I’ve been staying busy behind the scenes of late working on some interesting product opportunities. Many of you saw me present MediaSode at Startup Riot, and there are more cool projects in the works at TechDrawl. I thought I’d lob a few thoughts onto the site to keep the discussion lively. My focus this night is why things don’t work. I’m beginning to think technology has outpaced our ability to manage it. Cases in point: Read More…
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Blogger disclaimer: Chris Treadaway is not compensated by or affiliated with any company mentioned in this video blog post.
The returns are in for SXSW Interactive 2010, and they’re off the charts. More people attended SXSW Interactive than the Music festival this year for the first time ever. Somewhere between 15,000-16,000 people attended SXSWi, an increase of roughly 4,000 attendees. You could easily argue that SXSWi is now the must-attend event of the year for folks in the consumer Web business, and it’s right here in Austin, Texas.
Here’s my recap of the event, the LBS craze, and other happenings at this year’s show:
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On Techdrawl, writers post regularly about ideas and how to make them happen. I’m Ross Baird and I work for Gray Ghost Ventures (GGV), an impact investment firm in Atlanta, that asks, “How can start-up businesses fundamentally change the world?” GGV provides capital to entrepreneurs addressing the needs of low-income communities in emerging markets. Depending upon need and opportunity, GGV, a Certified B Corp 
may be sole investor, lead investor, co-investor, general partner, limited partner, creator or manager. The exploding field of social enterprise, particularly in the business world, argues that through building businesses with ‘doing good’ at the core of their missions, we can build financially sustainable models that create change at a scale we couldn’t have imagined before.
GGV was founded by entrepreneur Bob Pattillo to invest in microfinance, one of the earliest success stories in for-profit businesses fighting poverty. In the past few years, GGV has grown into a $100 million social venture family of funds and initiatives investing in projects from clean technology to mobile education, investing in schools worldwide, and in the enterprise I work with, First Light Ventures (FLV). FLV is a seed fund that takes for-profit social enterprises at the very early stage and serves as an incubator as we work to accelerate them to full-scale businesses.
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Barracuda Networks released its Barracuda Labs 2009 Annual Report this week with significant data from three areas.
The report is available at the company’s newly launched security research portal. Read More…
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Drownproofing was developed by swimming coach Fred Lanoue, known to students as Crankshaft because of his limping gait. It was first taught in 1940.[1] His method was so successful that it gained national recognition,[2] and Georgia Tech soon made it a requirement for graduation, until 1988.[3] … It is claimed that during Lanoue’s time teaching at Tech from 1936 to 1964, he taught drownproofing to some 20,000 students.
Once they had mastered the Drownproofing technique, students learned how to stay afloat with their wrists and ankles bound, swim 50 yards (46 m) underwater, and retrieve diving rings from the bottom of the pool using their teeth.
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Twitpay was founded by Don Brown and Michael Ivey in 2008. The group brought the idea to Atlanta Startup Weekend in 2008, an event organized by Lance Weatherby at ATDC, where a team of developers signed on for a slice of the pie. Weatherby joined as well, and the team had a workable prototype by the end of the weekend.
That weekend’s event was part of a new openness at ATDC driven by Weatherby. He had learned startups at MindSpring doing business development, eventually becoming executive vice president of Earthlink and later chief marketing officer of Ciphertrust. As a Startup Catalyst, he worked with Stephen Fleming, Michael Mealling and Jeff Haynie to bring BarCamp and other events to Atlanta, hosted at 75 Fifth St, NW. Weatherby marketed ATDC to a new generation of entrepreneurs in Atlanta’s growing startup community. Before this, few entrepreneurs under 30 in Atlanta knew what ATDC was. As a result of Weatherby’s programs, ATDC became the center of a rapidly growing community. The second Atlanta Startup Weekend in 2008 was a part of that. Read More…
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Brian Solis, principal at FutureWorks, co-founder Social Media Club and #6 on Ad Age’s Power 150 index of top marketing bloggers recently filled 5 Seasons Westside in Atlanta as fans lined up to get pre-released autographed copies of Solis’ new book, Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. Here’s the interview video.
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Here’s video from the recent Startup Tweetup hosted by Jungle Disk and Rackspace with popular blogger and technical evangelist, Robert Scoble who packed out the Cypress Street Pint & Plate in Midtown Atlanta, GA. Scoble works at Rackspace and is building a community for people fanatical about the Internet called Building 43.
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Technology attorney John Yates recently interviewed Bill Hiller, one of Atlanta’s long time technology executives and entrepreneurs who helped build the Atlanta technology community. Hiller was a senior executive at Alpharetta-based Digital Communications Associates (DCA), a tech leader and NYSE company in the 1980s. At its height, DCA was the world’s leader in communications products with its flagship product, the IRMA Board, a 3270 emulation circuit board. In simple terms, the IRMA Board allowed the IBM PC (introduced in 1982) to connect to an IBM mainframe. It wasn’t rocket science, but it was big business when you consider that every PC needed an IRMA board to talk to the mainframe. Enjoy Bill Hiller and his recollections of Atlanta’s leadership role in the communications industry.
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TechDrawl had a chance to speak with the founder of Usable Health, LLC, an Atlanta-based health and disease intervention company. Watch the video with Jiten Chhabra, MD (Dr. J) and Chad Bonner:
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