| Unboxing the Industry Achievement AwardsBy Marcelo Calbucci |
[I couldn't think of a better, less-boring title, hence the absurdity.]
Ken Myers, the CEO of the WSA invited me to blog about the WSA Industry Achievement Awards, and how could I say no to free food and free drinks?
I think I've been only once to the Westin and the facilities were pretty darn good. I think it's better than W or Sheraton.
I won't write about everything that was said already by John Cook (name, YouTube, Dave Ross, bad predictions) and by Brier Dudley (winners, YouTube demo failure), but will give a different view in a few things...
The Press Pass
Shocking. I had a ribbon that read "Press" on my badge. When John Cook saw it he freaked out. Seriously, freaked out. 
And I did the only thing an honorable person could do in a moment like this. I told him it was a mistake. Some people study years to become professional journalists, and I just write this scrappy blog. I don't even do it for a living (and never plan to do so), I write because I love...
The Startup Angle
So the WSA, now called WTIA, wants to reach out to the startup community. I think they realized they neglected their main source of future members for a while and they want to address that. The good thing is that they want to change and they are not so much resource constrained like other organizations because of the deep pockets of MSFT, RNWK, AMZN and a few other members.
They still don't know what they are going to do and are very open to suggestions.
The only reason for a startup to attend this event would be to...
Networking
According to Ken Meyrs, there was about 750 people there. As soon as I got there I saw Kabir Shahani (Apparture), than Dan Rosen (AoA), Mike Mathieu, Nathan Kaiser (nPost), Josh Maher (Lunch 2.0), Brian Dorsey (Noonhat), Eric Monsowitz (Maveron), and a lot of other people.
The problem with a networking event w/ 750 people is that you just miss a lot of them. I couldn't find Geoff Entress, Brier Dudley, and a few other people I wanted to talk to.
Bottom line is, I prefer networking events that have between 50-200 people.
And there was a good number of entrepreneurs and investors, but, of course, the service providers were there in full force, including...
SolutionsIQ
And you might ask what those 750 people do for a living? Well, about 400 of them work for SolutionsIQ, one of the sponsor. Just kidding, but there was probably 100 of them and they kept multiplying during the event, you know, like Agent Smith. No kidding, I couldn't take 10 steps in any direction without another person from SolutionsIQ introducing her/himself to me. I wonder how much they spent on parking fees. Probably more than it costed to sponsor the event.
The food
The appetizer was good, but the mini-cheeseburgers were so, so, so... why the hell are they serving mini-cheeseburgers as appetizers? Make it a full bacon cheeseburguer and help us get some serious calories into our love-handles.
The YouTube presentation.
One word: Fail. The A/V aspects of the event were pretty bad in general. The most interesting thing was a footer at the YouTube presentation that read "Google confidential and proprietary". Ok, I guess we'll keep just between the 750 of us. Hush hush.
The Awards
NextIT claim to be about Natural Language. I found it boring. Absolutely nothing new.
The video of the CEO of Zumobi was so full of techno-jargon that I'm sure 3/4 of the audience had no clue what he was talking about.
My next critique is about Inrix that won the Technology Innovator of the Year... Whaaaaat???? Sorry, I don't know Byran Mistele, and he might be a brilliant innovator, but Inrix was a spin-off of Microsoft and he was an "executive at Microsoft" (according to Inrix site). By definition, Microsoft executives don't innovate and spin-offs are spin-offs. They were "incubated" inside Microsoft. BTW, what they do is pretty cool independent of who created it.
I just realized Yapta should marry TripIt. Yapta is valuable, but with TripIt-like technology it will hit out of the park. Same way around. Now the question becomes who can deliver the entire "travel organization/refund" solution first, Yapta or TripIt? My guess is on Yapta, because their technology is harder to duplicate, while TripIt can be done in a couple of months by some good developers.
TravellingWave... I think it's cool, but I didn't get it. Their founder was not the most well-spoken person. He looked very smart but not good at making a business case.
Finally, a shout out to Ken Myers that performed very well as a host and the first speaker. Ken has this tone of voice and pace that is very, very easy to follow and understand.
Next Year...
I'll probably attend again.
Comments 
January, 2007
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