lalawag » Laurie Percival

SXSWi 2009: Oh The Memories

Laurie Percival — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:00:52 +0000

Most of Los Angeles is gearing up for this years SXSW Interactive and will be hitting the streets of Austin, Texas over the course of the next few days. I thought we should take a moment to reflect on some of the awesomeness that came out of SXSWi 2009.

Here’s a roundup of some of our most popular and outrageous posts from last year. Just click on the pictures to view the articles in all their glory.

(Photo (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com)

Jason Nazar Wants To Challenge You

Laurie Percival — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:00:02 +0000

Jason Nazar recently announced on his personal blog that he would be spending the next 30 days giving back to those in need. He explains in his post that he was inspired by a friend, Matt Cutts, at Google who kicked started his own set of 30 day challenges last year.

“for the next 30 days I’m going to do something each day to give to others. Its not always going to be a large amount of money and some days it won’t be money I’m giving away; I may make a donation online to various charities, give clothes to goodwill, buy a homeless person by my office a meal – I think what’s important is that I make myself think about the struggles other people are going through everyday.”

He makes a very good point. It seems more and more people are consumed by the things that are affecting them, and when they do think about doing something for others, they often use the excuse of later. It doesn’t take much to make an impact in someone else’s life and it definitely doesn’t take a lot of money.

Jason is asking for others to join his challenge and to help him find organizations and charities that you feel he should help out over the course of March. If you have one in mind he encourages you to leave it in the comments of his post. So far a few people have commeted and said they would join in the challenge including media empress Shira Lazar and David Travers from Rustic Canyon Partners.

Jason will be updating his blog regularly with his daily donation so you can follow along with his progress and hopefully get inspired to start your own.

(Photo (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com)

MediaLeaders SXSWi Kickoff Event

Laurie Percival — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:00:43 +0000

MediaLeaders is hosting another set of events that are all happening on the same night. As a pre-kick off event to get you ready for SXSWi they are having networking events in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City and Austin. Each event takes place Tuesday, March 9th, 2010.

In addition to a fun night of mingling, they are having a tweet contest to see who the “Best Social Media City” is. This is based off of tweets that contain the hashtags #medialeaders and #LA. Currently out of the eight cities in the running, Raleigh is winning by a landslide. Now, I’m not encouraging you to spam your readers but, do you really want North Carolina to beat us at this?

To participate in the tweet contest and let other LA residents know that you will be attending the event, visit MediaLeaders.tv and click the tweet “this button”. Or just tweet out:

I am attending #MediaLeaders #LA on March 9th (and I want LA to win the tweet contest). Join me: http://bit.ly/ab8CI8.

To check out who has already tweeted that they are attending and to quickly search what’s going on live at the event in your city, check out their Twitter Tracker.

Details

Date: Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Rush Street
9546 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, Ca 90232

Tickets: $12

(Photo from rushstreetculvercity.com)

This Week In Events: March 8 – 12

Laurie Percival — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:00:19 +0000

Most of Los Angeles tech is completly focused on the ultimate event that starts this Thursday, South by Southwest Interactive. But before you get completly in the Austin mindset you might want to spare a second to check out the events this week leading up to it.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Digiday: Mobile – Is Mobile The Next Critical Mass Medium? – Discover the what the future holds for you and this game changing media platform at digiday:MOBILE in Los Angeles. During this high-level full day event – top Publishers, Agency Executives and Brand Marketers will come together to discuss and debate how to fully utilize the next critical mass medium: MOBILE.

Full day of sessions and networking. Agenda here.

Time:
Starts at 8:00am, last session at 5:00pm
Cocktail party 5:30pm

Location:
Hilton Los Angeles (Universal City)
555 Universal Hollywood Drive
Universal City, Ca 91608

Tickets: $595.00
*The ticket includes all sessions, keynotes, meal functions, and a networking cocktail party.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Digiday: Social – The New Media Reality: Everything is Social. Are You? – During this high-level event, top Publishers, Agency Executives and Brand Marketers will come together to discuss how Social Media is everywhere and is changing everything.

Full day of sessions and networking. Agenda here.

Time:
Keynote starts 9:00am, last session starts at 4:45
Cocktail party at 5:30pm

Location:
Hilton Los Angeles (Universal City)
555 Universal Hollywood Drive
Universal City, Ca 91608

Tickets: $595.00
*The ticket includes all sessions, keynotes, meal functions, and a networking cocktail party.

Media Leaders Networking Event – Join fellow Media Leaders to share ideas and enjoy meeting new friends a week before SXSW. There’s no keynote speaker or panel of experts, just socializing and mixing with key influencers that are changing the way the industry operates.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Rush Street
9546 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, Ca 90232

Tickets: $12

Crash Space LA – BristleBots and LED throwie art – Tuesday night Crashpace LA is open to the public. They’ll be having some fun quick DIY projects for you to build. Come on over and have fun. The project kits are $5 for CrashSpace members or $10 for non-members and you can take them home after you build them. In the kit you get the parts to build your own Bristlebot, a tiny robot made from a toothbrush and LED throwie art. They’ll have a Bristlebot race track you can do time trials on.

Time: 8:00pm

Location:
Crash Space
10526 Venice Blvd
Culver City, Ca 90232

Tickets: None needed, more information on Crash Space here.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

ThinkLA’s February Interactive Mixer – Mingle at this mixer geared towards the interactive community. Appetizers served, no host bar.

Time: 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Location:
Rush Street
9546 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, Ca 90232

Tickets: Registration for this event is now closed. Walk-ins will be available at the door at $40 an individual.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Los Angeles VC and Angel Event – How to meet investors, pitch them, and what it really takes to get them to write you a check! We will be discussing trends in Early-Stage Investing, hot sectors, sectors that these Angels and VCs look at, things that are most important to them when they are considering an Investment, the best and worst things an entrepreneur can do to get their attention, additional advice for entrepreneurs, and, of course, the best ways to reach these and other Investors.

Time: 2:00pm – 6:15pm (workshop is 11am-1pm)

Location:
Bingham McCutchen LLP
355 South Grand Avenue Suite 4400
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets:
Entrepreneur Raising Capital – Event: $75
Entrepreneur Event + Pitching Workshop: $350
Investor / Service provider: $85

Friday, March 12, 2010

By now most of LA has arrived in Austin, Texas for the first day of SXSW Interactive, excluding me of course. For those of you not going and wanting to drive everyone crazy with non SXSW tweets, check out @notsxsw.

Thanks to Nicole Jordan for information taken from her LA Tech Calendar on KickingSand.com

Ignite LA Fizzled, I Expected A Spark

Laurie Percival — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:00:14 +0000

Ignite LA took place on Monday, March 1st at Cinespace in Hollywood. The place was so packed they had to put chairs in the walkways for us to sit on. So what was everyone there for?

To be inspired of course. All week long Ignite events are taking place across the planet in different cities. Known as Global Ignite Week, participants get five minutes to present on stage with their 20 slides and try to enlighten and inspire the crowd.

The tag line for all of the events is “Enlighten us, but make it quick”, with topics ranging from social good, to robots, to remote viewing?? This was my first Ignite and I am sad to say I had to ask my friends that had been to past events what the point was. Thankfully there were a few presenters that stood out and actually made me think “Wow, that’s really cool, I want to know more.”

Kurt Daradics bravely took the stage and gave a very touching and funny speech about being a cyborg. He shared with the room a personal story that many have never heard, how he was born with a condition that left him deaf until they were able to implant a piece of metal in his ear that conducts sound through the bone. I even had people coming up to me at other events this week to talk about how great they thought it was.

Photo by Laurie Percival

Eric Gradman shared a range of projects he has worked on including one called the Narcisystem, a wearable suit of biometric sensors which allows different parts of his body to control the elements in the room around him like the lighting and sound. How you can use RFID tags to turn any space into an interactive one and he talked about Sockieokie, a project that will be unveiled at a Syyn Labs, formerly Mindshare Labs, event this Saturday. He definitely inspired me to get out to the next Mindshare event.

The last presenter, Adam Sadowsky, treated us to some of the specifics behind the recently debuted video for OKGO’s new song “This Too Shall Pass”. It was released at 4pm on Monday and encompasses a Rube Goldberg machine. The band was really specific on their requirements and it was quite impressive that Syyn Labs was able to meet them all and pull off such a cool video in one shot.

The presenters that I liked, I really liked but they were few and far between. Overall I found the evening interesting but not necessarily enlightening. I didn’t seem like I had experienced what I had heard a typical Ignite event was like. That being said I am still willing to attend another one as long as they make some changes.

To the organizers I would have to recommend next time get a bigger venue, have the community vote ahead of time on who they want to see present, and for the love of god, have food available.

(Photos by Jim Alden @TechFrog)

Free Drinks Courtesy of Village Voice

Laurie Percival — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:00:03 +0000

We like to keep tabs on people that San Fransisco has stolen from us from time to time and make sure they’re being treated properly. I had “heard” on Twitter that the Village Voice had launched an app yesterday called ”Happy Hours” that geo-locates the nearest booze discounts. Ok pretty cool, but what really caught my eye was Alexia Tsotsis post in the SF Weekly about the app.

It seems Village Voice, which the SF Weekly and LA Weekly fall under, left some interesting comments on the TechCrunch article announcing the app which Alexia included in her post:

That’s right, they are offering to buy the first round of drinks for anyone that can show either Alexia or Bill that they have the app on their phone. Great news for you freaks that don’t have an iPhone yet, the app is available on the Android and on the mobile web.

Here’s a handy picture of Bill Jensen and Alexia Tsotsis to help you get acquainted with who they are. Take a good look so you’ll be sure to spot them at SXSWi and get your free drink on.

Alexia Tsotsis
(Photo from LAWeekly.com)

Bill Jensen

You can check out all of the features of the “Happy Hours” app here.

Now if you excuse me I have some downloading to do. I may not be able to drink right now, but eventually that day will return and I want to be ready.

(Photo by Jim Alden @TechFrog)

This Week In Events: March 1 -5

Laurie Percival — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:00:04 +0000

Why does everything in LA Tech have to happen on the same day? Lots to check out this week, especially on Wednesday. We will be at the Mahalo offices then for Scripped.com’s Hollywood 2.0 panel. Hope to see you there!

Monday, March 1, 2010

Ignite LA – Speakers get only 5 minutes to give an amazing, inspiring talk. In LA, there are tons of different communities at the intersection of tech, art, green/sustainability, unique lifestyle design, digital/collaborative media, and social action that don’t know each other but should. Think of Ignite as a set of trailers for exciting projects people are doing that you should know about.

Time: 7:00pm to 9:30pm

Location:
Cinespace
6356 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Tickets: Free, RSVP

A Good Knight’s Party — Premiere Party for ‘A Good Knight’s Quest’ – official premiere party for A Good Knight’s Quest, a new web comedy series by The Escapist and writer/director Brett Register. Evening includes: special guest DJ Michael Woodward of Your Only Friends, signature “Quest” drink specials by a Capitol City mixologist, win an evening with a cast member, red carpet interviews w/Kristyn Burtt of The Web Files, high-definition screening of our extended trailer and cast and crew Q&A.

Time: 8:00pm to 11:00pm

Location:
Capitol City Hollywood
1615 N. Cahuenga Blvd
Los Angeles, Ca 90028

Tickets: Free, RSVP required

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Scripped – Hollywood 2.0 – The topic of the discussion will be *”Film Production and Online Distribution – Strategies for Success.”* This will be an especially useful chat for those of you interested in hearing how quality content is put together, and how to go about distributing content on the web.

Panelists:

Tyler Crowley – Director of Strategy, Mahalo ; producer of several web series
Sean Percival – Director of Content Socialization, Myspace; founder lalawag.com
Mali Elfman – Editor-in-Chief, Screencrave ; Producer
Aaron Lubin – Producer

Time: 7:00pm

Location:
Mahalo
902 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, Ca 90401

Tickets: Free, RSVP required (email Sunil at Sunil@scripped.com)
* We can only accept 100 people into this event due to the limited space.

Dealmaker Media – How To Build A Remarkable Company (aka: How Not to Be Boring) - At this special event, we’re thinking out of the box, so you can too. We’ll be discussing:

Startup DNA: How do you build a truly remarkable company?
Where does inspiration for “new” ideas come from?
How do you promote a new idea to a market that might not yet be defined?
Spreading the gospel: turning doubters into believers.
How to surround yourself with a winning team

Time: 6:00pm to 9:0pm

Location:
Clearstone Venture Partners
1351 4th Street (4th floor)
Santa Monica, Ca

Tickets: Strategy Series & Mixer: $60 Member Price: $40 / Mixer Only: $35 Member Price: $25

Digital LA – Celebrity Websites Panel – The Oscars are coming up, perfect time for our panel on celebrity websites! At the perfect venue to talk celebs: Madame Tussauds in Hollywood, right on the Walk of Fame, on the same block where the Kodak Theatre will be hosting the Oscars a few days later! So after our panel in a section of the exhibit reserved just for us to talk about celebs, u can take pics with ‘em too!

Panelists:

Jeff Pierce, 65 Media, concepted JimCarrey.com website, currently a finalist for this year’s SXSWi Film/Web award http://jimcarrey.com
Anthony Malzone, Art Director for Prince, manager of Prince’s online presence, including his official website LotusFlow3r http://www.lotusflow3r.com
Karen Woodward, content manager, writer, Booeep.com, works with Greg Grunberg, Sophia Bush, Lauren Holly, Disney kids, etc. on their official websites

Time: 5:00pm to 8:00pm

Location:
Madame Tussauds Hollywood
6933 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: $60 thru Mar 1, Increases to $75 on March 2-3
* Includes admission to our panel, and a self-guided tour of the museum immediately afterward.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Digital LA – Alice In Wonderland – We just reserved a block of 10 VIP tickets to see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in 3D at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood! Our VIP tickets include no waiting, reserved seating, popcorn, a drink and 3D glasses.

Time: 9:00pm to 11:30pm

Location:
El Capitain Theatre
6838 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: RSVP here, and they will let you know when registration is available

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Art Directors Guild Panel Discussion – An open invitation to attend a panel discussion of Production Designers and Set Decorators nominated for the 2009 Acadamy Award for achievement in Art Direction. Footage from the nominated films will be shown. Following films will be discussed: Avatar, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Nine, Sherlock Holmes and The Young Victoria.

Time: 2:00pm doors open 2:30 event starts

Location:
Egyptian Theatre Hollywood
6712 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Tickets: Free, seating is first come first served

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Digital LA – Oscars Viewing Party – Get ready for the big awards show of the year: it’s our second annual Oscars Viewing Party! We had so much fun dressing up and watching the show together last year, we’re looking forward to more of the fun this year. Especially cuz a third of the Best Picture noms are digital: Avatar, Up, and District 9! This is a dress up event, blazers for guys and cocktail dresses for the ladies.

Time: 4:30pm to 8:00pm

Location:
The Parlor
1519 Wilshire Boulevard
Santa Monica, Ca 90403

Tickets: $35 thru Fri Mar 5, Increases to $40 Mar 6-7
*Your ticket includes light appetizers (shrimp cocktail, chicken satay skewers, sliders, veggie platter, and unlimited soda, juice, water).

Streamy Awards Nominees Announcement – Watch It Live Today

Laurie Percival — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:00:00 +0000

The second annual Streamy Awards are quickly approaching but before you get too excited about what you’re going to wear you might want to know who you will be cheering for. After weeks of serious deliberation by the academy on who to vote for, the final nominees for top web series of 2009 have been picked. They will be announced today, at 9:30am (PT) live on Streamys.org.

Photo by Wm. Marc Salsberry

Join media empress Shira Lazar and theStream.tv’s Jim Festante as they a Read off the nominees for ten of the main categories. The full list of nominees in all 35 categories are set to be announced in a press release immediately following. Check back with us for a complete list once we have it.

The official Twitter account for The Streamys will be live tweeting the event and are planning on giving one special fan a ticket to the Streamy Awards sometime during the announcement. Be sure to follow them at @streamyawards for a chance to win.

The second annual Streamy Awards ceremony is scheduled for April 11, 2010 at The Music Box at Fonda Theater in Hollywood. See photos of last years event by Wm. Marc Salsberry here and by Lan Bui here .

UPDATE: Info from NewTeeVee.com

And the nominees are:

OVERALL SERIES

Best Comedy Web Series
Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis
Easy to Assemble
The Guild
The Legend of Neil
Wainy Days

Best Drama Web Series
Angel of Death
Compulsions
OzGirl
The Bannen Way
Valemont

Best Hosted Web Series
A Comicbook Orange
Diggnation
Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show
Know Your Meme
The Totally Rad Show

Best Reality or Documentary Web Series
Interview Project
Mommy XXX
RADAR
Streak to Win
The Secret Life of Scientists

Best News or Politics Web Series
Auto-Tune the News
Rocketboom
The Tommorow Show with Mo Rocca
The Young Turks
VBS News

Best Foreign Web Series
Flying Kebab
Girl Number 9
Noob
OzGirl
Riese

Best New Web Series
$5 Cover: Memphis
Girl Number 9
Odd Jobs
Old Friends
The Bannen Way

Best Companion Web Series
Assassin’s Creed: Lineage
Dexter: Early Cuts
Harper’s Globe
The Office: Subtle Sexuality
Weeds: University of Andy

Best Animated Web Series
Eli’s Dirty Jokes
Happy Tree Friends
Homestar Runner
How It Should Have Ended
Zero Punctuation

Best Branded Entertainment Web Series
Back on Topps (Dick’s Sporting Goods)
Brainstorm (Altoids)
Easy to Assemble (IKEA)
Parts Art (Lexus)
The Temp Life (Spherion)

Best Experimental Web Series
Auto-Tune the News
Green Porno
HBO Cube
INST MSGS
Level 26

DIRECTING

Best Directing for a Comedy Web Series
Blue Movies (Scott Brown)
Dorm Life: Semester 2 (Chris Smith, Mark Stewart Iverson)
James Gunn’s PG Porn (James Gunn)
The Guild (Sean Becker)
The Legend of Neil (Sandeep Parikh)

Best Directing for a Drama Web Series
Anyone But Me (Tina Cesa Ward)
Compulsions (Nathan Atkinson)
Girl Number 9 (James Moran)
The Bannen Way (Jesse Warren, Mark Gantt)
Young American Bodies (Joe Swanberg)

WRITING

Best Writing for a Comedy Web Series
Back on Topps (Jason Sklar, Randy Sklar, Eric Friedman, Matt Price)
Dorm Life (Chris Smith, Jordan Riggs, Jessie Gaskell, Jack De Sena, Jim Brandon, Brian Singleton, Mark Stewart Iverson)
The Legend of Neil (Tony Janning, Sandeep Parikh)
The Guild (Felicia Day)
Wainy Days (David Wain)

Best Writing for a Drama Web Series
Anyone But Me (Susan Miller, Tina Cesa Ward)
Compulsions (Bernie Su)
Girl Number 9 (James Moran, Dan Turner)
The Bannen Way (Jesse Warren, Mark Gantt)
Valemont (Christian Taylor)

ACTING

Best Male Actor in a Comedy Web Series
Zach Galifianakis (Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis)
Tony Hale (CTRL)
Amir Blumenfeld (Jake and Amir)
Sandeep Parikh (The Guild)
David Wain (Wainy Days)

Best Female Actor in a Comedy Web Series
Illeana Douglas (Easy to Assemble)
Justine Bateman (Easy to Assemble)
Joanna Cassidy (Sex Ed)
Felicia Day (The Guild)
Lisa Kudrow (Web Therapy)

Best Male Actor in a Drama Web Series
Craig Frank (Compulsions)
Robert Englund (Fear Clinic)
Joe Absolom (Girl Number 9)
Mark Gantt (The Bannen Way)
Eric Balfour (Valemont)

Best Female Actor in a Drama Web Series
Zoe Bell (Angel of Death)
Rachael Hip-Flores (Anyone But Me)
Tatyani Ali (Buppies)
Sophie Tilson (OzGirl)
Crystal Chappell (Venice)

Best Ensemble Cast in a Web Series
Back on Topps (Randy Sklar, Jason Sklar, Jason Nash, Janet Varney, Stephanie Courtney, Brian Huskey, Phil LaMarr)
Dorm Life (Nora Kirkpatrick, Hannah Pearl Utt, Anne Lane, Jessie Gaskell, Brian Singleton, Jack De Sena, Jim Brandon, Jordan Riggs, Pancho Morris)
Easy to Assemble (Illeana Douglas, Justine Bateman, Eric Lange, Michael Irpino, Cheri Oteri, Daryl Sabara, Michael Panes, Rob Mailhouse, Sean Durrie, Tom Arnold, Ed Begley Jr., Tim Meadows, Ricki Lake, Greg Proops, Kevin Pollak)
GOLD (Robert J. Brewer, James Paul Xavier, Nathan Mobley, Rick Robinson, David Nett, Gary Karp, Shannon Ivey, Alan Loayza, Shannon Nelson, Jeremy Guskin, Angela Schnaible) The Guild (Vincent Caso, Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Amy Okuda, Sandeep Parikh, Robin Thorsen)

Best Guest Star in a Web Series
Chris Hardwick (Back on Topps)
Nathan Fillion (PG Porn)
“Weird Al” Yankovic (Know Your Meme)
Wil Wheaton (The Guild)
Courteney Cox (Web Therapy)

Best Web Series Host
Alex Albrecht (Diggnation)
Zadi Diaz (Epic Fu)
Kevin Pollak (Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show)
Kristyn Burtt (The Web.Files)
Michael Buckley (What The Buck?!)

Best Vlogger
Brigitte Dale (Brigitte Dale)
iJustine (iJustine)
Phillip DeFranco (sxePhil)
Shane Dawson (ShaneDawsonTV)
Shira Lazar (Shira Lazar)

CRAFT AWARDS

Best Editing in a Web Series
$5 Cover: Memphis (Nathan Black, Morgan Jon Fox, Josh Swain)
Brainstorm (Jochen Kunstler, Jacob Vaughan)
Auto-Tune the News (Evan Gregory, Andrew Gregory, Michael Gregory)
I Kissed a Vampire (David Bekoff)
The Bannen Way (Zack Arnold)

Best Cinematography in a Web Series
Angel of Death (Carl Herse)
Brainstorm (Michael Lohmann)
LUMINA (XiaoSu Han, Andreas Thalhammer)
I Kissed a Vampire (Robert Lam)
The Bannen Way (Christopher Charles Kempinski)

Best Art Direction in a Web Series
$99 Music Videos (Kit Pennebaker)
Green Porno (Rick Gilbert)
Mountain Man (Matt Enlow)
Riese (Chad Krowchuk)
Tiki Bar TV (Kim Bailey)

Best Sound Design in a Web Series
Fear Clinic (Kunal Rajan)
Mountain Man (Michael Miller)
Riese (Bill Mellow, Kevin Belen)
Rockville, CA (Seth Talley)
The Vetala (Randy Kiss)

Best Visual Effects in a Web Series
Backyard FX (Erik Beck)
Fear Clinic (Jason M Bergman, Nicholas Onstad, Bethany Pederson, David Dang)
Mordy Koots (Reece Sanders, Clayton Jacobson)
Safety Geeks: SVI (Thor Melsted, Mike Smith)
The Crew (Jeff Bell, Zack Finfrock, Brett Register)

Best Animation in a Web Series
College Humor: Hardly Working (Dan Meth)
Happy Tree Friends (David Winn, Alan Lau, Jason Sadler, Brad Rau, Roque Bollestros, Paul Allan, Nica Lorber, Michael Lipman)
How It Should Have Ended (Daniel Baxter, Tommy Watson, Tina Alexander)
Inventions (Chris Weller, David Lamps)
theGoob (Magnus Jansson)

Best Original Music in a Web Series
Auto-Tune the News (Evan Gregory, Andrew Gregory, Michael Gregory)
Horrible Turn (Chance McClain, Kevin Ryan, Frank Bullington, Jeremy Botter)
Key of Awesome (Mark Douglas)
Sparhusen (Rob Mailhouse, Todd Spahr, Illeana Douglas)
The Coat (Thierry Chaze)

Best Live Production in a Web Series
Coin-Op TV Live
Fantasy Football Live!
Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show
The RadNerd Show
TWiT.tv

Best Interactive Experience in a Web Series
Circle of Eight
I <3 Vampires
Married on MySpace
Valemont
Wreck and Salvage: Suppendapo

Best Product Integration in a Web Series
Circle of Eight (Mountain Dew)
Easy to Assemble (IKEA)
The Bannen Way (Jaguar)
Valemont (Verizon Wireless)
Woke Up Dead (Kodak)

Best Mobile Experience in a Web Series
AT&T Life Without Mobile
Mr. Wrong
Playboy: Interns
Seth on Survival
Valemont

(Photo by Wm. Marc Salsberry)

Barcamp Begs For Attention On Craigslist

Laurie Percival — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:00:35 +0000

Through our lovely tip line, we received the following Craigslist Ad. It seems Barcamp is pretty loney and wants someone, anyone, to make it happen again. Maybe Mike Prasad could pick up where it was left off and give the poor little guy some love.

4/20: Seemingly abandoned unconference ISO a good home

Hey Los Angeles. It’s BarcampLA. I know I haven’t been around for a while, but there’s a good explanation for that. I’ve been abandoned. At least I think that’s what has happened. Nobody has done anything with me for almost a year now. You used to like to hang out with me every six months.

If you don’t want to chill with your old friend that’s fine I guess. Could you let me know what happened though? Am I not cool anymore? Did I not talk about social media enough? Maybe I talked about it too much. Whatever I did, I can change.

There’s something I really want to know more than that though. Maybe it’s harder to answer. Maybe it isn’t. Doesn’t hurt to ask though. So here goes nothing.

Can someone please make me happen again? Like once every six months? It doesn’t matter who does it. I just want to see my friends again. Is that too much to ask?

(Photo by Wm. Marc Salsberry)

Create Your Own Videos With Flixtime

Laurie Percival — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:00:28 +0000

AudioMicro has partnered with Fotolia on a new Animoto like site called Flixtime. Users can create custom, production-quality videos for free using Flixtime’s software and AudioMicro provides the music and sound effects for the soundtrack.

Fotolia and Flixtime CEO Oleg Tscheltzoff had this to say about the site:

“We have been getting more and more demand from users who want a tool that easily creates stunning videos by using images and text. Companies from all over the world have video needs, whether for websites, projects, or presentations. Instead of investing tons of money in equipment, talent, and a location to produce videos, our users can simply use their content, or the images and music provided by Flixtime, to create the videos they envision.”

According to Ryan Born, CEO of AudioMicro:

“We are very pleased to partner with Flixtime to provide the music for such an amazing technology. With just one click, Flixtime users can bring energy and emotion to their videos by adding music. We’ve supplied a handpicked selection, spanning nearly every musical genre and style. With tracks for everyone, Flixtime users are sure to have the perfect soundtrack and take their videos to the next level.”

Users can pick from their own photos and videos or choose from a library of royalty-free stock images that are provided by Fotolia. You then add your choice of music and text and voilia you have an awesome 60 second video with sound effects and music for free.

I made my own video in about 20 minutes using the lalakitteh’s. You can make one much faster but it took me a while to find the song I wanted. Unfortunately I couldn’t embed it even though there was a button that should let you. Click on the link below the pic to see my masterpiece.

lalakitteh video

Flixtime launched worldwide on February 22, 2010. Follow them on Twitter at @flixtime and make your own video here.

Docstoc Opens Up Docstore to the Public

Laurie Percival — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:40:22 +0000

Docstoc announced today that the Docstore is opening up their platform to the public. Previously only partners were able to sell their professional content through the marketplace. The Docstore, as previously mentioned here, allows users to buy and sell professional high quality content.

According to the coverage on TechCrunch today, Jason Nazar, CEO of Docstoc, stated that:

“One of the platform’s fastest growing user base segments are small business owners looking for free and paid documents for entrepreneurs, startups and professionals. Documents range from legal documents to real estate contracts to analysis to forms for business models.”

What this means for users. They can sell their documents through the site and for the first 60 days they will keep 100% of the revenue. After that point the revenue is split 50/50 between the user and Docstoc. There are no other fees or charges and Docstoc provides the user with reporting and analytics to track purchases. You also get live customer support via phone and chat, the ability to sell content in bundles for a much higher average sell, and you can embed and sell documents on your own website or blog as well.

Check out the Docstoc Docstore here, and follow them on Twitter at @docstoc.

Get to know them

Docstoc is one of the fastest growing internet companies targeting Small Business, they currently reach over 20M uniques a month, and are aiming to be the largest trafficked site on the internet for small business. Created by CEO Jason Nazar, from Starups Uncensored, Docstoc gives you the ability to search over five million documents. You can find and share proffessional documents and store private ones as well.

This Week In Events: February 22 -26

Laurie Percival — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:59:40 +0000

This week is packed with events, and two celebrations happening on Thursday. Hope you have a case of red bull cause you’re gonna need it.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Gravity Summit – We have an amazing day planned for attendees – a virtual brain trust of the top brands and minds in the industry. In addition, the attendees are outstanding – decision makers from all types of businesses across Southern California – financial services, entertainment, healthcare, music, high-tech, non-profits, municipalities, and entrepreneurs.

Time: 9:00am to 4:30pm conference
Tweetup Cocktail Party at the Roxy at 6:30pm (free)

Location:
UCLA Covel Commons
200 De Neve Drive
Los Angeles, Ca 90077

Tickets: Register here

UCLA Anderson School Of Management – Entrepreneurship Week – Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, will be delivering the Keynote address on campus as part of UCLA Entrepreneurship Week. His speech will be followed by time for networking. UCLA Entrepreneurship Week encourages and celebrates entrepreneurship across all the graduate schools on campus.

Time: 7:30pm

Location:
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Gold Hall (Building B)
Executive Dining Room

Tickets: Free, RSVP

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Social Media Club – Going Goo Goo over Google Analytics - join Social Media Club as we discuss Google Analytics, with John Shiple, CTO, Ultralive; Alex Becker, Co-Founder and President, Highly Relevant; and Andrew Hahn, Luxury Link and Familygetaway.com. Erica Forrette, Online Marketing / E-commerce will be moderating this event.

Time: 7:00pm to 9:30pm

Location:
Mahalo
902 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, Ca 90401

Tickets: Advance Pre-Sale $10 Members Free Student Free

Thursday, February 25, 2010

New Media Vault 1 Year Anniversary Bash! – New Media Vault Celebrates its 1 Year Anniversary with a New Media Star Studed Bash at its new location The Standard Hotel in Downtown LA. With Live Jazz and Musical Performances! Get your photo taken at our free photo booth to comemorate this historic evening! Tech and Software door prize give aways all night! We will be raffling off tuition for 2 students for Hollywood’s Newest Web TV School! WEB TV WORKSHOP. Raffle tickets will be sold for $5

Time: 7:30pm

Location:
The Standard Hotel (Downtown)
550 South Flower St.
Los Angeles, Ca 90071

Tickets: Free, RSVP

TechZulu Turns 2 – Digital LA, Techzulu, and Citrusbyte invite you to celebrate at the new Geisha House – Santa Ana. Just walking distance from Efren’s home! TechZulu’s Efren says: “Come down and celebrate with us. There will be lots of new faces and contacts to be made so we are definitely looking forward to this years celebration!”

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Geisha House
2773 North Main Street
Santa Ana, CA

Tickets: $10 advance registration required

Friday, February 26, 2010

Digital LA – LA3D – VFX Animation Panel @ Cinespace – We’re teaming up again with the LA3D vfx/animation group, for our VFX panel and mixer at Cinespace. Our top-notch panelists specialize in movie animation (character design, title treatments, visual effects), and commercial effects. We’re super stoked that the lead designer on Avatar will be joining us to chat about animation, design, and FX on the highest grossing film of all time.

Time: 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Cinespace
6356 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: $15 Advance Registration Required

Sunday, February 28, 2010

UpTake’s Los Angeles Meet-up for Bloggers – Learn tips & secrets from UpTake’s search engine team to
increase visitors and awareness to your blog.

Time:
Increase Your Blog Traffic Seminar: 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Cocktail Reception & Networking: 4:00pm to 5:00pm

Location:
Huntley Hotel
Aqua Room
1111 2nd Street
Santa Monica, Ca 90403

Tickets: Free, RSVP

Freedom Speaks Takes The Latest Pepsi Challenge

Laurie Percival — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:00:27 +0000

Pepsi Refresh Project is giving away millions each month in an effort to find people, businesses, and non-profits with ideas that will have a positive impact. Yup that soda company is giving away boatloads of money in 2010 for “refreshing ideas that change the world” and Freedom Speaks, a LA based company, has made the finals. They have a chance to win a $250,000 grant! But they can’t do it alone, they need your votes to accomplish their goal.

Kurt Daradics is the co-founder and President of FreedomSpeaks and an all around stand up guy. He feels they have a pretty refreshing project. They want to build the worlds first complete database for elected officials (there are over 513,000 elected officials in the US alone!)

The database would be a one-stop web site for citizens to identify their elected officials at all levels of government. By identifying these officials, citizens will be more informed of who represents them down-ballot and thus be able to make a more informed decision about who should represent them on important local issues.

“We know this may not be as fun sounding as sending kids to camp, or art projects. However, we think that building this database and making it available over the internet can accomplish quite a bit of change. Local officials impact our daily lives more then any other politician but getting information on them is almost impossible. We make this info free to you at FreedomSpeaks.com so that you can outreach directly to your public officials and help make your government suck less.”

Currently they are ranked 34th and only the top 2 ideas will receive the 250k funding. You have until February 28th to get your vote in. My advice, don’t wait to the last minute. Procrastination never helped anyone. Plus I’m pretty sure you can vote more than once, sneaky! According to the site you can vote for 10 of your favorite ideas every day. You hear that, you can vote EVERY DAY! So get to it!

Get to know them

Freedom Speaks – FreedomSpeaks has built the largest database of elected officials to date. It is the only completely non-partisan political social network that allows its members to write letters to their publicly elected officials. With the click of a mouse, a single letter can be delivered via both email and fax to one or all of the public officials you select! We currently have data for Federal, State, County & City officials, including their addresses, telephones, faxes, emails and websites. It’s time for you to speak out and be heard America – with FREEDOMSPEAKS.COM, it’s easy!

Track Down Your Favorite Food Truck With Cluster Truck

Laurie Percival — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:00:25 +0000

There’s no doubt that food trucks are increasing in popularity and with the huge turnout at the recent LA Street Food Festival it seems it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. If you want a great way to keep track of all of the different trucks out there without having to follow dozens of Twitter accounts, check out Cluster Truck.

Started by Scott Rocher, a web developer (and food truck fanatic), Cluster Truck keeps tabs on 67 food trucks. There’s a live map that will show you at a glance where a truck is located in the city by address and the time period the truck is scheduled to be there.

Each truck also has their own page with menu information, their schedule and link to their Twitter account. Most of the accounts have a picture of their truck so you know what your looking for once you track it down.

Information is still being added to the site and some of the schedules and menus haven’t been filled in yet. Each truck has the abilty to edit and add to their own page so if you have a favorite truck on the list that is missing information you might try encouraging them to update their info.

Want to get your truck added? You can contact Scott via email at scott@clustertruck.org and he’ll get you setup in just a few minutes. Follow them on Twitter at @clustertruck. Happy eating!

(Photo from www.clustertruck.com)

This Week In Events: February 15 – 19

Laurie Percival — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:00:12 +0000

Have drinks with Kevin Winston on Monday, chat with Mark Horvath on Wednesday and end your week watching web shows with Brady Brim-DeForest. It’s all happening this week in LA Tech. Don’t forget to check out our plancast, and if you have an event to promote let us know at tips@lalawag.com.

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Digital LA – Digital Drinks at W Hollywood - Introducing… the new W Hollywood! After months of construction and anticipation, the brand new W Hollywood has *just* opened! We’re among the FIRST to schmooze in this new hot spot in Hollywood – check it out before your friends and give them the report! We’ll be in the ‘Station’ outdoor patio reserved just for us, for your digital networking, just off the Living Room lobby.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
W Hollywood
6250 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, Ca 90028

Tickets: $10 advance registration required

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Los Angeles Social Video Meetup – Join us for our first LA Meetup. Mark Horvath, a visionary producer, will join us. Mark is the founder of InvisiblePeople.tv has travelled across America to capture the stories of people without a home, raw and unedited. Mark will share his experiences and the effectiveness of using social broadcasting technology to rapidly share your story. We’ll also have a cool new start-up, Vpype presenting along with producers/media mavens and personalities to talk about how to use social video within Facebook to create your personal digital studio.

Time: 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Location:
Blankspaces
5405 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, Ca 90036

Tickets: RSVP

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Streamys – IAWTV Member Webseries Courtesy Screening – Join us for a special screening of web shows in a lovely environment where you can kick-back and just watch. With drinks. Each featured show will offer a sampling of episodes for your consideration for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards. This screening event is being held as a service to IAWTV Members, but is open to the everyone. Please, come, hang out, drink, laugh, and enjoy these shows of which we are so proud. Space is limited, RSVP soon!

Time: 7:00pm to 9:30pm

Location:
Cinespace Hollywood
6356 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca

Tickets: RSVP

Los Angeles Is The Top Twittering City

Laurie Percival — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:22:13 +0000

According to data pulled from Twitter Grader, HubSpot is reporting that Los Angeles is in fact the top twittering city, meaning we have the highest amount of users. Considering how many of you love to talk about and promote yourselves this shouldn’t be too surprising. It is however nice to know that we beat San Francisco in something, even it if it mindless chattering.

Check out the stats for all of the states in the infographic from HubSpot:

R3515T – A New T-shirt Line Launches

Laurie Percival — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:00:24 +0000

A new line of limited and unique t-shirts has just been announced. As far as we can tell the site was launched by Sean Bonner and aims to release a different print tee each week. Designs will be limited and available for one week only, so if you want to get your hands on one you have to pay close attention to the site, and or their Twitter account. Once a design has been taken down it is gone forever.

“If you want to look like everyone else you have no shortage of options. If you want to wear the same clothes everyone else is, there are hundreds upon thousands of companies who will happily sell you the same designs over and over again. At R3515T we have always been drawn to the limited and the unique and felt that our products should reflect that. With the exception of one or two standard logos, our products will always be limited and changing.”

So far the product assortment includes the weekly tees and they also have a track jacket available. We hope more products will be added as the site grows. In addition to the online product, they will be doing individual store exclusives with shops around the world. Each design will be exclusive to a single store and only available at the shop. Time to make some international friends or turn in your frequent flyer miles!

Follow them on Twitter at @R3515T and join their mailing list here.

Get to know them:

R3515T – The team behind R3515T has been designing tshirts for the better part of the last 20 years. We’ve created logos and merch for bands like Hot Water Music, Hatebreed, Less Than Jake, Strife, Bad Brains and countless others. We’ve exhibited and collaborated with artists such as Glen E Friedman, Shepard Fairey, Space Invader, Coop, Richard Coleman, Estevan Oriol and Tim Biedron to name a few.

Where Do You Draw The Line In Over Sharing? (NSFW)

Laurie Percival — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:29:55 +0000

This past Sunday night most people were celebrating the victory of New Orléans Saints over the Colts in this years super bowl. Well according to my Twitter feed and the noises coming from the apartments around me that’s what they were doing. I not being a sports fan was playing on the internet and occasionally checking out links on Twitter.

One particular link caught my eye so I clicked.

What I was rewarded with was a Twitpic of two completely naked girls, a full frontal shot you could say. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The tweet was normal sounding enough, I though maybe some drunken debauchery would be shown but there was no hint that there would be nudity in it. I immediately got Sean’s attention and showed it to him. We joked about it for a minute or two and then let it go.

*Black bar was added to the picture by us

A few minutes later more tweets from this user started flowing in, along with them came more naked pictures. This time they had a clear explanation:

*Black bars added to the picture by us

Again, I was surprized but didn’t think much of it. I am not the kind of girl who shy’s away from nudity. I have no problem with out of the ordinary things that may cross my path. However the next day this got me thinking. What about the people who are not so casual about these things? I wonder what their reaction to seeing these pictures would be? Better yet, what about the teens that are supposedly on Twitter, are they coming across this kind of material?

The first thing to consider would be the user that was putting this info out there. It was Olivia Munn, one of the hosts of “Attack of the Show” on the G4 network. I follow her because we watch the show and I am a fan, probably much like the other 114,647 people that follow her. (Which I would have to assume includes young men). I have seen her tweet about her Maxim pics and heard her talk about her Playboy spread but up until that moment I had never seen Twitpics of a totally naked girls coming from her links. I didn’t expect these kinds of pictures from her account.

I went back to the pictures a few days later and found that over $20,000 people had viewed the first full frontal nude one, and 53 accounts had re-tweeted the two pictures. I honesly thought they would have been taken down by now, considering the network she works for is fairly conservative.

With all the tools we currently have available that allow us to instantly share our experiences and feelings, when and where do we draw the line and decide, maybe I shouldn’t share that? Should Twitpic have some responsibility for hosting the nude pictures? Should Twitter be monitoring what’s out there? Or should we as adults monitor ourselves and know that some things just shouldn’t be shared. What about the women in the photos? Yes they are strippers but that doesn’t mean they want naked pictures of themselves floating around the internet.

Who decides when we have crossed the over sharing line and invaded other peoples privacy? Do we need someone to tell us or can we be responsible enough?

This Week In Events: Feb 8th -12th

Laurie Percival — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:36:32 +0000

Here’s what’s happening in Los Angles tech events this week. There’s also a networking event happening in Orange County on Wednesday if you dare leave the city.

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Startups Uncensored – Google Adsense for Websites - This month’s Startups Uncensored will be on the “Google AdSense Tips for Startups”. It will be an open and frank town-hall conversation talking about how to best optimize and monetize your website with Google Adsense.

Time: 6:30pm to 8:00pm (Reception to Follow)

Location:
Santa Monica Public Library (Auditorium)
601 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Tickets: Free, RSVP
*This event is capped at 140 attendees. Confirmation will be required or your spot will be given up for our waiting list

ThinkLA’s Interactive Mixer – Mingle at this mixer geared towards the interactive community.

Time: 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Location:
Rush Street
9546 Washington Blvd.
Culver City CA 90232

Tickets: Registration is closed, walk-ins welcome $40

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Digital LA -The Actor Producer Panel – We’re teaming up with SAG’s New Media group for our panel on how actors can use online tools to create, develop, distribute and market their web stories. We will be covering Creation, Development, Distribution and Marketing.

Panelists:

Brett Register – Actor/Creator, The Crew, @brettregister @theCrewtv
Jodi Binstock – Producer of Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow; (formerly at E!, Disney ABC TV)
Aaron Grasso, Producer of Closure, part of the 30 Day Film Challenge; appeared at Sundance Tweethouse panel @30dayfilm
Amber J. Lawson – Babelgum, Comedy Publisher
Brandon Martinez – Abrams Artists Agency, New Media Agent
Marc Hustvedt – Tubefilter, Editor-in-Chief; Ex.Pr. Streamy Awards, SAG @MarcHustvedt @Tubefilter
Mark Friedlander – SAG @SAGnewmedia

Moderator: Kevin Winston – Digital LA founder @kevinwinston @DigitalLA

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
SAG
5757 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Tickets: $20 advance registration required. Tickets increase to $30 on February 8th.
*Free for SAG members, email name and SAG number to specialevents@sag.org.

ProductCamp Preview – ProductCamp SoCal is just a few weeks away! If you’ve never been to a ProductCamp, you need to come to OC Product Managers’ ProductCamp Preview. Following an hour of networking, we will have a session that will follow the format that you’ll see at ProductCamp SoCal. Drinks and appetizers will be served.

Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Location:
JT Schmid’s @ The District
2415 Park Ave
Tustin, CA 92782

Tickets: $15 pre-register online and pay at the door, ($20 if not pre-registered)

Thursday, February 11th, 2009

Tech Happy Hour Mixer – Gravity Summit, Tech Supper Club and iHollywood have teamed up to host a happy hour mixer for you to meet executives with a passion for digital media, social media, sales and marketing. Come mix and mingle and learn more about the Gravity Summit taking place on February 22nd at UCLA. They will also raffle off the new Cisco HD Flip Camera at 7:00pm. (Must be present to win).

Time: 5:00pm to 7:30pm

Location:
Acapulco Restaurant
1109 Glendon Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90024

Tickets: $10 for one, $15 for two

*Special thanks to Nicole Jordan for some of the events included. Taken from her LA Tech calendar on Kickingsand.com.

Battledish: Adventure Game For Foodies

Laurie Percival — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:04:54 +0000

Battledish has announced their inaugural dishcrawl, taking place this weekend following the Gov2.o unconference. For those of you who are not a “foodie”, a dishcrawl is an experience that takes the participants through four dishes in four different restaurants all in one night. Dishcrawls give participants the opportunity to mix, mingle and connect offline while enjoying delicious food. The best part is, you set the evening at your own pace.

Merging social media and food together, the Battledish Dishcrawl will take you on a culinary mission around Los Angeles. The location based food adventure consists of five missions. Each mission is a dish in a restaurant. To play, simply pick an adventure, go on missions, and get foodie prizes.

Battledish is still in private alpha mode, but if you’re lucky, you’ll get a peek inside. Sign up here. You can follow them on Twitter at @battledish.

Details

Date: February 6th and 7th

Time: Happy hour kicks off at 7:30pm at Little Bar

Location:
Around Los Angeles, more information here

Tickets: Free, Register here

(Photo from steelheadstudio.com)

Stylit.TV Has Valentines Day Covered

Laurie Percival — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:00:56 +0000

Need a gift for your girl for Valentines Day? Don’t have a lot of money to spend? How about getting her a $1,100 diamond necklace for the low, low price of…free. That’s right, the good folks over at Stylit.TV have outdone themselves this time for their Valentines Day Giftbag Robin Hood Giveaway.

Just enter to win on the Stylit.TV site by Tuesday, February 9th, 2010. If you use the code “HeartsAndArrows” you will receive 20 extra credits that you can use to win. If you use our special code “LaLalove” you’ll get another extra 20 extra credits.

One person will take home the grand prize, The Essence I, a diamond pendant from Whiteflash.com.

Plus, the person that enters the most credits will win the Essence II diamond pendant worth $395.

I was lucky enough to win one of their gift bags at a tech event and I have to say the quality of the items I received was fantastic.

Follow them on Twitter at @StylitTV and watch for tweets alerting you to even more chances to win and to future giveaways.

(Photos from Whiteflash.com)

This Week in Events: February 1 – 5

Laurie Percival — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:00:34 +0000

It’s February now and that means there’s a whole new month of tech events to attend. There are some pretty cool ones happening this week that are not your usual monthly event. We’ll be at Cafe 50’s on Thursday to support their tweetup. What kind of Mayor would @Percival be if he didn’t show up?

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Web TV Prep Classes - Are you a writer compelled to finally produce your passion project? Are you an actor inspired to take control of your own career? Are you an independent producer ready to jump into new media?

In just four short weeks WebTvPrep will take you from an aspiring actor, frustrated writer, or stagnant producer, to the star/producer of your own show. The course will cover the four major areas of: creative development/casting, production, Post Production/Web Design/Technology, and Social Networking/Viral Marketing/Sales.

Date: February 1st to February 24th

Time: 7:00pm

Location:
Dogma Studios
4136 Del Rey Ave.
Marina Del Rey, Ca 90292

Tickets: Discounted Tuition for New Media Vault Members $225 or pay by individual week, prices here

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

New Music Seminar Los Angeles – The day will kick off with a keynote speech, followed by four sessions filled with vital information on how to see it and how to do it, accompanied by the New Music Seminar Guide Book filled with important contact information and vital new music business basics. With a focus on Social Media impact.

Speakers and Presenters

Time: 7:30am registration begins, Schedule

Location:
Henry Fonda Theater,
6126 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca 90028

Tickets: Online Registration closed but you can register at the door

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

GDP Talk – TechZulu has partnered up with GDPWealth to bring you a night of amazing talks with some of the brightest minds in Southern California, Startup interviews, and networking. Join the conversations enlivening the courtyard, in an evening filled with lovely music, good food, and fine libations. When you aren’t mingling, come listen to some of LA’s great minds as they present ideas about trends and realities facing today’s world.

Speakers:

Scott Bell, Founder, Gross Domestic Product, Inc. — Everything Your Broker will Never Tell You
Greg Ferenstein, UC: Irvine Researcher, Fast Company Expert Blogger — American Education: “What is Litrarcy?”
Kurt Daradics Founder of CitySourced, Co-Producer Digital Family – The Future of Civic Communication
Adam Mefford, Co-Founder MindShare.LA — The iPod Generation Goes To Work!

Time: 6:30pm to 10:00pm

Location:
The Belamar Hotel
3501 North Sepulveda Blvd.
Manhattan Beach, Ca 90266

Tickets: $15 (all of which will go to charity) or $0 if you are a bit strapped for cash at the moment.
*Ticket includes appetizers & Hosted Wine/Beer for 2 hours. Discounted cash bar for sprits.

Cafe 50’s Tweetup – Watch @percival try to defend his mayorship at the first Cafe 50’s tweetup. Ever since they started on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and Foursquare they’ve met a lot of great people online. Even though many are regular customers, they don’t have all the names and faces paired just yet and have decided it’s about time to change that. Come in after work and enjoy drink specials, discounts and freebies.

Time: 5:00pm to 8:00pm

Location:
11623 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90025

Tickets: No RSVP needed, anyone can come

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Gov2.0 Camp LA – Join government, industry, and nonprofit new media leaders at the first West Coast unconference on social media and government. Together we will work to make “Gov 2.0″ more accessible to the public, share advice, and solve common problems both at the Camp and beyond

Date: February 5th – 7th Agenda

Time: TBD Check the Schedule for updates

Location:
BlankSpaces
5405 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Tickets: Register

Twiistup 007 Casino Royale Pics

Laurie Percival — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:45:13 +0000

Twiistup 7 took place last night, January 28th, at the Skirball Cultural Center. Check out the amazing shots from the James Bond oo7 themed after party taken by LA resident tech photog Wm. Marc Salsberry.

Austin Passy with his super sweet and cute girlfriend Jeana Arter

By Wm. Marc Salsberry

Kurt Daradics with Mark Jeffrey and his date “the hottest girl at Twiistup”

By Wm. Marc Salsberry

Marketing Pro Nicole Jordan and Serena Ehrlich from Social Media Club

By Wm. Marc Salsberry

Pete Cashmore, CEO and Founder of Mashable and Neil Patel, SEO Ninja and Twiistup Owner

By Wm. Marc Salsberry

Eston Bond with Read Write Web’s Jolie O’Dell and Mike Prasad

By Wm. Marc Salsberry

See the rest of the evenings photos here, and check out Wm. Marc’s other work here.

(Header Photo of Neil Patel by Wm. Marc Salsberry)

This Week In Events: Jan 25 -30

Laurie Percival — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:00:48 +0000

The rain has finally stopped so it’s safe to hit the road. Time to dust off your business cards and get back into the swing of things. Here’s what’s happening this week.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

SXSW Interactive Mixer – It’s your chance to meet some of the SXSW organizers and of course all the great folks who make up the LA tech and gaming community. On top of that there are free drinks, music and one lucky person is getting a free ticket to the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin Texas.

Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Location:
The Griffin
3000 Los Feliz Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90039 (map)

Tickets: RSVP only, registration closed

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Media Leaders Networking Event – Bring your business cards to take part in a cutting edge junction of leaders in PR, media, marketing, advertising and tech while discussing current events and new ideas. We are a group of influencers that come together to exchange and thrive on meeting new people and making lasting connections.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
The Other Room
1201 Abbot Kinney Blvd
Venice, CA 90291

Tickets: $12

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Twiistup 007 Day One (evening only) – Twiistup kicks off with Leila Janah, founder and CEO of Samasource.org, followed by demos from new company “Wildcard” and a reception at Hotel Angeleno.

Time: 6:00pm to Midnight

Location:
UCLA (Korn Hall)
110 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Tickets: $397 (price is for both days and mixer)

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Twiistup 007 Conference and Mixer – Day two of the conference picks up at the Skirball Cultural Center. Check out the full agenda here.

Time:
Conference 8:00am to 5:30pm
Mixer 7:30pm to Midnight

Location:
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N Sepulveda Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90049

Tickets: Full Event Pass $397

Sloane Berrent Heads to the World Economic Forum

Laurie Percival — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:53:34 +0000

Even though Sloane Berrent has moved out of Los Angeles and relocated to New Orleans, we still consider her one of us. Yesterday she was chosen out of 5 finalist candidates as the winner of the annual “MySpace Citizen Journalist” competition. Congrats Sloane! They couldn’t have picked a more deserving person. So what does this all mean for her?

She’ll get to travel next week to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland as a special correspondent for MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and the World Economic Forum. As a part of the Davos press corps she will be using the MySpace platform to report on conference news and interview world leaders about issues relevant to the MySpace community, documenting her experience by blogging on MySpace and on the Wall Street Journal online.

She will also receive:

Invitations to the Young Global Leaders opening conference and various media events
Attendance at private meetings with editors from the Wall Street Journal and News Corp executives
The opportunity to document the experience in written and video blogs on MySpace and the Wall Street Journal online
Syndication of her MySpace blog via WSJ.com

“It has been a lifelong dream of mine to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos,” said Berrent. “It’s an incredible opportunity to report on world leaders and the future of the global economy. In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, I’d like to focus on the world’s role in the recovery effort. I’d also like to explore how economic development, specifically, microfinance and educational opportunity, play a role in changing the face of world economies and helping to break the poverty cycle.”

Sloane Berrent MySpace Journal Davos Submission

Sloane | MySpace Video

Wanna catch up with Sloane? She will be speaking at CalTech on March 2nd and is planning a tweetup around that time to get together with friends. Stay glued to her twitter account, @sloane, for more details.

Get to Know Her

Sloane Berrent – is the founder of Cause It’s My Birthday and creator of TheCausemopolitan.com, is a former Kiva Fellow and a young philanthropist. Through Cause It’s My Birthday – a fundraiser based on giving back versus giving birthday gifts – Berrent raised more than $19,000 to purchase malaria nets for distribution in northern Ghana. Berrent writes about her work in philanthropy and social entrepreneurship through TheCausemopolitan.com. She is a graduate of the University of Vermont and a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This Week In Events: January 18 – 23

Laurie Percival — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:00:48 +0000

Today is a holiday for some of you, so for those of you that are lucky enough to stay out of the rain you better rest up now. There are plenty of events this week to attend. We will be at the LAWeekly Web Awards on Thursday live tweeting the event, hope you can join us virtually.

Monday, January 18th, 2010

HOLIDAY! Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Startups Uncensored #13 – Building an Online Brand – This month’s Startups Uncensored will be on the “Building an Online Brand”. It will be an open and frank town-hall conversation talking about what it takes to build and grow an online brand that’s meant to last.

Speakers: Sean Moriarty – former CEO of TicketMaster, Blake Irving – former Corporate Vice President, Windows Live Platform Group.

Time: 6:30pm to 8:00pm Reception to follow

Location:
Santa Monica Public Library (Auditorium)
601 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Tickets: Free, RSVP *Event is capped at 140 attendees, confirmation will be required.

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

LA Web/Mobile Software Entrepreneurs- iPhone Developer Happy Hour – Our next happy hour will be co-hosted by Los Angeles software entrepreneurs Ryan and Evan Rifkin from .app/ads..App/ads is a new network agnostic ad platform for iPhone developers. Anyone building iPhone apps that serve ads should come have a drink.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Copa D’Oro
217 Broadway
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Tickets: Join LA Web/Mobile Software Entrepreneurs to RSVP

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

LAWeekly Web Awards – an evening to celebrate the winners of this years LAWeekly Los Angeles Web Awards. Check out all 36 winners here.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Bardot
1737 Vine Street
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Tickets: Invite Only but stay tuned to @LAWeekly for a chance to get on the guest list.

Social Media Club – Getting It Right In 2010 - Join a stellar group of speakers to discuss social media in 2010. They will be covering topics such as social media trends and how to take advantage of them, where people are getting their news today in relation to your business, what real-time search has to do with social media and news, how to craft a strategy that builds engagement and what to measure so you know your actions are effective.

Speakers: Sally Falkow – Moderator. Social Media Expert, Strategist and Trainer, Jessica Gottlieb – Named a “Power Mom” by the Nielsen Company in 2008 and 2009, James Macpherson – Editor and Co-Founder of Pasadena Now, Dana Chinn – Web Analytics and News Organization Expert, USC, Annenberg School of Journalism.

Time: 6:30pm to 9:30pm

Location:
Western Justice Center Foundation
55 South Grand Avenue
Conference Room
Pasadena, CA 91105

Tickets: $10 RSVP

Mindshare – Program includes: Jim Bell / Cornell Astronomy Professor & President of the Planetary Society, Mars Exploration Rover: Postcards from Mars; Sasha Strauss / founder of Innovation Protocol & prof. in USC’s school of communications, Social Cachet and the Perils of Celebrity Endorsement; Andrea Gunschera / Executive Creative Director, Realtime Technology AG, The Flexibility of Reality.

Time: 7:00pm to 1:00am

Location:
Downtown Independent Theater
251 S Main St
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Tickets: $30

Tubefilter Hollywood Web Television Meetup – For the January edition of the Hollywood Web Television Meetup, we are proud to present a very special evening with popular internet culture show EPIC FU as they launch the new EPIC FU network. Join us as we screen the premiere of one of the web’s most revered and award-winning series, followed by an intimate discussion with its creators—Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf. The evening is sponsored by HP and Intel, who will be onhand to give away a free HP Envy laptop and a free HP DreamScreen for Meetup attendees. This is definitely a night not to be missed!

Time: 7:00pm

Location:
Busby’s East
5364 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Tickets: Panel and Mixer $9.99 Mixer only $4.99

*Some information from Nicole Jordan’s LA Tech Calendar on www.kickingsand.com

RateItAll Best of the Decade Awards

Laurie Percival — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:49:09 +0000

RateItAll sorted through ten years of data to determine the RateItAll Best of the Decade Awards. The awards were given over 157 different categories, loosely broken into “Products” and “Culture.”

“We believe that our Best of the Decade awards is the most comprehensive and ambitious online awards program ever attempted,” said RateItAll CEO Lawrence Coburn. “Our longevity online combined with the breadth and depth of our data have allowed us to keep the pulse of public opinion for an entire decade.”

They hosted a small, invitation only event in San Francisco yesterday to unveil the data at RateItAll’s headquarters. Three cities were chosen as the ones that had the most impact on the decade; San Francisco, New York City and Chicago. I have a feeling that the next time these awards happen, Los Angles will be a force to be reckoned with.

Take a look at the full presentation and follow them on Twitter at @RateItAll:

RateItAll Best of the Decade Awards Slides

View more presentations from lawrencecoburn.

Get to Know them

RateItAll – Based in San Francisco, RateItAll is a consumer rating community where visitors can find and share opinions on virtually any topic. Since the company’s inception, more than 5M opinions have posted to its databases from hundreds of thousands of consumers. All of the site’s content is available for syndication via widgets, and RateItAll members share in the advertising revenue associated with their reviews. RateItAll’s mission is to power the exchange of the world’s opinions.

(Photo from RateItAll.com)

LAWeekly Web Awards Winners

Laurie Percival — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:37:08 +0000

LAWeekly announced the winners of their first annual web awards today. We want to send out a big congratulations to those of you who were picked, and send a special thanks out to all of our readers. Thanks to your support, and your votes, we took home the award for Best Tech Blog. Thank You!!

Check out the full list of winners:

LA’s Best Twitterer
@XeniJardin

LA’s Best Flickr Pool
LA Addict

LA’s Best Flamer (i.e. best shit talker)
Buddyhead

LA’s Best Food Blog
Eater LA

LA’s Best Music Blog
Aquarium Drunkard

LA’s Best Police Blog
Witness LA

LA’s Best Tech Blog
Lalawag

LA’s Best Politics Blog
Top of the Ticket, LA Times

LA’s Best Drinking Blog
Caroline on Crack

LA’s Best Low Brow Art Blog
The Streets are Calling

LA’s Best High Brow Art Blog
Bldg Blog

LA’s Best Business Twitterer
@kogibbq

LA’s Best Local Activism Site
LA Streets Blog

LA’s Best Gamer Site
G4 TV

LA’s Best MySpace Music Page
Slash

LA’s Best iPhone App
Textplus

LA’s Best Most Shameless Self Promoter
Alana Joy

Best Twitpic
Paid to be Nice

LA’s Best News Blog
LAist

LA’s Best Counterculture Blog
LA Taco

LA’s Sexiest Site
Suicide Girls

LA’s Best Online Video
SecretSauce TV, “Where The Dirty Hipsters Are (Wild Things Spoof)”

LA’s Best Home Page
GOOD Los Angeles

LA’s Best Designed Site Aesthetic
Coilhouse

LA’s Best Personal Blog
Wil Wheaton

LA’s Best Celebrity Fan Site
Her Name is Jane Lynch

LA’s Best Government Site
METRO

LA’s Best Restaurant Site
Eat at Street

LA’s Best Retail Site
Sorting with Style

LA’s Best Humor Site
Cracked

LA’s Best 12 Seconds Account
Mike FX

LA’s Best Commenter
Sarah J. Gim, The Delicious Life

LA’s Best Tweet of the Year
Roger Avary’s tweet from jail:
@avary : “#34 is ‘rolled up’ to a higher security facility for exercising his first amendment rights. The truth he has discovered is too dangerous.”

LA’s Best Blog Post of the Year
“100 Things to try in LA Before You Die,” Caroline on Crack

LA’s Best Online Photo of the Year
“Walkabout,” by Mathieu Young, GOOD Los Angeles

LA’s Best Comment Thread of the Year
“Nike Confuses USC With that School Near Diddy Riese,” Lost Angeles Blog

LAWeekly will be hosting an invite only awards ceremony on January 21st at Bardot to present the winners with their award. I really hope it is some kind of funky statue that we can proudly place on our mantel.

Keep checking with LAWeekly.com, and follow them on Twitter @LAWeekly, for information on how you can win a spot on the guest list for their private party. Hope to see you there!

(Photo from LAWeekly.com)

Media Leaders: Six Events One Night

Laurie Percival — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:00:16 +0000

MediaLeaders wants to make sure you have the opportunity to network regardless of what city you are in. On January 26th, 2010 they are hosting SIX events on the same night (LA, San Fran, NYC, Chicago, Boston and Austin).

If you have never attended a MediaLeaders event here’s what you can expect.

“Bring your business cards to take part in a cutting edge junction of leaders in PR, media, marketing, advertising and tech while discussing current events and new ideas. We are a group of influencers that come together to exchange and thrive on meeting new people and making lasting connections.”

Details

Next LA Networking Event | Jan 26 @ The Other Room (Venice Beach)
Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Location: The Other Room 1201 Abbot Kinney Blvd Venice, CA 90291
Tickets: $12

Next NYC Networking Event | Jan 26 @ W-Hotel Union Square (Olives Lounge)
Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: W-Hotel Union Square 201 Park Avenue South, New York, NY
Tickets: Early Bird FREE (still available) Standard Registration $12

Next San Fran Networking Event | Jan 26 @ W-Hotel San Francisco
Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: W-Hotel 181 Third St , San Francisco, CA 94103
Tickets: Standard Registration $12

Next Austin Networking Event | Jan 26 @ 219 West Restaurant
Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Location: 219 West Bar and Lounge 219 West Austin, TX
Tickets: Standard Registration $12

Next Boston Networking Event | Jan 26 @ City-Bar (Back Bay)
Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Location: City-Bar 61 Exeter Street (at Boylston) Boston, MA 02116
Tickets: Early Bird FREE (still available) Standard Registration $12

Next Chicago Networking Event | Jan 26 @ W-Hotel Whiskey Sky Bar on the 33rd Floor
Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: W-Hotel Whiskey Sky Bar 644 Lake Shore Drive Chicago, IL 60611
Tickets: Early Bird FREE (first 100 only)

(Pictures provided by Media Leaders)

Twiistup 007 – Casino Royale

Laurie Percival — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:00:24 +0000

Twiistup 007 – Casino Royale takes place in just two weeks. This time around the conference will run for one and half days, starting in the evening at UCLA on Wednesday, January 27th and will continue at the Skirball Cultural Center on Thursday, January 28th for a full day with the mixer ending the evening.

We have a special discount code that will give you $50 off of the ticket price but it is only good for a limited time. When purchasing your ticket just use the code “seanshair” and the discount will be automatically applied. But don’t wait too long, our code will expire at 6:00pm this Thursday, January 14th.

Confirmed Speakers so far:

Peter Guber – Chairman and CEO, Mandalay Entertainment
Richard Rosenblatt – Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, Demand Media
Om Malik – Founder Giga Omni Media
Lisa Stone – Co-Founder and CEO of BlogHer
Eric Ries – The Lean Startup
Bambi Francisco – Founder and CEO, Vator.tv
Leila Chirayath Janah – Founder and CEO, Samasource
Robert Scoble – Technology Blogger
Dave McClure – Seed stage investor for the Founders Fund
Rick Heitzmann – Managing Director of FirstMark Capital
Brian Solis – New Media Author and Consultant
Alex Quilici – Co-founder of Quack.com, CEO of YouMail

Details

Date: Wednesday, January 27th to Thursday, January 28th 2010

Time:
Wednesday: 6:00pm to Midnight
Thursday:
Conference 8:00am to 5:30pm
Mixer 7:30pm to Midnight

Location:
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N Sepulveda Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90049

Tickets:
Full Event Pass $397 (includes meals)

Full Agenda Here

Percival 2.0

Laurie Percival — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:30:55 +0000

If you are a weekly or even monthly lala reader, you may have noticed that apart from Le Web my participation on the site has dropped significantly over the past couple of months. During this time my wonderful husband Sean took his brainchild back and has ensured that you would have something entertaining to read each day.

So what have I been doing all this time? Over the past two months I have been working on something big and I’m finally ready to share what it is.

In about six months I will be able to join the ranks of the mommy bloggers, that’s right folks, I’M PREGNANT! The Percival’s are bringing a bundle of joy into the world this year so watch out, she’s going to kick some real-time ass.

Any woman who has gone through this experience will immediately understand why I have been absent from the site, making a baby makes you extremely tired and the morning sickness is no peach either. To those of you that work a full-time job while pregnant, my hat is off to you, I couldn’t do it.

Thankfully I am past most of the yucky stuff and feel good enough to contribute to the site again. Don’t worry, Sean and his amazing posts will still be around.

If you want to join in the fun of our experience,you can follow the Twitter account we created for our pregnancy tweets at @percivalspawn. I started it on the day I found out and we are going to try to do most of the baby tweeting from there and not on our personal accounts. Hopefully this way we won’t drive everyone crazy with baby news. Also at negative six months I’m pretty sure this is the youngest user on Twitter.

To all of you that had events during this time that I was unable to attend now you know why. You can expect to see us out and about more often now, just make my drink a virgin. =)

(Photo by: (cc) Kenneth Yeung – www.thelettertwo.com)

This Week In Events: January 11 – 15

Laurie Percival — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:00:12 +0000

Check out what’s happening in Los Angeles tech this week. Be sure to add us on Plancast.com, we will be utilizing this service even more in the future to keep track of events.

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

LAVA Breakfast - CEOs Talk Startups – Discussion on start-up issues including i) team building and recruiting, ii) business plan issues, iii) developing a concise message, iv) building credibility (with customers, partners, employees and early investors), v) getting the business model to work properly, and vi) finally getting funded. What mistakes did you make during in the early days and what lessons would you pass on another entrepreneur?

Panelists: Wil Schroter, Founder and CEO – Go BIG Media and GotCast.com, Marc Diana, Founder and CEO -LeadPoint, Inc., Keith Richman, CEO – Break.com, Matthew Dusig, CEO and Co-founder – United Sample, Inc.

Time: 7:00am to 9:00am

Location:
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N Sepulveda Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90049

Tickets: $60 (onsite $85)

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Social Media Club “Dating & Relationships: The Game Has Changed” – mix, mingle and discuss how Social Media has changed the rules of dating. Exactly one month before Valentine’s Day, come hear all about how social media can help you with the hook ups.

Panelists: Liz H. Kelly (@lizhkelly), Linda Sherman (@lindasherman), Julie Spira (@juliespira), Evan Marc Katz (@evanmarckatz), Analis Flox (@avflox).

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
12th & Highland
304 12th St.
Manhattan Beach CA 90266

Tickets: Free, RSVP

Schmoozd – Social Media Mixer – The first-ever Schmoozd event, a new Social Media Mixer event in Los Angeles. X bar’s environment is the perfect place to network – a lounge designed with spots for hanging out as well as socializing and action. Whether closing the deal or sharing ideas, X bar’s renowned design, cuisine and location means X marks the spot.

Time: 6:00pm to 9:30pm

Location:
Xbar
Hyatt Regency Century Plaza
2025 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Tickets: $10 discount price available until Jan 14th at 1:00pm

Think LA Thirsty Thursday – Meet up with thinkLA for a free-to-attend networking mixer organized by AdZoo! Thirsty Thursdays are casual events (no name tags) that give people the chance to mix, mingle and make new friends in a relaxed atmosphere.

Time: 6:30pm t0 9:30pm

Location:
Bigfoot West (not the Los Feliz location)
10939 Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90034

Tickets: Free. To register please email tony@thinkla.org.

Friday, January 15th, 2010

Digital LA – Digital Drinks at Wonderland – For our next Digital Drinks, we’re headed to exclusive new club Wonderland. Complete with an Alice in Wonderland theme, this new club (where Shag used to be) is Hollywood’s latest hot spot.

Time: 6:00pm to 10:30pm

Location:
Wonderland
1835 Cahuenga Blvd
Los Angeles, Ca 90018

Tickets: $10 advance registration required

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

Barcamp San Diego 6 – Barcamp has grown – again. This coming barcamp will be SD 6, which means we’re on our THIRD year of barcamp. More info here.

Date: Saturday, January 16th to Sunday, January 17th

Time: 10:00am to 7:00pm

Location:
Intuit (San Diego, Santa Fe Campus)
7535 Torrey Santa Fe Rd
San Diego, CA

Tickets: Free. RSVP

*Some information taken from Nicole Jordan’s tech calendar on kickingsand.com. Thx Nicole!

Redux: Funny Has a New Home

Laurie Percival — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:30:42 +0000

Redux, previously only available to beta users, recently launched to the public and now everyone can join in on the fun. The site gives you a comprehensive list of things that you like, hand-picked by people who you select and find funny. Redux helps you find and enjoy videos, photos, music, and websites recommended by people who love the same stuff you do.

It feels like a cross between FriendFeed and Brizzly, but with many features that you cannot get on those sites. You can create channels and instantly have access to things that are near and dear to your heart, like unicorns or cats. If a channel has not yet been created, you can start one.

Recently they added thumbnails to all picture and video links so your stream will show you everything the links contains, without having to navigate away from the page, neat!

Once you find a thread that your friends couldn’t possibly go through their day without knowing about, you can easily share it by clicking on the desired social media icon. You can share amazing threads through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and email, like this one:

Cats in Hats for Christmas:

from flickr, by tonguetiedandtwisted

from flickr, by mo ba ca na

from flickr, by susurrus_sparks

See the full thread by noxinova here.

(Photo from redux.com)

This Week In Events: Dec 15 – 19

Laurie Percival — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:00:16 +0000

We missed out on telling you about the #140 conf LA meetup that took place on Monday, but based on the tweets we have seen everyone was completely aware of it. Here’s what’s happening the rest of the week in Los Angeles Tech:

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Tubefilter Hollywood Web Television Meetup – Going Pro: Seducing the Studios – Many producers dream of scoring a studio deal. With financing, marketing, and distribution all taken care of, can’t you finally just focus on creating something great? But what’s it really like when a studio gets involved? At December’s Hollywood Web Television Meetup we’re exploring these questions with Going Pro: Seducing the Studios, featuring panelists from Big Fantastic, Sony Pictures Television, and The Bannen Way.

Time: 7:00pm

Location:
Busby’s East (Mid Wilshire)
5364 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, 90036

Tickets: $10 panel and mixer $5 mixer only

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Digital LA Holiday Party at Green Door – Digitally Deck the Halls this year at Green Door for the annual Digital LA holiday party. Relax with drinks in the French-inspired Victorian lounge, dance to our special holiday DJ mix, and don’t forget to ask for our Holiday Digital Drink special. Festivities will continue next door at the Cabana Club after 10pm.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Green Door
1429 Ivar Ave Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Tickets: $10 advance registration required

New Media Vault – This month join us as we celebrate the holiday season, we’re supporting the efforts of the SillyWalksforHunger, whose goal is to serve 1 million meals this holiday season. Every $5.00 equals 35 meals — so this is doable with the help of Los Angeles’ New Media community. So, come share the holiday cheer, and enjoy the only downtown Los Angeles new media networking event.

Time: 7:30pm

Location:
The Crocker Club
453 S Spring St.
Los Angeles, 90013

Tickets: Free

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Mindshare Mixer – “Another Night of Enlightened Debauchery!” – Program includes: Dan Busby – Physicist and Freelance Tinkerer /Electric Cars: 19th Century Technology Today, Jamie Zigelbaum – Oblong Industries /Digital Dactyls, Vanessa Van Petten – Youthologist & CEO Radical Teenagers, Inc. /Virtual Dating, Friends and Sex: How .Com is Changing Next Generation’s Relationships, and Tim Nordwind – Bassist for the band OK Go, will be DJ’ing.

Time: 7:00pm to 1:00am

Location:
The Downtown Independent Theater
251 S. Main Street
Los Angeles, CA

Tickets: $30

LeWeb: The Sketches

Laurie Percival — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:37:33 +0000

One of the great things about a conference as big as Le Web is the range of people you get to meet. I had the pleasure of meeting David Newman, an artist from San Fransisco who spent his time at Le Web doing sketches of the faces of the conference. Here are some of our favorites:

Chris Brogan

Michael Arrington

Yosef Yardi

Dave McClure

Chris Sacca

Cathy Brooks

Yours truly!

You can see the entire line of David’s work at flickr.com/dnsf.

LeWeb: The Second Stage Heats Up

Laurie Percival — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:41:09 +0000

The main stage was compelling to say the least here at LeWeb day two, but the second stage is no slouch either. Each time I have entered the room from the beginning of the day for Sean’s presentation to the after lunch panel with Chris Brogan and Brian Solis, almost every seat out the 400 available was taken.

Dubbed the “Deep Discussion” Stage – Salle 400, you can find specific tweets about speakers and presentations that happened in this room by using the hashtag #lewebdd.

It would be impossible for me to recap everything that was discussed in the afternoon panel, ”How brands and marketing have to adapt to this new worldwide real-time “word of mouth”, so I thought I would share some of the gems that came out of it.

Panel Participants

Moderator:
Chris Brogan President, New Marketing Labs, Author, Trust Agents

Panelists:
Richard Binhammer – Senior Manager, Involved in Dell’s Social Media efforts
Matthais Lüfkens – Associate Director, Media, World Economic Forum
Steve Rubel – SVP, Director of Insight, Edelman Digital
Brian Solis – founder and President, Future Works
Seth J. Sternberg – Co-Founder and CEO, Meebo

First off I would like to say this panel was outright scrappy. It was definitely not the love fest that some of us are used to seeing. That being said there were many great points of views being shared and each member was respectful of the others opinion while they were disagreeing with what the last one said.

It started off with a few members missing, well one member in particular Mr. Solis. Taking time to be interviewed in the hallway, Brian was late to his own panel and made a grand entrance by walking down the stairway onto the stage only after everyone in the room called out his name.

Here are some of the best quotes that came out of the panel:

Matthais – “Instead of just citizen journalism there should be CEO journalism.”

Steve to Chris – “You are the Owen Wilson of web 2.0″

Richard -”At Dell we are banking revenue because we are connecting with customers. We have gone from a static web to interactive web, that direct connection with customers is what’s important, people connecting with people. Social Media scales relationships in a very real way.”

Seth - “Brands are understanding that they need to be where the conversations are.”

Brian- “Everything we are talking about today will resonate with this crowd but we all have to report to someone who won’t give a shit about authenticity”

Steve – “We have to think about the business cause first not just the puff in the pan”

Matthais – “ROI is return on involvement not investment”

Richard – “People want to connect to the engineers not the CEO at Dell. Social Media scales because our guy can connect to so may more people from his desk than the time it would take on the phone or traveling to conferences”

Seth – “You guys have said Twitter way to many times, let’s talk about another social media tool. Facebook will have a higher click thru rate than Twitter because the people there know you better. Meebos click thru rate is about 1%. How do we do that? Time. How long the ad is in front of the user.”

Richard – “As the web becomes more social these tools (social media tools) are more important because people won’t search they will ask their friends. Social networks will give search a run for their money.”

Question from the audience - How do smaller brands connect in a big way with their customers?
Richard’s answer – “Go where they are.”
Seth’s answer – “If on your website you make it easy for them to share from there through all communication networks, that helps.”

LeWeb: MySpace & Twitter Offer Data For All

Laurie Percival — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:24:21 +0000

It’s cold and wet in Paris, France, but the participants at Le Web could care less. Over 2,500 people were in attendance for day one of the conference and all were nice and dry, and well fed. Loic and Geraldine Le Meur have done an excellent job planning for this two-day event.

Everywhere you went there were food/beverage stations, great seating areas with tons of outlets and the wi-fi worked (mostly) and so did the heat. I have never attended a classier conference, once again the French have topped anything I have seen produced in the states. Bravo!

Some of the big announcements from day one came from Twitter and MySpace. The four major ones from Twitter came during Ryan Sarver’s presentation. Unfortunately I am not a developer so some of this stuff doesn’t exactly make me jump up and down, but for those of you in know I hear this is pretty exciting stuff.

Twitter Announcements:

1. Firehouse for everyone – they want everyone to have access to the entire Twitter data feed. This means any developer can build rich applications off this data, instead just the lucky few who currently have this access.

2. New developers site – a place for developers to get together and learn, ask questions and share information, including tutorials. Should be launching in the next couple of weeks.

3. Move to OAuth – requests per hour will be increased which they believe will make it easier for 3rd party applications to add more features and increase the engagement that they are able to provide.

4. Chirp – the first Twitter development conference taking place in San Fransisco in 2010. Tickets will be priced under $400 and the venue will hold around 900 people. More details to come at chirp.twitter.com

Mike Jones, COO of MySpace, took the stage and had some news to share as well. MySpace is opening up their massive data feed, something they have never done in the past.

MySpace Announcements:

1. MySpace is opening up their entire data feed to all developers. Much like the Twitter fire hose, this data feed gives unprecedented access to the 35 million daily status updates of MySpace users.

2. New developer site – MySpace is also revamping their developer site to offer better tools and documentation to developers.

3. $50,000 contest – MySpace is offering a prize of $50,000 to one lucky developer who can build the most compelling service off the new MySpace data feed. More information is available on their developer site at http://developer.myspace.com/.

This Week In Events: Dec 7 – 11

Laurie Percival — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:30:58 +0000

We’ll be in Paris this week attending Le Web, but that doesn’t mean you should stay at home and mope. Here’s what’s happening in Los Angeles tech this week.

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Media Leaders Toys For Tots Fundraiser & Networking Event – Bring your business cards to take part in a cutting edge junction of leaders in PR, media, marketing, advertising and tech while discussing current events and new ideas. We are a group of influencers that come together to exchange and thrive on meeting new people and making lasting connections.

There will be MARINE CORPS RESERVE members in attendance to collect toys. Please help by bringing a new, unwrapped toy valued at $10 or more to the event. Toys suitable for 10-14yr old are especially needed.

Time: 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Location:
Shade Hotel Zinc Lounge
1221 N Valley Dr
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Tickets: Free, Register

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Jobnob Docstoc Happy Hour – Come “Jobnob” with cool new start ups and talented job seekers at this informal networking happy hour where you can find startup jobs. Be flexible on commitment and compensation- bootstrapped startups may be offering *alternative compensation: reduced rates, equity, internships, part time, etc. Get in on the ground floor with these great startups and meet cool tech companies!

Time: 4:30pm

Location:
Air Conditioned Supper Club
625 Lincoln Blvd
Venice, CA 90291

Tickets: Free, Register

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Dealmaker Media Investor Outlook 2010: Startup Strategy Series and Mixer - Hear from VC’s and Angels as they discuss trends VC’s are betting on, if investing is in an upswing, steps startups need to take for investors to take them seriously, and what the new fundable trends will be: Healthcare 2.0? Green tech? Or are mobile and cloud computing still “in” for 2010?

Time: 6:00pm to 9:00pm

Location:
Manatt
11355 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064

Tickets: Strategy Series + Mixer $60 Mixer only $35

Digital Family Reunion ‘09 Photos

Laurie Percival — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:00:41 +0000

It was a packed house Wednesday night at #DFR ‘09 and based on the photos from the very talented Wm. Marc Salsberry, a good time was had by all.

Hot threesome Laurel Kaufman from GIT with Jessica Gottlieb and Marsha Collier

All the way from Washington DC Dr. Mark Drapeau aka @Cheeky_Geeky

Familiar faces Espree Devora, Alexandra Mokh, Jim Alden and Chris Darbro

Tameka Kee and newly acquired LA resident Melissa Jun Rowley with one of DFR’s organizers Kurty D

Sexy Blondes Nicole Jordan and Amanda Coolong

Check out the rest of the photos here.

LA Web Awards 2009

Laurie Percival — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:40:36 +0000

LA Weekly announced that they are having the first ever Los Angeles Web Awards. There are so many great bloggers, writers, foodies and oversharers in Los Angeles, this is a great way to highlight the best of the best and bring attention to a site that may not be on everyone’s regular RSS feed.

There are a total of 36 categories to choose from, but don’t worry you don’t have to fill in all of them in order to submit your vote. To nominate a person, blog, company etc., just put a link in the box provided on their site so the judges will know exactly who you are voting for and hit submit.

On December 31st, voting will end and a team of judges will comb through the sites and select the winners. LA Weekly will then host a grand party in LA to announce the winners. Stay tuned for more info on the date and location.

Feel free to nominate your favorite Los Angeles tech blog lalawag in as many categories as you see fit. Happy voting!

Categories:

LA’s best Twitterer
LA’s best Flickr Pool
LA’s best 12 seconds account
LA’s best Commenter
LA’s worst Flamer
LA’s best Food Blog
LA’s best Music Blog
LA’s best Police Blog
LA’s best Tech Blog
LA’s best Politic’s Blog
LA’s best Drinking Blog
LA’s best Low Brow Art Blog
LA’s best High Brow Art Blog
LA’s best Business Twitterer
LA’s best Local Activism Site
LA’s best Gamer Site
LA’s best MySpace Music Page
LA’s best iPhone App
LA’s best Most Shameless Self Promoter
LA’s best Web Ad
LA’s best News Blog
LA’s best Counterculture Blog
LA’s Sexiest Site
LA’s best Online Video
LA’s best Home Page
LA’s best Designed Site Aesthetic
LA’s best Personal Blog
LA’s best Celebrity Fan Site
LA’s best Government Site
LA’s best Restaurant Site
LA’s best Retail Site
LA’s best Humor Site
LA’s best Tweet of the Year
LA’s best Blog Post of the Year
LA’s best Online Photo of the Year
LA’s best Comment Thread of the Year

Judges include – Attack of the Show’s Kevin Pereira, Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick, Digg’s Aubrey Sabala, Web personality iJustine.

(Photo from LAWeekly.com)

Citysourced App Launches

Laurie Percival — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:22:57 +0000

Just in time for the holiday’s the CitySourced app is here! Now you can do some good this season and help clean up your neighborhood, and it only takes a couple of minutes and an iPhone.

Here’s how it works. You know that pothole your car keeps falling into as you try and pull into your driveway? CitySourced can help with that. All you do is pull out your iPhone, snap a pic, select the report type and hit send. CitySourced will geo-tag your picture and send a PDF report to the city council member that handles that district. Neat!

And it’s not just for help with potholes, there’s a whole slew of items that you can tag and report:

abandoned bicycle or vehicle
animal services – biting, deceased, not leashed, not permitted, pest control
driveway cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
graffiti removal
homeless encampment, nuisance
illegal dumping/trash, fire/burning
leaf collection
parking illegally, illegally in driveway, in red zone, without permit
parking meter broken, parking sign
plants/trees danger, degradation, obstruction, overgrown, removal
roadway cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
sidewalk cleaning, danger, degradation, obstruction
street light, sign
trash can/bin broken, removal
water leak driveway, fire hydrant, sidewalk, street, unknown
yard waste removal
other including building code enforcement, noise complaint, property violation, any not listed

I recently tested it out with some graffiti I spotted on the street. Some jokester thought it would be cool to tag the word “sean”.

I loaded up CitySourced on my iPhone

The app asked if it could use my location. (you must say yes for the app to continue)

Snapped a pic of the offending graffiti

Selected the type of report appropriate for the offense

Then hit submit. The report shows that is it processing and after a few short minutes you can go into the My Reports section and see your report.

Currently there are over 1900 cities in the database and users have the ability to add a city from the CitySourced website. The app is free to download and according to Kurt Daradics, Co-Founder of CitySourced, the way they plan to make money is off of the individual cities.

San José is the first city to sign up. By paying for the service, they can consume the data being reported in a more direct way. For instance my graffiti report would not be lumped in with all other reports in one big PDF file, it would go directly to the person in charge of handling graffiti complaints. By paying for the service, the reports that are coming in are streamlined and go directly to the person who can quickly and effectively handle the complaint.

Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments.

This Week In Events: Nov 30 – Dec 5

Laurie Percival — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:30:27 +0000

Check out what’s happening in Los Angeles Tech this week.

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Ford Fiesta Movement Celebration – For the last six months, 100 Fiesta Agents have been taking to the streets with the Fiesta Movement. On December 1st everyone can join the Movement and get a sneak peak of the 2011 Ford Fiesta. To commemorate the movement, Ford is aiming to organize the largest corporate-hosted Tweetup on record. The event will also include a special live performance by Parachute.

Time: 8:00pm to 12:00am

Location:
Hollywood Palladium
6215 W Sunset Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90028

Tickets: Free RSVP

Digital LA Princess and the Frog – Screening & Experience – see the Princess and the Frog movie on the Walt Disney Studios lot, more than a week before its Dec 11 release. Afterwards, head over to Sound Stage 3 for the Ultimate Disney Experience, where you can meet the Disney Princesses, see original props and costumes, learn to draw from a real Disney animator and much much more.

Time: 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Location:
Walt Disney Studios Lot, Sound Stage 3
Burbank, CA

Tickets: Sold out but you can still purchase regular price tickets here

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Digital Family Reunion – DFR ‘09 promises to be the largest holiday party of the season, bringing together Southern California’s technology and business communities. Including leaders from all of the major industries such as media, entertainment, finance, publishing, venture funding, software, commerce, education and many more.

Time: 6:00pm to 11:00pm

Location:
Wokcano
1413 5th St
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Tickets: $50 ($30 for WITI members)
*Use discount code: DFR30 to receive $30 price

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Affiliate Convention Conference LA – Affiliate Convention bases its conference and tradeshow series on the idea that actionable information, business building and networking opportunities should be freely available to everyone in the affiliate marketing industry, especially to working affiliate marketers. Sporting a growing line-up of thought leaders in the affiliate and search engine marketing sectors, Affiliate Convention LA is a unique opportunity to meet and share ideas with the brightest business people in the affiliate marketing industry. Affiliate Convention is the only event in the affiliate marketing industry which gives affiliate marketers free access to the movers and shakers in the sector.

Date: Thursday, December 3rd to Friday, December 4th

Time: Schedule

Location:
Hyatt Regency Century Plaza
2025 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, California 90067

Tickets: $850 Registration at the door

Digital LA – Burgers & Cocktails - Get together with your friends from Digital LA for beer and burgers to celebrate the launch of Save As. The first 10 people to bring their s4ve.as file upload confirmation page print out get a free burger.

Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Location:
Umami Burger
1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Tickets: Free No RSVP required

New Media Vault Celebrates Turkey Day

Laurie Percival — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:30:35 +0000

Some of us have family obligations that require travel during the days around a holiday. Others are blessed and can spend the day in the city with friends and more importantly not on the 5, 10, or 405 freeways. If you are one of these lucky angelinos staying in the city for Thanksgiving, you might want to check out the last New Media Vault mixer for ‘09.

The New Media Vault is getting together at the Crocker Club tonight to celebrate Turkey Day. They will be giving away a free turkey and giving a portion of the proceeds to the Downtown Los Angeles Midnight Mission. In addition there will be a special screening of the New Girl Gamer Series: Girl Gamer Rocks Tokyo City.

So head downtown and have some fun. I”ll be at home thinking about the wonderful 5 hours we’ll be spending on the freeway tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving.

Details

Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Time: 7:00pm

Location:
The Crocker Club
453 S Spring St.
Los Angeles, 90013

*Strict dress code enforced

Tickets: Free RSVP

Digital Family Reunion ‘09

Laurie Percival — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:36:44 +0000

It’s time to come together for the holidays again! The second annual Digital Family Reunion is almost here, it’s taking place next week in Santa Monica on Wednesday, December 2nd.

DFR ‘09 promises to be the largest holiday party of the season, bringing together Southern California’s technology and business communities. Including leaders from all of the major industries such as media, entertainment, finance, publishing, venture funding, software, commerce, education and many more.

This years celebration will give attendees the chance to network with people from many different industry’s, talk with the recipient of the DFR “Outstanding Achievement Honor”, enjoy great food and entertainment, and check out the showcase tables from the sponsors and partners.

Last years DFR turned out over 800 attendees, which is why we are bringing this fabulous event to your attention now, it will sell out, and possibly sell out early. We have a special discount code to share with our readers that will give you $20 off the ticket price. Just use code DFR30 when registering to receive the $30 ticket price.

Check out some of the happy faces from last year’s event, hope to see you there!

Photo (CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com, bub.blicio.us

Details

Digital Family Reunion

Date: Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Time: 6:00pm to 11:00pm

Location:
Wokcano
1413 5th St
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Tickets: $50 ($30 for WITI members)
*Use discount code: DFR30 to receive $30 price

(Photo from digitalfamilyinc.com)

We Live In Public (and so do you)

Laurie Percival — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:20:25 +0000

My first experience of anything even remotely related to “living in public” happened in Los Angeles at an after, after party. It was a warehouse with art, music and a BYOB situation.

There was one bathroom and unknown to most of the occupants there was a camera in the corner of it that was broadcasting onto a TV set, everything that happened in the bathroom. I saw everything from girls doing lines, to couples getting it on, all while the unsuspecting people in line waited to pee.

I’ll admit, the idea of being watched kinda excited me. Even though I was aware of the camera, I still made my way into the bathroom. I wanted to see what it felt like to be watched. Call me a voyeur, call me an exhibitionist, but there is at least some small part in all of us that likes that feeling. Otherwise you would be spending your time in front of the TV and not on the computer.

Photo from weliveinpublic official photostream

We live in Public, winner at this years Sundance Film Festival, is a must see. I attended the screening in LA and was absolutely blown away. I had never heard of Josh Harris or his crazy parties and experiments in New York, but watching it all unfold under the direction of Ondi Timoner really opened my mind to the dangers of exposure on the Internet. Some of us don’t realize what we are putting out there for the world to see, and others don’t care as long as they get recognition for it.

When I was offered the chance to see an online screening of the movie I jumped at it. Interloper Films had received permission from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to perform a live, private password-protected online screenings for press only. Never before had something like this been allowed. Academy eligibility rules dictate that for a film to be eligible for Oscar nomination, it mustn’t be shown to the public in any venue or medium other than in theaters for 60 days after the initial theatrical release. This was the first time in film history that the Academy granted special permission to do so.

Eager to see it again, I sat riveted to my screen as I watched Josh’s life unravel in his quest for fame. Instead of trying to describe what the movie entails I thought it would be better for you to see for yourself. Here’s a look at what We Live In Public is all about:

*Some footage may be NSFW

We were given a chance to do a Q&A with the director, Ondi Timoner, after the screening. It was fascinating to hear her talk about Josh and the film and how it all came together.

“The internet is the most powerful invention in our lifetime. We are connecting to more people with less depth, this movie raises consciousness about how we raise our kids.”

This statement could not be more true. Everyday I see more and more people who spend their time trying to promote themselves on the Internet and get their 15 minutes of fame. Two recent examples would be Balloon Boy’s family and the solider who live tweeted the events at Fort Hood. These people were not concerned about how their actions would affect others, they just wanted to be noticed.

Photo from weliveinpublic official photostream

It took quite some time for this film to come to fruition. After viewing the rough draft of the film, Josh told Ondi that he didn’t like the way he looked. This was during the time when he was living in public with Tanya and it had all fallen apart. He had lost his money and his fans were turning on him. So he threw it out and left Manhattan. That was the last contact Ondi had with Josh until 2008, when she received an unexpected phone call.

It was Josh, he wanted to start the movie up again. He was offering 50% of the profits from the movie and full creative control, something that had not been an option before. Ondi was intrigued and took the bait. Josh was ready for the film to be made. He told Ondi:

“I dont care how you make me look just make a great film”

According to Ondi this was around the same time that Facebook status updates came out. She said that this made her realize she needed to make the film. The internet space had changed.

“I couldn’t have put this movie out without the internet and things like Twitter and Facebook.”

In August of 2008, they were able to get independent financing and won the Grand Jury Prize at this years Sundance Film Festival. An amazing feat for Ondi as she is now the only director that has a double win at Sundance, the other for DiG!. Josh flew out for the event and was supposed to be in town for just one week. Last I heard he is still living “off the grid” in Jason Calacanis’s pool house and driving his yellow corvette.

His house in Ethiopia is unoccupied and Josh has grand plans for it as well. He wants to lend out his house to people who need to get away from the Internet for a while. They can choose how much money they want to pay and then go stay in Josh’s house. More info regarding this endeavour should be on the website soon.

Josh’s next project is called Wired City, a studio of self surveillance. The idea is for a group of people to document themselves, then Josh would take the best bits of film and turn it into entertainment. The group would consist of 400 hand-picked people at a time, then a new group would come in. Think of it like the Truman Show, it would be live 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Kind of a new wave for reality tv.

Personally this idea sounds just as damaging as the first two to me, but I doubt he will have any trouble finding people who want to be involved in something historic.

The movie is tentatively scheduled to be released on DVD and iTunes on 2/10/2010, and will contain tons of extra footage from the bunker where “Quiet” took place. Until then you can check out their website which is releasing a new 15 second clip each day with never before seen footage from the film.

Follow them on Twitter @wlip and check out video interviews and extras on the official website, weliveinpublicthemovie.com. If you’d like to help promote the film, there is a special widget featured on the site for you to use.

Adventure Girl: Experience the World

Laurie Percival — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:57:13 +0000

Don’t get the chance to travel much? It’s okay, now you can live vicariously through Adventure Girl’s travels. Armed with a digital camera and a blackberry, two devices she could not possible live without, Stefanie Michaels spends the majority of her time seeing the world and sharing her experiences with others.

Millions of people visit her website, AdventureGirl.com, to check out the places she has been and get tips on exciting places to visit. Her love of travel started at a young age and she has been involved in the industry for a long time. Even though she has maintained a strong presence online, Stefanie is relatively new to social media outlets like Twitter.

But that didn’t stop her from quickly carving a place for herself in the space. In just six months she jumped to 1 million followers and admits to being a Twitterholic. Don’t get this confused with people who tweet too much, Stephanie maintains a good balance and won’t overwhelm you.

Let’s get to know Adventure Girl and find out what life is like when the world is your playground.

Five Questions with Stefanie Michaels

1. You were born and raised in LA and still live here. After all of the amazing places that you have traveled to around the world, what draws you to this city?

It’s funny, because I am not here that much, and when I am- I consider it more of “base camp”. If I’m not catching-up on meetings and business-I’m usually so exhausted from traveling, that I use the city to reconnect with friends, take in a restaurant that may have opened while I was away, and or go to one of my favorite haunts to chill. Just try and enjoy my city and “un-traveling” while I can- it’s where I find my downtime. It’s “home”.

Although, after I’m home a while, I get anxious and cranky, and look forward to being on the road exploring again. I always say that the jet fuel I smell when I get to the airport gives me butterflies in my stomach= it means I get to go somewhere cool, somewhere diverse, and a place I can learn and grow with new experiences I encounter.

2. What can your followers expect to see in your tweet stream? For example, the most valuable info that you specifically give that a large site like trip advisor wouldn’t have?

Initially in March 2009, when I finally got my @adventuregirl site into my hands from a squatter who usurped my namesake, I was really one of the only travel people on Twitter. So, I would tweet travel deals off releases that would come across my desk. I had done an e-mail blast to everyone I knew in the travel industry, alerting them I was now Twittering- within 3 weeks, I had 175,000 followers- many who were in the travel industry. I think a light went on for them, and many created their own sites offering the same information there after.

I decided then, and when people were inquiring about my “life adventures”- like what was I wearing in a photo?, where was I going next?, that I decided to share a more personal “me”, more personal information than just sharing travel deals.

It was a big learning curve, and of course truly what social media is about. So, I do still share travel deals, but my page shares more of personal opinions about a place I’ve experienced. I’ve also tried to make it a point of giving others a platform and voice on my page, by RT’ing their information, travel stories, charitable endeavors, other’s “life adventures”.

3. How has your life changed since hitting one million followers on Twitter?

I’ve experienced this on slot of notoriety that I had only had a sliver of as a travel writer and editor. I’ve been known in the travel industry and to my own fans for a while via adventuregirl.com, but Twitter opened me up to a whole new genre of people who were like minded, who were tech-minded (my people). Here I was this struggling traditional print journalist, recently unemployed because of what is happening to publishing, to within 6 months of being on Twitter, walking a red carpet, an expose in People Magazine, and networks bringing me in to talk about how we can work together. It’s a trip really.

4. What is your favorite tool for connecting with your audience, and why?

I am simply a Twiterholic. Really, that’s all I do. It’s quick, immediate, to the point in 140 characters, and I love the people I have met on it. I always say, I would have never met or had the opportunity to meet the people I have met via Twitter on any other network. There is something about it that creates this instant pen-pal ideal for communication like non other.

There is just something magical that happens with Twitter, and I thank the founders every morning when I wake up for helping not only change my life, but given so many opportunities for others.

It is also transparent. I can point anyone to my Twitter page, and they can see it, click on links, experience what I am doing alongside of me without having to join Twitter. Facebook isn’t like that, neither MySpace- and I find that annoying really. It’s like joining an exclusive club, and leaving others out. I’ve never been a big fan of leaving people out. The Facebook I’ve experienced is “clicky”, and people I know on it really only want to communicate with their own friends- not reaching out to strangers- it much more insular. I do blog, and still write for the Huffington Post, World Hum and Tonic News, and am in a site redesign for adventuregirl.com and my blog there.

5. What’s next for you?

I’m heading to Macau, China in about a week on assignment. I’ll be tweeting from there sharing everything I come across and experiences with my followers. Also from Macau, speaking at a conference in NYC via Skype- a first time for me and for the conference. I love technology!

I’ve been working with Operation Smile on my 140smiles.org campaign, raising money via Twitter to help 140 children get new smiles through life changing surgeries to correct facial deformities. It’s a personal mission for me to eradicate facial deformities, such as cleft palates. My brother, who had died before his surgery, had been inflicted with this, and it’s heartbreaking. After all- a smile is how we communicate. So, I hope through social media I can continue to raise awareness and create new smiles for children everywhere.

It looks like I’ll be heading overseas with doctors and helping some of these kids and parents during their surgeries early 2010. I am truly humbled for this. I would have never had this opportunity to help children in this capacity had it not been for Twitter. Another reason Twitter has changed my life.

There are some other exciting things coming up, which I can’t quite share at the moment! But, I promise as soon as I can lalawag will be the first to know!

(Photo provided by Stefanie Michaels)

Follow her on Twitter @adventuregirl and check out her website AdventureGirl.com

(NSFW) AV Flox: Sex and the 405

Laurie Percival — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:54:17 +0000

Sex and the 405, it’s what your newspaper would look like if it had a sex section. And who better to tackle this taboo than the mistress of sex, the woman who has been writing sex and relationships since she was practically born, miss AV Flox.

Usually you can read all about her latest developments in sex and relationships in her weekly column on Blogher, but now AV is giving you and herself another outlet and this one is for all things sex. Here’s and idea of what you will find on Sex and the 405:

“Here you’ll find news about the latest research being conducted to figure out what drives desire, passion, and other sex habits; reviews of sex toys, porn and other sexy things; coverage of the latest sex-related news that have mainstream media’s panties up in a bunch; human interest pieces about sex and desire; interviews with people who love sex, or work in sex, or work to enable you to have better sex; opinion pieces that relate to sex and society; a raunchier kind of celebrity gossip; and more…”

We happen to have an exclusive photo of miss Flox that was used to create the header image on her site. Yes, ladies and gentlemen that is her body riding high above the city. Yowza!

Header Photo used on the site

Original photo from the shoot

Congrats on your new endeavor AV.

Like a delectable piece of chocolate that you discover and just can’t help eating, your site is mouth watering. I have a feeling it will do wonders in bed for some, others will just continue to be vanilla.

Check out the interview she did last week with Melissa McCarty on KCal9 News about the site.

Party with The Underground

Laurie Percival — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:00:15 +0000

The underground PDC event is taking place this Wednesday, November 18th. I didn’t make it to last years party but have heard that is it something you don’t want to miss. The event is invite only but don’t worry, we’re here to hook you up.

Thanks to Wm. Marc Salsberry, lalawag has 10 RSVP codes to give out at our discretion. To enter, just tweet out why you want to go. Be sure to include @lalawag and @undergroundpdc in your tweet so we can find it.

You have until Tuesday at 5pm to get your tweets in. We will pick a winner based off of how much we enjoy your tweet. Here’s a few tips, we like sarcasm, wit and humor. Good luck!

Details

The Underground @ PDC 2009 – An invite only event taking place after the PDC conference. Sponsored by INETA, Microsoft and local Southern California partners. We hear this is one party you don’t want to miss. See pics from last year’s event.

Date: Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Time: 7:00pm to 1:00am

Location:
The Conga Room
800 W Olympic Blvd
Stes A160 and A260
Los Angeles, CA 90015

(Photo from chelliepingree.com)

This Week In Events: November 16 -22

Laurie Percival — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:30:45 +0000

There’s a lot happening in Los Angles this week. Choose carefully, you won’t be able to attend everything. Unless of course you are Mike Prasad, who somehow makes it to multiple events a night.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Digital LA- Sci-Fi Panel @ Star Trek: The Exhibition – Sci-fi movies rank at the top of the box office: Transformers 2 is #1 for the year so far, plus Star Trek, and Monsters vs. Aliens. Sci-fi TV shows includes remakes like award-winning Battlestar Galactica and highly-anticipated V. Join them for a discussion on online sci-fi communities and marketing sci-fi to the mainstream, on the day before the Star Trek movie DVD release and in the Star Trek Exhibition.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Star Trek: The Exhibition @ Hollywood & Highland
6801 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA

Tickets: $19 advance registration required by November 16th at 4pm

Myspace Redcarpet Livestream of Twighlight New Moon Premiere – fans of ‘The Twilight Saga: New Moon’ can experience the Los Angeles premiere, exclusively on MySpace. Anya Marina, writer and performer of “Satellite Heart” on the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, will co-host the broadcast with the winner of the Red Carpet Correspondent Contest.

Time: 6:00pm

Location: anywhere with a computer and an internet connection

Tuesday, Novembers 17, 2009

GIT LA Presents: The Impact of Tech on Good & Green – taking a look at how the tech industry is jumping on the green bandwagon and what kind of impact it will have on the industry and on the good and green companies it supports. The panel will also discuss how we as business people can do some good and make money in the process.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
The Organic Panaficio
4211 Admiralty Way
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292

Tickets: $10 RSVP
*A portion of the ticket sales will go to Free Arts For Abused Children

SMCLA November Corndog Social – Simply keep next Tuesday night open for a rockin’ good time.

Time: 7:00pm to 9:30pm
Location: To be determined
Tickets: No RSVP yet

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Time: 7:00pm to 1:00am

Location:
The Conga Room
800 W Olympic Blvd
Stes A160 and A260
Los Angeles, CA 90015

Tickets: Invite only, you must have an RSVP code to attend. Thankfully we were given 10 tickets to give out at our discretion. Details on how to enter are listed in a separate post on lalawag.

The Los Angeles MySQL Meetup Group - join them for an evening of networking and conversation regarding performance optimization for MySQL with InnoDB & XtraDB and updates on Infobright. Hosted by Joe Devon and Scott Metcalf with guest speakers Carl Gelbart and Morgan Tocker.

Time: 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Location:
Sun Office in El Segundo
222 N. Sepulveda Blvd
El Segundo, CA 90245

Tickets: Seating is limited, RSVP deadline is November 18th at 6:00pm

Digital LA – Video Game Marketing panel @ OTX – Join them for a panel discussion on console video games (xbox, PS3, Wii) trends and marketing. They’ll discuss marketing both hardcore (action/shooter) and mainstream (music, party) games, niche and portal strategies, social media, and more.

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
OTX Research
10567 Jefferson Blvd
Culver City, CA

Tickets: $22 Space is limited, Advanced registration required by Nov 18 at 3pm

Mindshare Event – Program for November 18th includes:

Alex Lightman / Executive Director of Humanity Plus – The Ten Minute Transhumanist
Jamie Zigelbaum / Oblong Industries – Augmenting Human Intellect
Alexandra Hall / CEO, Airship Ventures – Zeppelin Tourism Takes Off
Dr. Tristan Ursell / Adventurer & Biophysicist, Stanford – Off Silk Roadin’: A Rally Across Eurasia!

Time: 7:00pm to 1:00am

Location:
Downtown Independent
251 S. Main Street
Los Angeles, Ca 90012

Tickets: $25 Early bird $30 Regular

Thursday, November 19, 2009

DIY Days LA 2009 – an evening of talks and networking, with a mix of both structured and free form activities to encourage open discussion. Plus the night will end with a rooftop party.

Time: 6:00pm to 11:30pm

Location:
Downtown Independent Theater
251 S. Main Street
Los Angeles, California 90012

Tickets: Free but you must register in advance

Friday, November 20, 2009

Digital LA – Digital Drinks @ Janes House – Join the digital la folks for their pre-Thanksgiving Digital Drinks at Janes House. After last month’s Halloween party at MyHouse, they are continuing their Cozy House Party tour at new Hollywood “House” hot spot, Janes House. Citysearch says this house party lounge “keeps things modern with bold earth tones, moody lighting and a DJ, with plenty of plush retro seating on the front porch patio under the stars, or in the jungle themed Monkey Room.”

Time: 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Location:
Janes House
6541 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA

Tickets: $10 advance registration required by November 20th at 4pm

Angels United Benefit – Stylit.TV is proudly co-hosting the Angels United Benefit to support Vitamin Angels, who supplies 10,000,000 undernourished children with vitamins to make them healthy. This is going to be a great night with celebs, a hosted open bar, a silent charity auction, gift bags, hors d’oeuvres, and more. All proceeds go to the charity, with the suggested donation is $35 (though if you give $100 you receive a special gift.)

Time: 7:00pm to 11:00pm

Location:
Marrakesh House
The famous eco-green, sustainable living, Marrakesh House, built by Hollywood’s legendary filmmaker, Chris Paine.
6310 Tompkins Way,
Culver City, CA 90232

Tickets: $35 recommended at the door RSVP

Start- Up Weekend- November 20th to 22nd – Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects. lalawag founder Sean Percival will be speaking on Sunday afternoon, be sure to check him out.

Time: Full Schedule here

Location:
BLANKSPACES
5405 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Tickets: $75

1920’s Film: There’s an App for That

Laurie Percival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:30:05 +0000

Roaming around the iPhone app store I ran across this little gem, Vintage Video Maker. It takes any video you have on your iPhone and lets you alter it to look like a silent movie complete with piano music and all. Boring mundane footage has never been so interesting.

Here’s a video I had on my phone of the lalakitteh’s going crazy over catnip. I applied a few of the techniques they suggested and voila!

I can tell this app is going to be a lot of fun, though it does have a few drawbacks. You have the ability to do black and white, speed up the frames, and add piano music, but once you set the selections, you cannot edit them again. I would like to be able to preview how the video is going to look before saving.

Your completed video automatically saves in your photos section, which is great because you can then just email, MMS or send it to YouTube. It would be nice if there was an easy way to share it on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube directly from the app. Hopefully some of these features will be added in later.

Additional features of the app include 60’s style home video effects and the ability to adjust the speed of the frame however you like. Overall I think it’s worth the three dollars but before you rush out and download it you should know that you must have the iPhone 3GS for the app to work.