Last week one of Bub.blicio.us‘ long-term media partners and friends, Liana Burtsava of Trendy Lime, was a partner at the Startup Week Vienna that welcomed 100 investors, 70 speakers, and over 1,000 guests to beautiful Vienna, the city known as the bridge between Eastern and Central Europe. Thanks to Liana, we are connected to blogger Vukasin Stojekov of Seebhub.me and the unfolding of startup events in Europe.

Contributed by Vukašin Stojkov of SeeHub.me of Serbia:

Morten Lund, investor and entrepreneur from Copenhagen, Denmark

A plethora of keynotes, presentations, panels and workshops participated in last weeks event in Vienna. Oliver Holle and Erik Bovee of Speedinvest held fantastic informational presentations. I have heard a fair share of VC presentations, but these guys really killed it. Not only did you learn a lot, you could enjoy it too due to their great presentation style. The Startup Week Viena is a must for early stage startups, and I hope to hear them in the future, ideally when they come to Belgrade. One of the best motivational keynotes was given by Pascal Finette on Wednesday, when he compared startups to running a marathon and shared his lessons with entrepreneurs in the audience.

TechCrunch day was awesome. A small part was due to Mike Butcher being on the stage where he is a Superstar. He is awesome presenting himself, moderating a panel, having a fireside chat or even presenting an awards ceremony.

A great piece of motivation and inspiration came on Thursday with Facebook’s Christian Hernandez highlighting Serbia’s Nordeus as his favorite European success story. This was an illustration of how close Nordeus and Facebook are which I believe many in this region take as a signal that one can indeed make it BIG on a global scale no matter where one comes from. Our last day on Friday, we had a chance to hear Doug Richard’s amazing story about his biggest mistake and I can not wait to hear from him again.

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch, soaked with champagne by the winners of the Start up competition, MySugr

The Networking was the best part of Startup Week for me. My biggest impression from this event was a who’s who in the CEE startup scene which was a significant upgrade from the traditional circuit of conferences I have attended in the past. I had the chance of meeting and talking with amazing people from Germany, Austria, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia. You name it, they were there. It was a great experience at what is poised to become one the central European startup events. This year’s edition was just a sign of things to come.

More photos from the conference found on Facebook. (photo credit Luis Kentzler)

Newly created hackathon incubator, AngelHack is about to take Silicon Valley by storm. A new idea that has not brings together 20 of silicon valley’s best and brightest together to create 2 new startups!

On November 11, 2011 a private bus will leave San Francisco holding 20 engineers and developers, en route to an exclusive location, to take over a hotel for 3 days and create two accelerated startups. Upon return, the teams will present their final product to a room full of media and investors.

“Angelhack is about 4 things: Collaboration, Entrepreneurship, Technology and Investing,” says AngelHack co-founder Krystyl Baldwin. “We call it AngelHack because we allow a select pool of angel investors the opportunity to invest in our companies in return for helping to sponsor the event.”

AngelHack is currently seeking out 20 bright engineers to put their entrepreneurial skills to the test. Interested parties can submit applications at http://angelhack.com/apply

Starting on October 3rd, product ideas will be crowd-sourced from the larger technology community. The owner of the product idea that gets chosen, will receive a stake in the company’s equity along with being one of the cofounders. The deadline for submissions is Nov 1.

For more information check out http://www.angelhack.com

The Google Code-in is one of the newest contests presented by Google’s Open Source Program. For students who have wanted to get involved with open source, this is a tremendous opportunity to dive in and give it a shot.

Google will team up with a variety of open source organizations to come up with a list of tasks to be performed by contest contestants. Who is eligible, you ask? Any students between the ages of 13 to 18 before the start of the contest are free to participate.

Google isn’t shorting their participants in the incentive department, either. Contestants who successfully complete one task will receive a t-shirt and a certificate. But it gets bigger: For those who complete three tasks, they will receive $100. For every three tasks after the first three, contestants will receive an additional $100, up to a total of $500 for 15 successfully completed tasks.

10 lucky grand prize winners will receive a trip to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, where their accomplishments will be rewarded with an awards ceremony.

The contest is slated to start on November 22, 2010. You can find additional information on the contest at the Google Code-in website.

The Google Code-in looks like a tremendous opportunity for young students to explore, learn and potentially develop a strong interest in programming. It will provide students with a great opportunity to network and work alongside some impressive leaders in the computer programming field.

What are your thoughts on Google’s contest?

(Photo Credit: Google)

By Julie Blaustein

Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter

The Girls in Tech event, TWITTER NATION Fireside Chat with Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter was held at the incubator Kicklabs in San Francisco with over 100 attendees. It was moderated by Claire Cain Miller, reporter for the New York Times. The chat was full of new and interesting information about Twitter and, surprisingly Evans was quite entertaining.

Evan Williams is known for inventing the term blogger and in fact one of his previous companies, Blogger, was acquired by Google. His success is a result of his need to be driven by his passion within. He is a big fan of Napolean Dynamite who he sees as one of the biggest geeks that there is, but so geeky, that he is cool.

Twitter had over 90 million tweets the day of the event and has now more than 145 million users. Evans feels  there has been no real need for PR and Promotion until recently, and that is because they were “lucky” enough not to need it. Twitter shares a great deal of information not surprisingly, on their own Company Blog .

Eric Brown, Sarah Brown, Lisa Phillips and Dana Contreras of Twitter

Did you know that Twitter is hiring! They have grown to over 300 people and are continuing to grow. Williams feels its important to continue having meals together to get to know one another. Perks include not only working in SF but having your gym membership covered, yoga, pilates and of course most of your meals taken care of.

What is it like working at Twitter? The Twitter folks present at the event were more than enthusiastic about being a part of this fast-moving train that the entire world has either joined or is quickly jumping on board.

I’ve heard of fashion being affected by the changing technology. You know, jackets that hold and charge iPods. Hoodies with built in speakers. And I won’t even consider purchasing a purse without an internal pocket designed for holding my cell phone. But the most forward-thinking and innovative trends are often impractical. That’s why you have to go to the modern art museums to see most of the ideas being put forth.

The WTFJeans brand is looking to make technology more reasonably integrated with our current fashion, launching a line of denim pants that have pockets specifically designed for your gadgets. The size of the pockets are cut to fit things like smart phones, iPods, and even USB portable drives. That’s handy. I suppose it makes sense for menswear, as we girls already have those easy-access purse pockets and all.

The pockets in the WTFJeans are also lined with microfiber, so your iPhone screen won’t get any additional damage done from sitting in your pocket all day. Maybe the screen will actually get a little cleaner, as it rests happily in your pants. Additional needs have also been considered, as the WTFJeans hide certain pockets, such as the one created to hold USB drives. You know, in case you’re a spy that just escaped with the files copied from that megacorporation you’re trying to bring down.

Jokes aside, I do like that clothing designers and manufacturers are finding reasonable ways in which to incorporate modern needs into their designs. I won’t be wearing the jeans anytime soon, but I know a few guys that would consider hiding a USB in a specialized pocket. These are also the same guys that would forget to take the USB back out of their specialized pocket before throwing their jeans in the wash, but that’s not really my problem, now, is it.

Necessity is the mother of all invention. Now how about a couple more super-pocketed purses for me?

[source and image via Gizmodo]

By Miiko Mentz

The 2009 Crunchies award winners were revealed Friday night at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. This was the third annual Crunchies Awards ceremony put on by TechCrunch, along with its partners GigaOm and VentureBeat. For a third straight year Facebook took home the Best Overall Startup Or Product Of 2009 award. Mark Zuckerberg was on hand to accept the award:

Zuckerberg also sat down for an on-stage interview with TechCrunch Founder and Co-editor Michael Arrington. They discussed Internet privacy and how Facebook has been aggressive on that front. They talked about the future of Facebook Connect and Zuckerberg said that this year Facebook will focus on making it easier for users and developers to use Facebook Connect because “much more is going to be developed outside of Facebook then inside.”

Arrington asked Zuckerberg if Facebook will get more aggressive on acquisitions, in which Zuckerberg commented on the motivation behind Facebook’s past acquisitions. He said the acquisitions “have been primarily to get great people to join the company” and then he went on to talk about each. Watch the full interview here:

And one of my favorite parts of the evening was the Richter Scales performance. Their performance was highly entertaining and lots of fun:

Like last year’s Crunchies Awards, the evening ended with a celebration at the Crunchies Awards after party across the street at San Francisco City Hall’s rotunda. Check out the pictures from the ceremony and after party: Crunchies2009′s photostream.

To see all the nominees, runner-ups, and winners, head on over to TechCrunch; and to watch the recording of the Crunchies head on over to the Crunchies page or TechCrunch’s Crunchies Ustream channel.

Follow me on Twitter: @MiikoMentz

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to Bubblicious, I also work at FutureWorks. FutureWorks was the video sponsor for the Crunchies and I was part of the video crew for last night’s ceremony.

Related Links:
GigaOM: DropBox, Foursquare, Facebook Winners at The Crunchies
TechCrunch: The Crunchies Photo Gallery
VentureBeat: Crunchies: Google Voice is coming to the iPhone “one way or the other”
VentureBeat: Crunchies: Zynga’s Mark Pincus sees a future for socially-conscious virtual goods
Bubblicious: A night of reflection and celebration at TechCrunch’s 2nd annual Crunchies

This week (tomorrow) is the San Francisco Music Tech conference which is a must attend event for anyone that loves music and/or technology.  The event brings together entrepreneurs, developers, musicians, investors, and service providers for a full day to talk about how the music industry is evolving and how technology is playing a role in that evolution.

The speaker lineup this year is also quite impressive, here are just a few of the folks that are going to be in attendance:

• Stephan Jenkins, Third Eye Blind 3eb!
• Tom Conrad – Chief Technical Officer, Pandora
• Zahavah Levine – Chief Counsel, YouTube
• Tim Quirk – VP of Music Programming, Real Audio / Rhapsody
• Dave Ulmer – Sr. Director, Multimedia, Motorola
• Jeff Yasuda – CEO & Founder, blip.fm
• Jean Cook – Interim Executive Director, Future of Music Coalition
• Michael Masnick – Founder, TechDirt

As you can see it’s going to be quite an eclectic event with a lot of interesting discussions.  I’m really interested in the back story behind a lot of the companies such as Pandora and Blip.fm so hopefully I’ll get time to chat with both Tom and Jeff.  We can see that the music business is greatly evolving.  With the evolution of sites such as Youtube, Blip.fm, Pandora, and Imeem; the indy artists now have a chance at stardom.  We are also seeing a huge difference in how musicians are interacting with their fans, many of them are actively engaging on sites such as twitter interacting and building relationships with people that love their music.  None of these things were possible even a few years ago.  Legal is also a hot topic in the music business as more and more people are starting to download their music for free on the web.  These are just a few of the interesting topics that are sure to be covered.

Here is a full schedule of the event and here is a full speaker lineup.

These are the details on the time and location of the event:

Hotel Kabuki
1625 Post Street
San Francisco, CA
Monday, December, 7 2009
9am – 6pm + cocktail party

Brian has graciously offered a discount of 15% for all the readers of BUB, thanks Brian!

If you want to register for the event visit the registration page and enter in the code “bub” to receive the discount.

Hope to see all of you there!

connect with me on twitter @JacobM

January 2010 brings an exciting event to San Francisco’s Girls in Tech event roster – The Catalyst Conference held at the Commonweath Club in downtown San Francisco.

Aimed to catalyze the career development of women working in high-tech, The Catalyst Conference offers high-level keynotes and discussions from successful women at the top of their game alongside workshops led by experts in innovation and collaboration. The event, which Bub.blicio.us is a main media sponsor of,  enables & propels women to take the next step, whether they’re launching a new venture, making waves in the corporate world, looking to join an innovative startup, or building their online and digital-media media brand.

Catalyst Conference will bring over 250 passionate, creative women together to fuel new relationships and ideas. Come prepared to share concrete technology and business tools and tactics, meet energetic leaders and entrepreneurs, and develop your own business ventures. This conference is for women at the top of their industries as well as those leading their first ventures, and will guide them all in discussions of strategy and success.

Attendees of the Catalyst Conference will also be able to:

• Understand industry trends, what models are working and what models aren’t working
• Promote your ideas and your company to a group of very targeted women in tech
• Learn how you can create change by using the web tools and platforms available for developing nations
• Participate in the Girls in Tech + Vator.tv pitch contest

This event is WOMEN ONLY for all attendees! Sorry boys! All interested women, please go here to register. Rates will go up closer to the event date, so purchase soon!

Event details:

9am – 6pm, January 26th, 2010
Commonwealth Club
595 Market Street, 2nd Floor