This past week was a pretty significant event in the web2.0 world – at least to people who follow startups and Techcrunch. This week was the equivalent of the web emmy’s for startups, called the Techcrunch 50. Most startups presenting had absolutely no business model. Except one that really stood out. And, it not only stood out, but the guys at Yammer took top prize.

I’ve been a pretty active twitterer for quite awhile now. It’s quite addictive and impossible to explain. Here’s one way we discussed today at the office in an attempt to explain it:

• Phone calls are for urgency
• Emails are for content and detail
• IM is for immediacy
• SMS is for quick confirmations
• Blogs are for news and commentary
• Wikis are for knowledge sharing
• Twitter is for casual, micro conversations

With so many different ways to communicate, and so much more information available at all times, it’s becoming very difficult to manage our digital lives. However, on the other hand, we have more and more tools at our disposal.

If you don’t twitter, it’s probably hard to understand. I’d urge you to try it — but I warn you: you’ll probably hate it initially and give up quick. But, it’s one of those transformative events that will happen and you will “get it”. It’s OK – some people never get it (and shouldn’t). Others get it pretty much right away.

Yammer gave me one of those a-ha moments this morning. When I heard about Yammer, I thought, “hmmm…. that’s very interesting and obvious”. I signed up (it was a great experience) and invited a few people around me. They all joined within a few minutes. I started yamming (what do you call it?) — and within not too long — I decided to invite the rest of our employees. Within a few hours, everyone had joined (except one person who was traveling). And by the end of the day today (remember, we signed up mid-morning Pacific time), we had already had 11 members, 3 tags and 105 posts.

Yammer is twitter – but for business communications. It essentially is a clone; with finer control and a decent revenue model. With Yammer, you can use it for free. However, if you pay $1 per user per month, you unlock a number of enterprise features such as access control features (IP ranges), custom logos, etc.

Yammer will be a very powerful internal tool for communication – especially for passive information that can be followed or produced as desired. It’s much less invasive than email, a lot less urgent than a call, and provides a nice way to organize content across the company.

It’s especially nice for distributed teams like ours. We have people now in Atlanta, Texas and California. This is a nice way to bring everyone together in ways that aren’t possible with email or phone calls. It allows everyone to participate in cross-concerns across our organization.

Congratulations on the Yammer team. This is a great product.

As a parting note, there are others that are clamoring for this market as well. One that announced a little prematurely, namely because of Yammer’s announcement this week, was Present.ly. I haven’t been able to do a review yet of their application, but it looks similar and they seem to have quite a number of nice features as well and they’re ready to rumble. Ahhh, the fighting entrepreneurial spirit is so refreshing.

So, if you already twitter or are now considering it: you can follow me on twitter for random, sometimes useless, sometimes interesting tweets. You never know what might happen….

We announced SoCon08 just a few weeks ago. I’m a little late to actually talk about it here because I’ve been traveling and extremely busy with the holidays.

And low and behold, Len announced today we’re already at 70 people registrants after just opening it up over a week or so ago.

If you don’t know what SoCon08 is — check out the details at the website.

SoCon08 is the 2nd annual social media event in the southeast. We started SoCon07 last year and had a huge turnout. This year looks to be even bigger and better. Last year’s event really expanded my network and I met some really great people through SoCon – including Grayson Daughters, Len Witt, James Harris, Tony Stubblebine, Amani Chanel, Joe Reger, Josh Hallet, Josh Watts, Michael Mealling, Raghu Kakarala, Michael Alvear, Jody Davis, Sherry Heyl, Adam Shafran and Lee Kantor — just to name a few of the many great people that made a difference in my life last year.

But if you haven’t signed up – you might consider doing it now. We have a limit and I anticipate like last year, we’ll sell out way before the event. You might also want to check out some of the participants already registered.

I’ll be hosting a table on entrpreneurship for Friday nights networking dinner. And on Saturday, I’ll be opening up the session with some short thoughts on where things have come and where things look to be going. Chris Heuer will be the keynote for the morning session and like last year we’ll break into individual discussion sessions unconference-style. I look forward to hearing about Chris’ perspective and how he sees things evolving in the social media context.

If you’re interested in demoing your wares in the afternoon session, please drop me a line for more details and to get your name in the hat.

We still have a couple of spots left for sponsorship. If you’re interested in a potential event sponsorship, please let me know for a sponsorship kit.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Tech Tags: socon08 socialmedia atlanta georgia socon

Lance Weatherby is bringing Startup Weekend to Atlanta on November 9th, 2007.

In Lance’s own words:

Essentially the idea is to get a bunch of smart people in a room over a weekend and build some type of Internet app. I think there are enough people here in Atlanta to make this a success. My goal in putting this together is to improve the Atlanta startup community. I hope that you will seriously consider joining in. I think it will be an enriching and immersive experience where you will learn by doing and meet a lot of interesting people with common interests and skills.

Startup Weekend was created by Andrew Hyde and they’ve had a past event in Boulder, Colorado and have a number of upcoming events in Toronto, NYC, Hamburg, Germany, Houston, Boston and D.C. (and now, Atlanta). The basic premise is to bring people together and attempt to incubate a concept to a company – all in 3 days. This is the ultimate expression of “let’s do this”. While it takes more than 3 days to get a company off the ground, no doubt, with the right combination of experience and passion – you can get a long way in the process when you concentrate effort.

I like it. I’m going to attend. Are you?

Quick update on Barcamp Atlanta. It’s been almost 7 days since I first launched the official sign-up page and we have only 10 slots remaining. If you would like to attend or know someone who is planning on attending and have not signed up, please do so now. It looks like we’ll be closing registration in the next few days. I’m impressed how fast we spread the word and got the group set. We’re going to have a lot of fun, learn a lot from each other and forge new relationships. I love forward to meeting you and spending time with you.

technorati tags: startupweekend, atlanta, barcamp, startup

Barcamp Atlanta is coming to town on October 12-13, 2007. The official sign up page is now available at http://www.barcampatlanta.com.

Because we have limited space, we can only accommodate 100 people on a first come, first serve basis. If you’d like to attend, please sign up now. If you’d like to bring someone with you, make sure you sign them up as well.

We also have a couple of other resources currently that might be helpful:

Barcamp Atlanta Facebook Group

Barcamp Atlanta Wiki

If you would like to volunteer to help, please email me at jhaynie AT gmail dot com.

We have 2 sponsorship slots left, if you are interested in sponsoring this event, please email me at jhaynie AT gmail dot com.

technorati tags: barcamp, atlanta, georgia, unconference

It’s been almost 9 months or so since I first sat down with Charles Shapiro to discuss the possibility of organizing a BarCamp here in Atlanta. Charles attended the BarCamp in Birmingham last year. Through a series of different events and twists, it’s taken a little longer than a lot of us probably wanted to make this happen. There have been some recent people driving making this happen – namely Michael Mealling, Stephen Fleming and Lance Weatherby – just to name a few.

Today we had our first IRC planning meeting and made a lot of progress. I’m proud to announce that we have a date, venue, 3 out of 5 sponsors, wiki, logo and we’re well on our way to making the event a reality. There will be more coming in the next couple of weeks – including a signup page and more badges, flyers and details on the event itself.

First, the essentials:

Save the date: October 12th and 13th, 2007
Location: Georgia Tech Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Tech Square in Midtown Atlanta

Because of space constraints, this event will be limited to the first 100 people that register once registration opens. We will be opening registration within the next 2 weeks and will announce more here as well as on our wikipage for how to register online. In the meantime, you can visit this page to add your name to the tentative list – however, this will not be sufficient to register. We will attempt to contact everyone on this list first before we announce public registration – but you must signup on the official registration page to get a confirmation of attendance. This is a first-come, first-serve event.

If you would like to read more about what BarCamp is – please do so before you signup. We would ask that you do not signup if you are not willing to participate. This is not a spectator event. This is not an event for vendors to meet prospective customers. While with any event like this we want people to meet and possibly forge interesting relationships, we are most interested in creating an environment for people to share their experiences and knowledge with others – and learn from others that have their own to give.

If you would prefer to go to a conference or an event and sit in the back of the room, this event is not for you. If you signup, be prepared to present and talk about what you know and interact with others. The simple rules are:

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers.
When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

As in all BarCamps, this event will be completely free to all attendees. We provide this type of event because we have generous sponsors (yet to be announced) who believe in what BarCamp represents and a number of volunteers who want to make our community better and who believe that the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.

We are limiting sponsorship to five sponsors – 3 of which have been already selected. There are only 2 sponsorship spots left. If you are interested in sponsoring this event for a small fee, please contact me at jhaynie AT gmail dot com.

If you would like to get involved, there are a number of things can you do to help. First, blog and tell everyone you think can benefit from this event about it. Pass the word around. If you would like to assist with some of the various details pre-event or during the event, please let me know by contacting me via email.

Logo credit: Thanks for Patrick Fitzgerald for creating the original peach podcamp remixed logo and giving us permission to use it for Barcamp Atlanta!

On a personal note, I’ve been out of commission for the past month since FooCamp. I had a much needed vacation at Marco Island, Florida with the family and took a fews weeks off from blogging. Sometimes it’s time to not do something for awhile to realize how much you miss it. To answer everyone that’s emailed me privately wondering — I’m back to the blog!

technorati tags: barcamp, atlanta, unconference, georgia

I talk with a number of entrepreneurs on a weekly basis and hear dozens of ideas about the “next big thing” each time. It seems like there’s a new Web2.0 company launching every hour these days and I can hardly keep up with TechCrunch to keep tabs on everything that’s happening. So, generally, when something interesting comes along – it’s a little easier to see – given all the clutter around.

Today was one of those super special days when I heard about a product (via Twitter of course) and instantly got it – and within a few minutes of seeing it and trying it out – got really, really excited. To me, this is the next big thing on the Internet. And, sometimes, it’s the simple ideas that make it.

Jason Calacanis, ex-Netscape fame, and his team today launched Mahalo (Hawaiian for “how may I help you?”). If you use it, you will immediately “get it”. At least, you should.

I think this site has the potential to change the way search works today – much like how google changed search many years ago. Will it change search in a way that will topple the giant? Probably not. Most likely, I predict, this company will be bought in the next 18 months. This is such a great idea – that it will disrupt search as we know it. The idea of human-powered search is so simple, but yet so brilliant.

I’m slightly partial to what they’re doing. Last summer, after the Vocalocity acquisition, Nolan, Jared and I took a few months to experiment with search and social content. It was an area of research that I was particularly interested in and we had a very similar idea (but our implementation of the concept wasn’t nearly as good as Mahalo). We wanted to try and solve the “relevancy” problem. While Mahalo is still a ways away from completing solving that — they’ve done something close. And, with some personalization and social networking capabilities mixed in – you’ll be able to link up your friends and extended network into more friend-based Mahalo “guides”. Imagine “tipping point” roles combined in relevant user-driven, search-based content.

This will be one company and product to watch evolve. And given the team, I’m sure it will be a success.

technorati tags: mahalo, search, socialsearch, web2.0

I got a pleasant gift a few hours ago when I received the following email from Tim O’Reilly and team:

WOW! How cool. I had some indication a couple of months ago that I might get an invite, but hadn’t really heard anything since then.

The idea of FooCamp is really pretty neat. It’s sort of an unconference of people from different technology and business areas — I guess people that O’Reilly wants to get together — and help facilitate conversations. This is the first time I’ve been invited and I look forward to meeting some interesting people – especially given that I’m sure most people who are invited won’t be from the south … Represent.

technorati tags: foocamp, oreilly

Today, we released Southern Fried Tech.

Southern Fried Tech is a place for people interested technology and media to congregate in the Southeast U.S. This is a micro social network based on a specific set of content produced by people in a specific region. The idea is that you’ll be more interested in your peers in a specific region that you connect with online and offline. Our first most important feature is content aggregation of people in the network. However, we have a long list of ideas on what we’re going to add next.

However, this is a social network and social content for you. We intend to develop features that the community wants – and expand the site with features that help you get more relevant information to what you’re looking for. Let me know what you’d like to see next.

Some of the current targeted features:

• More detail local events (currently, we’re pulling from upcoming.org based on your zipcode)
• Job postings
• New postings for regional companies
• Ability to push new content (outside of blog) into the system
• Discussion forums
• Integrated comments from blog-to-site and back
• Expanded social networking features and ability to find others that have similar interests based on what you blog about and take interest in.
• Expanded filtering and search of content and people
• Company directory

Of course, this list will change based on what we see and hear from people interested in the network.

As far as the video podcast, we’re going to continue to produce the video blog (most likely quarterly) and will introduce a more frequent podcast show soon.

We’ve worked hard to pull it all together. We’ve also worked hard on cross-browser support so you should be able to use the site on IE6/7, Firefox 1.5/2, Opera and Safari. As well, check it out on your mobile phone to get a more optimized version for your hand held device.

Like all fun in technology, there are many things we’ve missed and things that don’t work perfectly. If you run into an issue (either functional or visual), please please please let us know. We want to make it as perfect as we can. We’ve already had a slew of new user signups and suggestions for enhancements. Thanks to everyone who’s helped make this possible.

technorati tags: southernfriedtech, atlanta, georgia, socialnetwork

Last week, Nolan and I met with Adam Shafran and Lee Cantor (hosts of the Dr. Fitness and Fat Guy radio show). It was a nice get together over pizza. Lee told us about his son, Max, wanting to get on the radio like he was doing. And, after a few sessions later and some help from grand dad – we now have Kid Power Radio.

Of course, if Lee’s son is doing it – you wouldn’t be surprised to find Grayson Daughter’s daughter Ava to be one of his first guests – how appropriate. I let Jared listen to the 2nd episode this weekend – and he thought it was funny. He especially thought it was cool that Max watched the same TV show he’d also watched that week.

Have they now started a new trend in podcasting? Not parent-to-kid podcasting – there seem to be plenty of those out there. No, this is much different – and much cooler. This is kid-to-kid. Wow, now that’s a concept.

Lee told me this past week they had over 100 downloads for the show. That’s incredible. By the time his kid is 12, he’ll have plenty of sponsorship money and a full-ride to college. I’m waiting for Ava to have her own vidcast on Youtube next.

technorati tags: kidpower, radio, podcasting, atlanta, georgia

This morning I bum rushed the charts and purchased Mine Again by Black Lab on iTunes. I had never heard of the song until I found out about the “bum rush” plan awhile back. However, after listening to the song back then, I really liked it. Yet again, both the long tail and social music revolution in work. This is also basically what I term “social transactions” – transactions by which the social network decides to make (or withhold).

Why don’t you join by purchasing the single right now? (NOTE: this link will open iTunes and take you to the store for purchasing).

technorati tags: bumrushthecharts, socialmusic, itunes, mineagain, blacklab