Socially Speaking

Our next Waxxi interactive podcast will feature two world-renowned figures in technology and business: Michael Parekh and Michael Arrington.

A founder of Goldman Sachs’ Internet Research group, Michael Parekh was one the early pioneers who helped discover, nurture, and fund the foundations of the web as a lead analyst for the IPOs of such organizations as UUNET, Yahoo!, and eBay. Michael (Mukesh) is a native of India and came to the US in 1977. He is passionate about all things Internet and technology, as well as interesting trends he observes, globally.

In building TechCrunch over the last year, Michael (Mike) Arrington helped lay the foundation for the Web 2.0 world we’re living in today, becoming one of its most highly respected pundits, educators, and analysts. Mike is a former corporate attorney (of Wilson Sonsini fame) who has also helped bring public several companies, and is co-founder of edgeio. He grew up in California and Surrey, England, and lives and works in Atherton.

Together, Michaels Parekh and Arrington represent the core of the Internet, and technology: where it’s been, how it’s evolving, and where it’s going.

The date to join in on this global conversation is Thursday, June 29, 2006 and time is 10:30AM PDT. As always, all you need is a phone and/or Internet connectivity.

By dialing in, you’ll not only hear the entire conversation, but have the chance to be a part of it. We’ll give you instructions when you register, but the process is rather simple: hit two buttons on your phone in order to ‘raise your hand’ to ask a question or make a comment.

Many of our members and participants outside the US will choose to use this feature only. This was tremendously effective and important for our first interactive podcast.

We’ll have more details posted shortly. Stay tuned.

Last week, at a gathering at San Francisco’s Hotel Utah, a powerful group of social media types, podcasters and bloggers corralled. Shel Israel hosted the event in honor of Jackie Danicki and Adriana Cronin-Lukas.

Jeremiah Owyang helped spread the word, as he does so masterfully, as well as putting people who should be talking together, together. One of them being, on my behalf, Mario Sundar. Mario is a passionate, inquisitive, and incredibly knowledgeable person with whom I’m interested in becoming more acquainted. Thanks for sharing some time to speak (and for the very kind words), Mario. We must continue the conversation.

Gratefully, Adriana was quick to introduce me to Mike Hudack of Blip.tv. And Jeremy Pepper was quick to point out how much he sounded like Vince Vaughn (it’s true. Jeremy was spot on). If you haven’t seen what they’re doing, take a look at Blip. We are.

It was great shaking hands and chatting with BrainJams‘ Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells. [mental note: keep in touch with them. we like what they're doing.] And just down the bar, not there for the event, was Buzz Andersen who does some interesting work with Apple’s Soundtrack Pro.

A nice surprise was seeing Mike Arrington again (the last time was at a much larger party at the TechCrunch House) who agreed on the spot to join our next interactive podcast with guest Michael Parekh. More to come on that…which will prove to be one heckuva global conversation.

What I’m finding so interesting is the concentration of immensely driven, passionate innovators, thinkers, creators and knowledge workers here in the Bay area. We’re thrilled to be a part of it all.

(closing tip: if you’re in London on June 21, be sure not to miss What My Space Means, held by the Engagement Alliance).

On Saturday I attended Techdirt Greenhouse for the second time. It was, again, a great gathering of intellect, talent, opinion and creativity. The format and methodology is what attracted me in the first place: brain jamming, if you will. Interesting companies were pre-selected and given the opportunity to present to us, the participants. We then, armed with our color coded shapes (which defined our discussion leader/rooms), were off to separate breakout groups to ponder, debate, challenge and summize the questions asked of us by each of the presenting companies.

Two that stood out to me in making an impact, socially speaking, were Jumpcut and SalesBuilder. Jumpcut is making some waves by bringing way-cool movie making capabilities – a la iMovie SANS the Mac – alas, even to the novice. CEO Byron Dumbrill was impressive, and has already caught the attention of Warner Independent Films. Even better, he’s combined social networking (community) with digital media. We likee.

SalesBuilder is doing something really different, and close to our hearts: telling companies to stop focusing on themselves in their online presence, and really focus on their customers. If I might steal from Techdirt’s blog post subtitle theme, this stems from the It’s-not-about-you department. Really.

This is one of the reasons I take a back seat role as the host of Waxxi’s podcasts. If I didn’t, we wouldn’t be interactive, or nearly as interactive. Nor would we be any different from any other podcast (one-on-one, or one-on-few, interviews). “The floor is yours” is one of our mottos, and seemingly SalesBuilder CEO’s Olivier Chase’s mentality. Good stuff, and a powerful tool to any organization that wants to be truly closer to their customers, and outstep their competition by doing so.

It was nice to see some familiar faces, like Jackie Danicki, Hillary Johnson, Chris Sims, Anne Donker and more. It was equally nice to see new faces, one of them being my lunch mate Mike Sigal of Guidewire Group. And Sprint’s Russ McGuire, who gave a speech centralized around the theme of his excellent blog, the Law of Mobility.

Someone who left a very strong impression upon me, even before we got to know one another more, was Adriana Cronin-Lukas. There are few people in life with whom you connect on very intense levels, and know that your meeting was not a coincidence. Adriana is one of those people, to me (and others, of that I am sure). In addition to speaking at industry events – as she did the next day at Vloggercon on Net Neutrality – Adriana is making marks in the world as a Sherpa of social media, and then some.

Thanks to the Techdirt Mikes and the entire team for another great idea workshop. Keep ‘em coming.