Category Archives: People

You might have missed it, but last night, one commercial aired during the Super Bowl that had a direct tie to the Silicon Valley. It was the Best Buy “phone innovator” commercial and aired featuring Philippe Kahn, the inventor of the camera phone, Ray Kurzweil, the inventor of text-to-speech synthesis, the founders of Shazam, Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, and the creators of Words with Friends (with a great hat-tip to Alec Baldwin). It was a great spot that featured some of the tech world’s biggest, brightest, and legendary inventors and mobile pioneers. It kind of is a backhanded compliment to have it be associated with Best Buy though, in my opinion, but it still is a great commercial. Nice of them to also focus on some of the people you didn’t know were part of the startups – like with Square, the only founder most people know is Jack Dorsey.

Anyways, what did you think of this Best Buy commercial? You can watch the whole thing here.

Many here in Silicon Valley are eagerly trying to get funding for their startups. Out of those few who are able to get funding from Venture Capitalists, I wonder how many actually hear what’s in the above video. Following in line with the “Sh*t” memes that are the flavor of the month on YouTube, August Capital’s David Hornik posted this hilarious one about “Sh*t VCs Say”.  There are some really great gems in this video like poking fun at the negotiating process (e.g. “$10 million pre”) and much more…here are a few of my favorites:

• Is an 11 good on Klout?
• Is that the biggest plane they got?
• I got one word for you: participating preferred
• That’s what you’re doing? Are you kidding? I had that idea 3 years ago.
• S-1, baby!
• What if we put it in the Cloud?
• Mary, can you come here for a second? I need you to tweet something for me!
• I just got back from Paris.
• You’d be better off with Snooki on your board.
• What? You only have 7 million users.
• Why in the world are people skiing on the weekends when the lines are shorter during the week?
• You gotta check it out, it’s like the AirBnB for cosmetics

Thanks David Hornik for the laughs this Saturday morning. You can watch the whole video here.

It’s that time of year again – holiday dinners, holiday spirit and, of course, holiday parties! Trendy Lime is excited to be entertaining its global fans with a tri-continental series of Holiday parties this year—in Brazil, Europe, and the place where it all began– San Francisco, at our beloved Harlot club.

Please join us at Harlot on December 20, 7-11 pm, to enjoy this festive event. The highlight of the party: 10 amazing prizes from our sponsors handed out by Santa Claus and his lovely Elves. So be sure to get your raffle ticket at the door:

• Main prize: two $250 vouchers towards your adventure experience with Zozi.com
• Two sets of sparkly jewelry from Chic Gems
• Two 14-day passes to the elite Bay Club Financial District
• Two beauty baskets from Jurlique, organic care from Australia
• Voucher from CocoVine,1673 Haight Str. for Coco-Luxe delicacies and Blue Bottle Coffee
• Delicious dinner for two @ Morac Lounge

Program:

• Presents raffle handed out by Santa & Elves
• Complimentary appetizers courtesy Morac Lounge
• Photo shoot by Sergei Krasii Photography and Julie Blaustein Photography

Admission:
Complimentary with password sent through Eventbrite. Please RSVP at http://holidaysoireesf.eventbrite.com

General Sponsor:
Our Holiday Soiree is kindly supported by Royse Law Firm, integrated legal solutions for domestic and international clients including start-ups.

Partners:
Zozi.com
Bay Club Financial District
Morac Lounge
cocoVine @ 1673 Haight Street
ChicGems
Jurlique

Media Partners:
Graffiti PR
Eclectic a la Mode
Bub.blicio.us
Sergei Krasii Photography
Julie Blaustein Photography

Trendy Lime:
TrendyLime.com is a social network of 4,000+ international influencers and producer of upscale social and networking events. We enjoy a track-record of 40 sold out events on Fashion, Technology, and Professional Networking in the most exquisite venues of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, and Vienna. Our Mission is to provide unique event experience for the most discerning guests, while supporting good cause initiatives and charities and collaborating with local businesses.” Ourr diverse and international team is comprised of experts in Marketing, Branding, Event Planning, Fashion, and Travel.  We also enjoy the support of our advisors, followers, and evangelists. Past Trendy Lime sponsors and clients include: HP, Intel, Bay Club, Red Bull, Bloomingdales, jetBlue Airways

Contact:
For inquiries, please contact Liana Burtsava at liana@trendylime.com. Information on Trendy Lime events at www.trendylime.com

Imagine a day without access to your computer? The One Laptop per Child San Francisco Bay Area community (olpcsf.org) sees to it that no child goes without a computer in under-developed countries and even shows them how to use and fix them.  This is a community of volunteer educators, technologists, anthropologists, enthusiasts, champions and others. Monthly meetings are held at the SFSU downtown campus where they share stories, exchange ideas, solve problems, foster community and build collaborations around the One Laptop per Child project.

Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Professor of the Information System at San Francisco State University is the force behind the grassroots group that has organized the OLPC SF Community Summit 2011. The Summit is a combination of panel discussions, “Birds of a Feather” sessions, speed-geeking and much more. A few of the topics that will be covered include Education, Technology and Outreach & Deployments of OLPC programs. Last year it was a local meeting, this year the Summit is open to an audience worldwide.

Verma, who is passionate about the cause due to growing up in India where many children still lack educational opportunities.  says, “The Summit will bring together people who want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege. They share the belief that the One Laptop per Child is one of the most revolutionary endeavors going on in the world today.”

WHEN: Oct. 21st to  23rd.

WHERE: SFSU Downtown Campus in San Francsico

COST: General $40 and Students $25

REGISTER:  Eventbrite: bit.ly/plMJnH

By Julie Blaustein

The Social Media Club Panelists: Moderator Chris Heuer, Peter Kim, Jen McClure and Michael Brito

The Social Media Club of San Francisco held their monthly meeting at PeopleBrowsr offices on Tuesday, May 17th. in SOMA. It was a conversation that included Chris Heuer, Founder of the Social Media Club as Moderator, Peter Kim of Dachis Group, Jen McClure of Thomas Reuters and Michael Brito of Edelman.

There appears to be a shift in the way that companies are messaging themselves; rather than conducting Social Media its preferred to be known as conducting Social Business. Much of the discussion centered around how each of the panelists define social media in terms of their companies and how it relates to social media. All agreed that social media has evolved from when it first came into our consciousnesses around 2004. Brito saw that when it first debuted to companies it was creating chaos but now companies are making sense of it and embracing it. McClure whose company has a large workforce felt that the term itself is being used less and its now more about it becoming part of the social organization and enabling employees to communicate with one another. Kim shared how the social media term is on the “outs” with the story of  how his client, Zappos‘ CEO Tony Hsieh, fined $1 to anyone who even uttered the term social media.

The panelists also shared their own definition of Social Business. Kim saw it similar to how you connect consumers but in the business world. Its how you communicate with employees through technology such as Jive Software that provides social networking, collaboration software, community software and media monitoring. Kim said, it “pains him when people use social business as social media which it is not.” McClure sees social business as a platform to connect and help employers learn from. Brito shared his definition of social business from an infographic that he has created. As he defined it, its the natural evolution that companies go through internally to equip themselves with customers. It starts with the people internally in a company such as the CMO and as a result processes are established within and technology brought on to manage it results.

Google Trend Comparison of Social Media vs. Social Business

A comparison between Social Media and Social Business in terms of search and news interest demonstrated how Social Business is barely a blip, yet its most definitely of importance to those in the enterprise social world. In the end perhaps the discussion was mostly about the semantics of language as it was agreed that social media is the umbrella term, with social business being a niche version of it. Some examples of those companies as seen in the forefront of this focus on Social Busienss were IBM, SAP, Cisco, Intel. Kim though felt at tis time no one is doing Social Business Particularly well but just getting started such as Disney and AT&T. There is still a huge amount of opportunity for companies to join the social world in a business way in the near future.

Join the Conversation with the Social Media Club SF at #SMCSF, view the video and photos from the event.