PitchCamp Winners and thank you to ALL!

Robert Goldberg and I invested a ton of time and thought into our PitchCamp workshop at Web 2.0 Expo Europe (held in Berlin again this year) but I have to say, it would not have been a huge success (thanks Mike Butcher for saying so!) without the tireless help of numerous others. But before I get into the thank you shout outs I must tell you about the terrific companies that won the arduous pitch process. We had 12 great companies and I think all of them made great progress in their pitches. But here were the judges favorites:

• First place -- Wuala


• Second place -- YouCalc

And a tie for third place:

• Amazee


• Plista


• SofaTutor

We had an incredible group of judges officiating and I must thank all of them --

• Mike Butcher – European Editor TechCrunch


• Olivier Creiche – Vice President and General Manager of Europe, Middle East and Africa, Six Apart


• Simon Levene – Partner, Accel Venture Partners


• Patrick Liechti – Business Development Manager – Web 2.0 Startups, Sun Microsystems


• Matt Marshall – Managing Editor and CEO, Venture Beat


• Dr. Maximillian Niederhofer – Atlas Ventures


• Mehrdad Piroozram – Managing Partner, iSteps Widget Ventures


• Jens Redmer – Head of European New Business Development, Google


• Carsten Rudolph – Emerging Business Team, Microsoft


• Rob Schiller – Investor and Entrepreneur


• Reshma Sohoni – CEO, Seedcamp


• Yossi Vardi – Investor and Entrepreneur

Part of what made this so much fun was a terrific group of sponsors who provided prizes and sponsored the PitchParty afterwards -- I have to especially thank Ernst & Young, LinkedIn, iSteps, ContentTeam, Hobnox, SixApart, and VentureBeat.

But let me save the most superlatives for the tremendous, astounding, wonderful David Nöel of Hobnox who did an amazing amount of work to bring everything together on the ground in Berlin so that we had a great party and hundreds of happy pitchcampers. THANKS DAVID!

Only 2 Spots Left! (Pitch Camp Berlin)

Robert Goldberg and I have been working hard to improve and expand the format of our "Pitch Camp x.0" Workshop at Web 2.0 Expo Europe and we have some very exciting updates:


1. Due to demand from entrepreneurs we have expanded the panel of experts that now includes folks from Google, Sun, Microsoft, Accel, Atlas Ventures and more! Check out the expanded session description here http://www.budurl.com/2wx6

2. We have made the format even more interactive. Now each participating company will be pre-assigned one of the panelists as a coach. There will be a hands on session where the coach helps in real time each company revise the pitch. This should get the competitive juices flowing. Other attendees to the workshop will also be assigned to observe the process.

3. We have found thousands of dollars worth of prizes to give away to the winners who will judged by the entire panel of experts. Check out the site http://www.budurl.com/2wx6 for more details on the prizes

4. Every participating company will get a prize!

5. We have a facebook event page, please sign up http://www.budurl.com/eu8v

6. IMPORTANT the deadline for submitting an application to pitch and participate is OCTOBER 11th. Email me to get an application -- tshelton (a) theconversationgroup.com

7. Several companies who are financially strapped have approached us to see if they could participate. We are talking to the O’Reilly folks about the possibility of getting one, but at most two session only passes for 1-2 worthy companies. Not a done deal yet, but we are hopeful. FYI if they become available these passes will only get you into the Pitchcamp Workshop and nothing else. So if your applying to pitch and are operating on a shoestring, in the applications process please let us know your circumstances and we will see what we can do to offer you a Scholarship!

8. PARTY – we are having a special VIP party later Tuesday night ONLY for people who attend the workshop. Details and tickets will be provided at the workshop, but take my word for it… it’s going to be great!

Politweets.com -- Following the Election via Twitter

Here is a good one: "Obama is Apple, Hilary is Dell: http://tinyurl.com/2sfd72 (via Seeking Alpha) --ericlitman reported 2 minutes ago." I have no idea who Eric Litman is and never would have seen this cool article on Seeking Alpha if it hadn't been for this really ingenious web app that searches Twitter for "tweets" about all of the political candidates:

Politweets.com

As many people have ridiculed Twitter as being useless as have adopted it as a core part of their online toolset. So with the pro-twitter and con-twitter lines having been drawn, it is refreshing to get an application like Politweets which brings out the really intriguing aspect of Twitter -- the ability to tap into the pulse of some very interesting distributed event (like an election) and see what is happening.

My friend Doug March is one of the people behind Character140, the group that has created the Politweets application. But lest anyone think that they are only trying to show Twitter's good side, last month they released a similar tool called Twittertale.com which shows the use of foul language on Twitter.

Both applications work the same way -- the search through all public Twitter posts to find uses of specific words and display this posts, along the way "ranking" the words for the frequency of their use. In the case of Politweets this also gives us the ability to see how much a candidate is being talked about in real time (at least how much they are being tweeted about).

Is it "citizen journalism" ? I personally think it is more like listening in on a whole bunch of private conversations -- but it is still a fascinating application of social media. And with the primaries in New Hampshire and elsewhere giving us all a lot to talk about, it is also very entertaining and maybe will even give us something to learn about ourselves, our nation, and this radical new kind of community technology.

Engaging the Author

Having tracked down Thomas Claburn -- the author of "Media Companies Confront Mortality" -- I have engaged in a spirited conversation with him about CMP, his article, blogging vs. journalism, etc. With his permission, I repeat some of that conversation here.

Claburn points out that it is CMP and not he (or any individual writer) who (1) doesn't provide "community" tools and (2) and does spread articles around their network without attribution to the original author. So to be clear - my criticism on this point was not of Thomas or of his article -- but it was of CMP.

Regarding the specific comment, Thomas writes: "Your point is well-taken. It was certainly snarky and perhaps an unfair characterization of the state of the companies present."

But he goes on to point out that I was snarky back in calling his comment "ugly." We then debated whether there is a difference between blogging (which I characterized as editorial) and writing a news article for Information Week. I contend that there is a difference -- my expectation is that something labeled "news" will be presented with an attempt at conveying an objective perspective. Snarkiness is fine in an editorial, where it is clearly an individual's perspective. This blog, for example, is unapologetically my own perspective. And while I recognize that journalists are people too and have their own perspectives and biases - I expect that news will be written in a way that doesn't broadcast those perspectives.

But the most important part of this for me is that when I did track down the author, he did reply, was accountable, was engaged with the topic and the audience. So kudos to Thomas for being the kind of journalist that can make a difference in the media 2.0 world -- even if his company is following far behind in supporting him.

Here's What's Wrong

UPDATE - See bottom of article...

Dear CMP Media, thank you for your recent coverage of the Web 2.0 Expo. I enjoyed your article covering the panel I spoke on. Your article, "Media Companies Confront Mortality" demonstrated what is wrong with mainstream media very effectively.

#1) There was no byline. The article was written by "Staff Writers" -- since it wasn't written by a specific person, there is no accountability, no ability to respond, no knowledge of whether the person writing the article actually knows anything about the topic that he/she is writing on... So this is just a pronouncement from on high -- big media saying "this is what you should believe about what happened and you should believe because we are in charge."

#2) There is no comment mechanism. I read the article and then I have no ability to discuss the article with other people reading it, no trackback mechanism so that I can link to the article from my blog and point out problems or discuss issues...

#3) With the appearance of objectivity, the article puts ugly opinions into the public sphere. Where does CMP Media get off saying that our opinions were "...coming from a panel full of poorly capitalized Web startups..." How do they know? Did they bother to inquire with any of the four of us about our capital structures?

No need to read CMP Media any more, they discredit themselves through their practices, behavior, and poor reporting.

UPDATE: It occurred to me that the version of the article I was seeing was picked up from somewhere else within CMP, and sure enough the original version is in Information Week -- here.

I have written to author Thomas Claburn - let's see if he replies!