Meetup

This evening I attended the monthly Santa Cruz New Technology Meetup which was once again held at the Santa Cruz Police Department’s Community room. The event was sponsored by Soquel Group.

I encourage all of my local friends to join the Santa Cruz New Tech Alliance Meet-up Group. The event is free, you get a face-feed and you learn about local tech happenings. True geek happiness! (And you might get a REAL job - That is my better half’s comment)

Here are my notes from the meetup - Disclaimer – these are my notes, so please do not think the speakers actually said anything I wrote down.

Santa Cruz New Technology Meet Up

August 6, 2008

Message from Doug Erickson – “Remember that 24 year olds have lived on the internet their entire life.”

Sponsor – Soquel Group

• Local patent agency

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New Technology Presentation

4Grabs – Steve Russ

Xeequa – Axel Schultz (Patron of Social Networking)

Ecrio – David Beene

Presentation 1 - 4Grabs – Steve Russ – www.4grabs.org

4Grabs – the internet has changed the way we see the world. You can find anything, anywhere on earth, but it’s still difficult to find what’s happening in your own neighborhood. 4grabs is an attempt to re-focus how information is indexed through geo-tagged postings [latitude/longitude] and making them searchable by location. 4grabs … Your Neighborhood Exchange: Post - Link – Search. (Steve Russ)

• Steve is a sailor – over 50,000 miles
• Favorite subject is the internet – favorite site is Craig’s List
• Concept of community – “The world has gone from being local to being global, but it is still impossible to find out what is going on in your neighborhood.”
• Just started working on project in February
• LaAtitude and Longitude – Global Position
• The ability to do searches by distance from once house / locations
• Using Google Mapping interface
• Concept is the ability to post ads – “Your Neighborhood Exchange” Post –searchable database
• Classifieds / News / Jobs

IMHO – if they follow the Craig’s list business model in identifying cities to concentrate on, their growth will be outstanding – lots of revenue potential via ads

Presentation 2 – Xeequa – Axel Schultz

Xeequa – Xeequa is a Social Software company, helping people to midgrade from “social networks” to “social communities”. The company’s social media suite, includes a fully customizable and custom branded community system, social network, alliance network, blogs, forums, events and collaboration tools. Xeequa’s signature feature is it’s unique “Over Network Collaboration” technology, allowing network, alliance or community members to collaborate over the networks they built. (Axel Schultz)

• Social Business Suite – Enterprise product - $35 per month per company – there is a basic model for free
• The transition of from the local business to find information to information from the internet
• Sales force transitions – from the cold call to …..
• The way we do sales is diagonal to how we buy
• Word of Mouth - today is coming from the internet – the speed has increased
• Today’s demographics – the speed of “word of mouth” has increased to “today”
• Xeequa tries to leverage social networking, communities, forums and blogs to leverage word of mouth
• Software builds communities for companies
• Allows for community development and sales references for potential clients

IMHO – the hardest thing to leverage social networking, communities, forums and blogs is to manage the information and to keep it current. So many companies get hung up on “managing” the community when in reality if they allow for controlled chaos, the community will grow stronger. This software allows for everything to be under “one roof”. I think this will be great for medium and small size business.

I will be looking more into it as part of my “consulting” grab bag recommendation.

Presentation 3 - Ecrio – David Beene

Ecrio - Ecrio’s MoBeam® technology uses a light source on a small keychain-based device called the ClipPod™ to originate the “black and white” sequencing of a standard barcode. A standard laser scanner — like those in use in over 35 million brick-and-mortar retail locations in the US — interprets those light beams exactly as it would the reflection of a printed barcode. ClipPod users download offers from a manufacturer’s or retailer’s website (or receive them via email), transfer them to the ClipPod via USB, and then redeem the coupons at a “brick-and-mortar” retail location with the push of a button. Ecrio is working with retailers, consumer packaged goods providers, media companies, and traditional coupon ecosystem partners to bring the MoBeam technology and ClipPod device to market. (David Beebe)

• Around since 1988
• Based in Cupertino, CA
• Staff – 130 employees
• Venture back – profitable
• Mobile phone geeks – provider of advanced communications applications for 3G-enabled mobile phones
• Developer of VISA’s mobile payments platform (NFC) – near field communications – visa swipe cards
  • Inventor of MoBeam digital barcode technolog
    
    • The Market Opportunity
      • Coupons
      • • 76% of US population use them
      • Gift Cards
      • Loyalty Cards
      • • 75% of US households have them
      • • The average number per household is 12 cards -
          • I have five in my wallet - note to get more
      • POS Systems
    • Solution
      • Scanners bounce a laser light off the black and white pattern of a printed barcode and read the reflection
      • MoBeam is a key-chain based device with intuitive interface makes it simple to organize, store and redeem
      • Mini-USB connection to PC
      • Gets rid of paper coupons
      • There are security protocols to prevent barcode spoofing
    • Progress to Date
      • Met with 7 of top 10 retailers
      • Has been successfully demonstrated
      • 5 patents issued – 7 more in the works
      • Problem with adding it to the cell phone is lack of need from the manufactures – need for demand from the service providers

The device on your key chain can be branded. The key is to get the stores to adopt. Cool concept. IMHO it would be great if the software ran on my phone screen. They realize that need but need demand for feature.

Right at the end they spoke about licensing the technology.

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Announcements

• City Council member Tony Madrigal – asked us to vote for measure T (city 911) - already did!
• I missed the second announcement
• and the third one (sorry)
• Axl is looking for a guest slip at the harbor.
• Next Meetup is Sept 3