4Prox

Gadget and Gathering: Tuesday Feb 12

The Mass Tech Leadership Council are holding a Mass technology frenzy on Tuesday Feb 12 at  Skellig Irish Pub at 240 Moody Street, Waltham, Massachusetts.  Read more at Dan Bricklin's Blog

This informal meeting encourages attendees to show off their cool gadgets and toys, mix and  be inspired  by  some  amazing technology.

By all accounts they've lined up  some interesting companies:

"Microsoft R&D (they have some cool projects), Black Duck, probably Google (a lot of Open Source work on Android is happening in Cambridge I understand), the One Laptop Per Child foundation (we'll have a few XO machines and I'll show off my Open Source spreadsheet running on it), someone with an Amazon Kindle, and hopefully someone from iRobot." Dan Bricklin

If you have a BlackBerry with GPS, why not let Proxpro Prompt (beta) get you to the right place at the right time.  Go to http://wap.proxpro.com/Prompt/ in your BlackBerry browser.  Hopefully I'll be able to give a live demo on the night.

Synectics Creates Barrage of Innovation

Small technology companies, through necessity, have to be self-sufficient in innovation. However on Friday November 10, Proxpro was invited to the offices of Synectics http://www.synecticsworld.com/system/clientsuccess.htm , the global innovation consultants for an “Ideation” session. This process is designed to create and implement break-through commercial products. With a customer list including Unilever, Coca-Cola and 3M, Proxpro jumped at the opportunity to work Synectics.

If this wasn’t lucky enough our three facilitators and co-contributors included Elizabeth McCulloch, Dan Howe and Dave Jendal, high fliers from YUM, the world’s largest restaurant company (YUM brands include Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell). Under the supervision of Marvin Smith, partner, and Elisa O’Donnell, principal at Synectics, Proxpro’s product and marketing strategy underwent an extraordinary review. A refined creativity process and the experience of top quality consumer marketing professionals created a barrage of wonderful innovations and opportunities.

Thank you to Elisa, Marvin, Liz, Dan and Dave for a great day.

 

Social Media Club (SMC), Boston, packed with people, energy and ideas

Last night Todd Van Hoosear of Topaz Partners visit the Topaz site  hosted an energized Social Media Club inaugural meeting in Boston. A big thanks to Todd for organizing the event and providing provisions.

Social Media as a subject, with its technology combinations and permutations, is like the old Carlsberg ad: it challenges the parts of the brain that other topics can not reach. Even with close to 100 people present the format was a relaxed and informative.

True to SMC’s mantra, “if you get it, share it” the evening was pitched to be inclusive. Beginners, intermediate and advanced were all present. If an acronym came up, proceedings were halted while a verbal wiki-type translation was made. It was a hugely stimulating evening.

As a suggestion for the future, to keep the experts engaged, it may be an idea to compose working groups to focus on different levels of complexity: a beginner’s introduction; intermediate drive traffic to your blog /podcast; advanced mash-ups; Let’s create the future group; and a “what planet are you on? group”…any thoughts?

It was great to catch-up with Todd Van Hoosear; Isabel Hilbornclick here to visit Isabel's blog; Leanne Chase from Zoominfo.com; David Evans from theprogressbar.com who I last saw at Boston University where we both spoke on Social networking,  click here to visit David's blog; and Brian Del Vecchio who this week launched www.Wis.dm click here  an innovative new social networking site that goes beyond Facebook.com, focused on professionals early in their careers, very exciting.

Looking forward to the next event.