Author Archives: Julie Blaustein

by Julie Blaustein

If you are entrepreneurial and into Faceboook Apps, this is the place for you! WeekendApps is an entire weekend shared with other entrepreneurs devoted to reaching their potential, launching their startups, and achieving massive success. Meet up with potential friends and partners for future ventures.

Consider the weekend as being part of an incubator on steroids. You will be bombarded with inside information from designers, marketers, usability experts, and lawyers. Learn from those that have the experience in the marketplace. And overall, come out of the experience with your very own Facebook App.

The organizers of the event are Waleed, Elsie, Alexandros, ,Tyler and Peter Min they are awesome, talented, full of energy and super friendly. I also know them from Startup Weekend where we formed our own startup in a weekend. The cost is free, kinda. You’ll need to go and read all about it here. It will be held the weekend of February 22nd. at TEN’s Santa Clara Venture Accelerator.

To learn more about the event go to the WeekendApps site.

Tags: Facebook Waleed+Abdulla, Elsie+Samson Alexandros+Pagidas Tyler+Willis Julie+Blaustein Bub.blicio.us

by Julie Blaustein

Elizabeth Lefever of Orrick, Katherine Barr of MDV and Jeannie Shin of Orrick

It’s Girls in Tech’s one year anniversary and they are still going strong. The brain child of Adriana Gascoigne; created to provide resources, relationships and support amongst woman in this mostly male dominated field of high tech. The event provided by them about negotiations was well attended, informative and quite a lot of fun.

Katherine Barr, who held the workshop, is a Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) is a member of their investment team. She also holds a Professional Education Negotiation program for the School of Engineering at Stanford. Sporting the most engaging smile I have ever come across, she immediately relaxed the eager audience of about 30 with her amusing remarks.

The smart and hot looking crowd of Girls in Tech

So what is the big difference between men and women when negotiating? It comes down to that fact that women are too concerned about the outcomes of ones relationship with the other party. At the end of the day, the negotiations have nothing to do with your relationship but about walking away with alternatives and coming to an agreement where both parties are satisfied with the outcomes.

It was an interactive evening too. Starting with the arm wrestling between seat mates to show that even in that activity one is negotiating the outcome through eye contact, attitude, aggressiveness and other physical attributes. A case study and a “Vantage Seven-Element Preparation Tool” sheet set the negotiation concepts into play as a team of two were paired up and negotiated the contract of a has-been reality star at a new agency. The end of the evening the group was treated not only to a note pad worth of incredibly handy sheets that truly set the stage for a negotiation session but also to a laminated card to have handy for reference in stressful situations.

Some great books that were highly suggested included Getting to YES: Negotiation Agreement without Giving In and Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most.

Orrick sponsored the event and provided a scrumptious feast after the hard work the guys and gals completed during the evening of negotiations.

The scrumptious feast provided by Orrick

Tags: Girls+in+Tech Bub.blicio.us Negotiations Julie+Blaustein Orrick Mohr+Davidow+Ventures

Words and Photos by Julie Blaustein

SF BIG (Bay Area Interactive Group) is a volunteer, non-profit professional association that champions digital marketing to brand marketers, publishers and agencies through educational, networking, and association events. It also throws a pretty impressive event starting with the venue, which was at the Westin St. Francis in downtown San Francisco, to its sponsors who provide an open bar and some of the best food ever at an event. Its sponsors include the biggies including Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft along with other up and coming companies.

The panel titled, “The Wadget Revolution” a play on the Widget and the Gadget, discussed the widget revolution and how marketers can best take advantage of these new opportunities. The speakers included Donna Stokes of HP, Ken Barbieri of the Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, Will Price of Hummer Winblad, Hiedi Henson of RockYou! and Kevin Barenblat of Context Optional. The moderator, Christian Oestlien of Google gave a great overview on how quickly the space has grown. He graciously provided me a great Directory of Developers that are actually not Google employees but can assist one in creating their Gadgets. It was agreed by all on the panel that this is a channel in its developing stages and there is alot to be seen, especially in tracking data. Kevin Barenblat rightly so pointed out at the end of the panel that, “Widgets are providing what the media buyers have been trying to for many years – seeking engagement with the user, a closer relationship and not just placing the banner in the panel section.”

Christian Oestien, Business Product Manager at hrf=”http/www.google.com”>Google and moderator

Folks are really digging this Widget, Gadget, Watchamakalit talk

After the educational portion, the troops were fed a 5 star feast including roast beef, sushi and pasta along with an open bar. If you are looking to network in the ad networking, media buying, and in the general agency space, this is the place to be to meet the movers and shakers in the industry. They also offer either a corporate or individual membership at the SF BIG Site. If you do so in January, you will receive an early discount of $75. Individual membership is usually at $100.Corporate is $750 and there is a $650 Early Bird.

d.

Sean Van Ittersum of Sean Consulting and Terri Williams, VP of Sales at JamBase - if you dig Live Music, check them out!

Shing Wong of Yahoo! and Donna Stokes of HP.

Thanks again SF BIG and all its fab sponsors for a good time had by all!

Tags: HP Google Yahoo! JamBase Terri+Williams Christian+Oestlien Donna+Stokes Ken+Barbieri Wahington+Post+Newsweek+Interactive Hiedi+Henson RockYou! Ken+Barenblat Hummer+Winblad Julie+Blaustein

Words and Photos by Julie Blaustein

On a rainy, mid-week night over 86 folks planned to attend; and 39 were planning to be at the OpenSocial and Facebook App Development event, more commonly known as the Facebook Meetup. It was to be held at the posh DLA offices located in the Four Seasons complex in Palo Alto. Instead, I found upon arriving there a swarm of folks hanging outside the building and they through a pizza party taking place outside the front doors of DLA.  An emergency gas leak resulted in no heat throughout the building and thus, the event was postponed.

Networking amongst the many developers, VC folks, and entrepreneurs was rampant. 

Gary Gill of PodClass.com made the most of it by working the scene, having flown up from San Diego specifically for the event. Blake Commagere and Adam Robertson were going to talk about how they designed the Vampire and Zombies Facebook that are the hottest apps on Facebook. There was going to be a demo of the apps and  the psychology behind the creation of the Facebook applications – a topic quite in demand these days. We will all just have to wait with baited breathe until this much anticipated event is rescheduled.

The Facebook Meetup was sadly cancelled due to a Gas Leak

Soon, we will be alerted to the rescheduled talk about the Vampires and Zombies Facebook Apps by Blake Commagere and Adam Robertson

The networking crowd making the best out of the cancelled event.

words and pictures by Julie Blaustein

Snap hosted its second annual Holiday Mixer at Azie Restaurant in SOMA last Thursday, December 6th.

The party was a celebration of their first year of Snap Shots and to thank their many partners and friends who helped make the product a success. Snap Shots is a new ad network working with over 2 million publishers including Disney, Xanga, TechCrunch, Photobucket and many others.

It is ranked 25th of all US networks reaching over 16 million unique users in the US and over 35 million uniques worldwide per month. The after party was over at the swanky Redwood Room in the Clift Hotel.

Tom McGovern, CEO of Snap and gang.  Richard Jalichandra of Technorati (right)

Joe Sarmiento of Snap, Sharon Lim of iLike, Sol Lipman of DeviceVM and
Kurt Collins of ClearSpring.

Vanessa Camones of RockYou and Jason Fields of Iconmobile

The Wonder Duo Jason Fields, formerly of Snap and Joe Sarmiento of Snap

Kurt Collins of Clearspring (formerly of Photobucket) and Julie Blaustein of Photobucket.

Stuart McFaul, Vanessa Camones and Jason Fields