to database queries. But we didn’t see any product that effectively brings all that information together to deliver the best possible answer. We wanted to make big data a big benefit to businesses.”

Although Austin has a thriving tech scene and TechCrunch has held events at South By Southwest, Cyfeon is the first Austin startup in TechCrunch Disrupt’s five year history to be invited to participate in the highly coveted startup Battlefield.

Thirty startups will launch during the Battlefield competition but only one will go home with the $50,000 grand prize and the Disrupt Cup. The Disrupt Cup isn’t just about the money, previous winners of Disrupt Cup have secured millions in funding after winning the prize.

Judging this years Disrupt NYC Battlefield are: Michael Arrington (founder TechCrunch/Crunchfund), Roelof Botha (Sequoia Capital), Chi-Hua Chien (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers), Chris Dixon (co-founder Hunch), Marissa Mayer (VP Google), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures).

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Find out more about Cyfeon here

Check out our coverage of TechCrunch Disrupt NYC here

Check out TechCrunch’s coverage of Disrupt NYC here

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