By Julie Blaustein

If you haven’t been to a Lunch 2.0 you should make it a point to schedule the time around lunch to attend one. After all, everyone needs to eat lunch. At Lunch 2.0 you not only score a free lunch but you will also meet new companies, smart people, eager recruiters and maybe even go home with some bling. Lunch 2.0 was started about 2 years ago when folks would sneak into other folks’ corporate cafeterias to eat lunch. Today the lunches are eagerly hosted not only in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle but now in Europe and Asia. Great press has been written about Lunch 2.0′s including from the SF Chronicle and the WSJ. The recent Lunch 2.0 held at the Powerset’s office in San Francisco was held for Bing. Bing was in town to celebrate its six-months since the launch and the recent partnership with Twitter.

It was a full-capacity crowd at Bing. Keep in mind, one can not just sign up on Facebook, one must provide full disclosure of who it is that will be coming for lunch on UpComing to be truly rsvp’d. Sadly, Lunch 2.0 hopefuls were turned away for the Bing Lunch 2.0 at the Powerset front desk if they were not on the list. If you were lucky enough to gain admittance, get past the front desk and up the elevator, you found yourself served a gourmet lunch, beverages including beer, along with desert. Bing goodies were also served including a Bing hat just in time for the winter chill. All types showed up from the web 2.0 world. A few of the players that I ran into included recruiter Robert Greene of GreeneSearch who places whiz kid engineers into the hottest start ups, Jamie Perlman who does Business Development for SlideShare and is known for his ability to “sweet talk” anyone into any deal, Salesperson Michael Hansen of ZenDesk, the latest darling of the start up world and CEO Marc Cramer of SurfCanyon whose technology is integrated into Bing!

To join the list and get alerts for the next Lunch 2.0, go to their website, Facebook Page or their LinkedIn Group. If your company wants to host, you might want to first read How to Host a Lunch 2.0 and if you can handle it, then contact the organizers at their Lunch 2.0 site.

Bing Greeters Giving Out Bling

By Larry Chiang and Marissa Louie

Holiday Party 2.0

Hosted by Bub.blicio.us, AD-Village.com, Zinette Magazine, and S1 Management

12/2 11:19pm: SPONSOR LIST IS NOW FULL
12/4 11:18am: SEE NOTES BELOW RE: AFTERPARTY

Fa-la-la-la-la, where’s the holiday moolah?? Show me the money.

In the old days, it was “Let’s set aside $50 grand of our $12mm b-round and effen host a holiday party.”

While we WILL miss the carving station, Cirque du Soleil ballet dancers and gift baskets, we are in a borderline depression. Chin up ol’ sport!, because we are architecting a party — a holiday party where we make money, build awareness of our start-up and wow our partners and sponsors with 10x ROI on their $100-200 sponsorship.

Remember, anything worth doing is worth doing for money. Why should holiday partying be any different= We fully expect surprises to be laced between now and FRIDAY (yes, four short days away).

The party is Dec 5th, 7-9pm at Roe Restaurant (651 Howard St.) in San Francisco.

Special Guests:

• Jackie Peters of Heavybag Media
• Sarah Lacy, Author of “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good”

Co-Hosts:

• Larry Chiang
• Marissa Louie
• Brian Solis
• Krystel Ariel
• Adam Jackson
• Tyler Willis
• Barney Pell
• Waleed Abdulla
• Yo Yoshida
• Max Schulze
• Paul Schleicher
• Michael Moradzadeh
• Halle Tecco
• Ryan Merket

Spotlight Sponsor: Sun Startup Essentials

Sponsors:

• AD-Village .com
• Asse9 link
• Founders Fund .com (solicited)
• Zinette .com
• Yoono .com
• Involver .com
• JS-Kit .com
• S1 Management .com
• Blog Networks on Facebook
• Rimon Law Group
• WordPress .com
• Workstir .com
• Ninne .de
• Whole Foods Market

Media Sponsors:

• Bub.blicio.us
  
• Future-Works PR
• Heavybag Media

RSVP via text message under 140 characters to:

@malouie | (510) 375-1941 | marissa@ad-village.com

@larrychiang | (650) 283-8008 | chiang9@duck9.com

or check the Facebook group.

In the spirit of Holiday 2.0, it’s “Let’s make some money hosting a holiday party by inviting co-hosts like Brian Solis, Jackie Peters, Barney Pell, Sun Startup Essentials, Founders Fund, Involver.com, Yoono.com, and Rimon Law Group.

Because we are ZOMG monetizing , we will invite you to come celebrate Holiday 2.0.

** Chiang SURVEY QUESTIONS: **
Should we tip, bribe, comp and tip bloggers to come?
Should we charge a $5 cover?
Should we charge a $15-75 cover to VCs?

Should we have an AFTERPARTY?
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=25107055702&id=811315726&index=3

by Michelle Lentz

Without a press release in hand, I’m feeling slightly cautious about this. But VentureBeat – and just about everyone else – is reporting that Microsoft is purchasing semantic search engine Powerset for $100M+ in a deal that will be announced next month. TechCrunch, cautious after all the Yahoo!/ Microsoft waffling, I suppose, makes a point that the deal is not yet set in stone and could still fall through.

I wrote about PowerSet back in early May and I rather liked it. At the time, I called it the evolution of search and not a Google Killer. I still hesitate to call anything a Google Killer, but I do believe that Google needs to invest some more time and money into evolving their own search past keywords and into semantics. As the Web evolves, Google needs to come with it.

I think the possible purchase of PowerSet is a smart move for Microsoft. If you recall, PowerSet currently only searches Wikipedia with a detailed, contextual search. It takes a fair amount of microcomputing power for PowerSet to index a page. With Microsoft behind them, coming by that power might just get a little easier. If this deal goes through, I imagine one of two things could happen: PowerSet could get swallowed up and lost in the Microsoft behemoth. Alternatively, Microsoft could really work with PowerSet and use it to vastly improve Microsoft’s own search engine, which currently leaves a lot to be desired.

7/1/08 UPDATE: The deal was officially announced today. According to Powerset:

Powerset will continue to operate much as we currently do, working in the same building, with the same organizational structure, and with the same uniquely talented and growing team. We’ll continue to tackle the hardest problems in parsing, semantics, ranking, indexing, scalable computing, user experience and all of our other specialties. But now we’ll do it with the support of Microsoft and the vast resources of the entire Live Search team.

Now Powerset will have the money and resources and only have to fight the red tape and politics that come with a big company.

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Events, news, apps, and more – let me know at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, via Twitter, or via Pownce.