
On the Ethic of Delivery – Required Watching
Over the past few years I’ve been a kind of informal adviser to the Defrag event. The role is less than onerous, Eric Norlin totally understands what his participants (and at defrag, attendees really are participants and not simply an audience) most want to see. Defrag has always been a

Mind Blown at Defrag
Defrag is an unusual conference. The simplest way to describe it as TED for geeks. Lots of these tech folks are really smart, and when given a forum to speak about whatever they want might result with interesting ideas. The conference creator, Eric Norlin, figured there is no shortage of cloud, social business, mobile, etc. events, but […]

Upcoming Conference: Defrag
Coming up next is Defrag – this is a pretty unique conference. Unlike most of my events that are focused on telecom, this one is a bit of a tangent. The content is phenomenal. The conference is 5 years old, and organizer Eric Norlin works to keep it intimate. Eric describes Defrag as the first […]

Is there a disconnect between Big Data and the Web of Data ?
Image via Wikipedia ‘Big Data‘ is currently capturing the imagination, attracting hype, investment and ambitious startups in almost equal measure. Kim and Eric Norlin’s excellent Defrag and Glue events have gained big-name company, with O’Reilly‘s Strata and GigaOM‘s Structure both set to arrive in the first quarter of 2011. Venture firms like IA Ventures have emerged, specifically […]

Software is Roadkill
The fastest way to become roadkill to venture capitalists is to become a software company. Software may not be inherently evil (it has created wealth for many people that is in proportion to the pain it has provided to many customers). Software and specifically on-premise enterprise software, however, is clearly…

“Why don’t you move it to California?”
It’s a question that I hear probably 6-8 times per “conference cycle” (ie, 6 to 8 times per year for every conference I run): “Why don’t you move Defrag to California?” Now admittedly, my personality bristles a bit at the suggestion. Over the years, I’ve tried to find ways to stay calm — but I’ll […]

CloudAve Special: 3 – No, 5! – Free Tickets To Defrag
Every year, when we get depressed about the darkness that is going to engulf many of us on the northern side of the country after the Daylight Savings time change, the only thing that keep our spirits up is the upcoming Defrag Conference. No this is not a hyperbole but a fact which many of the […]

29 Days and Counting
We’re 29 days from Defrag, and things are about to all fall into place. The final agenda gets posted this week. The registrations are rolling in. The amazing people are prepping to gather. And you do NOT wanna miss what’s sure to be our best Defrag yet. With that in mind, here’s how Morning 1 […]

Glue is Coming – Win Free tickets
In less than two weeks I’ll be winging my way half way around the world (for the third time this year). So why do I put myself through it? Well in part because I get to attend such awesome events as one I’ll be taking part in at the Omni Interlaken in Denver in a […]

T Shirt Friday #32 – defrag
Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with […]

T-Shirt Friday #23 – Defrag
Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with […]

A podcast with Flip Kromer of InfoChimps… and the end of an era
I’ve been following InfoChimps for some time, intrigued by their aspiration to build a marketplace for data that combines the free with the paid. Thanks to the team at Jones-Dilworth (honestly, does Josh have any clients that aren’t interesting?) I managed to get some time with founder Philip (Flip) Kromer and Joseph Kelly whilst over […]

A podcast with Felix Van de Maele, discussing Collibra
Steve Ardire introduced me to Felix Van de Maele, CEO of Brussels-based Collibra, at the Defrag conference in Denver last month. We met again at the European Semantic Technology Conference (ESTC), where Collibra won the seedcamp event. I spoke with Felix recently to record a podcast exploring the issues that Collibra sets out to address […]

Twitter and the Ricochet Effect
Defrag came to Denver. I couldn’t go, which was particularly difficult for those of us going through conference withdrawal after three great days at Enterprise 2.0 in San Francisco. I’m a conference junkie. I like the excitement of live events. To me, industry conferences are Shakespearian theatre wrapped in a religious revival tent. Live events […]
EventVue Chatter – Sometimes the Simplest Ideas are the Best
By Ben Kepes on December 9, 2009
At the defrag conference in Denver in November, many attendees were intrigued, excited and committed users of a product from Colorado company EventVue. EventVue was founded in 2007 by Josh Fraser & Rob Johnson. And they’re alumni of the inaugural class of TechStars. Originally the EventVue offering focused on attendee list functionality, giving conference attendees […]
Posted in General, Product reviews | Tagged chatter, commenting, defrag, eventvue, FriendFeed, glue, inline, real-time, twitter