Technology and PR networking events for January 2010, plus a review of TechCrunch (#xmascrunch)

Tuesday's TechCrunch for the UK and Europe's vibrant start-up sector, organised by @mikebutcher, @PetraJohansson and @rassami, was excellent. This now-regular gathering provides a place and a space for the latest thinking in the technology space, attracting start-ups such as Catwalk Genius, established businesses such as Skype, VCs and angels such as Balderton, as well as journalists, PR and SEO communities. Here is an excellent review of the day's proceedings by Basheera Khan.

In front of an audience of almost 1,000 (including those via live-streaming) key notes speeches delivered by TweetDeck, Festbuzz, Seesmic, The Filter and Tweetmeme provided some interesting insights into developments in the Web 2.0 space. Key themes for 2010 that came up again and again were hyperlocal, sentiment analysis, and real-time.

Here a selection of my Tweets from the day:

• Tweetdeck - has 19% of non twitter based applications
• Tweetdeck 10million downloads to date - but what's next! Funding, services eg: LinkedIn, updates to directory, mobile
• Tweetdeck essentially locks people in via lists/organised experience
• Sentiment companies are chasing the Holy-Grail. There will always be a trade-off in real-time.
• What does 'real-time' mean to you? Immediate? Soon? Later?
• It is reputation, content, context or location that makes information relevant
• Same content different delivery: successful paywalls are rare
• Location in online delivery is going to be a significant theme for next year. 09: cloud + real time, 10: real time + hyperlocal
• Quality journalism is not dead, long live quality journalism
• Info about info is more valuable than the info itself
• Vertical and real time is where the true value of search lies

Networking is an essential part of building any business. January 2010 is much quieter (probably due to detoxing requirements after December's frenzy of events), however here are just some of the technology and PR events happening up in London that we could find:

21/1/10: CloudCamp London - unconference style event striving to advance cloud computing
27/1/10: Digital Lounge - topic to be announced, but always a great group of people
28/1/10: MashUp - Apps: What's your strategy? - investigating the link between mobile web strategy and apps
2/2/10: First Tuesday - To charge or not to charge - though leadership seminar
15/2/10: The Debating Group - topic to be announced, but a great proper debate held in the heart of the House of Commons

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Cloud Computing: cutting through the hype

Last night I attended First Tuesday's networking seminar - 'The Future of Cloud Computing'. With an impressive line-up of speakers including Mat Clayton from Mixcloud, Stuart Hibbert from icomplete and Mike Wright from Striata, it provided a reality check to the current hype-cycle media clamour associated with all-things 'Cloud'.

Issues associated with the 'Cloud' were raised by most of the speakers, as well as the audience, time and time again. As Stuart succinctly put, these are: "Interoperability, security, reliability, performance, legal, portability, availability and management." And the costs associated with latency - by the micro-second - can be enormous: for example, a delay of half a second on search returns, Google loses 20% of potential advertising revenue.

A key point was also raised, that the 'Cloud' is certainly good for start-ups and projects due to its cost-saving benefits, however until standards such as the Cloud Manifesto (which looks at issues such as standards, security, evolution, access and discrimination, transparency, and interoperability) ensure that the sector matures, it is not a viable solution for larger global enterprises.

Striata's Mike Wright presented some fascinating case-studies that his company has worked on involving highly complex legal and technical issues associated with data transfers between the EU, America and China. He also highlighted the very real problems associated with the US Patriot Act. His obvious experience of having 'done it' was impressive.

And the closing words from Dell's Alastair Mcfadzean was that the cloud is an enabler. He said "Cloud is not about technology, it is about making IT efficient and more responsive to the business" - in other words, it is about businesses looking at their business models and adapting.

Ironically, one of the most well known Clouds that touches many of our lives - Googlemail - failed spectacularly, last night. There were thousands of tweets per minute of disgruntled, irate and upset users unable to access their Gmail accounts. This demonstrates how reliant we are on the 'Cloud' already - and even with a free-service there are massive expectations that it should be available and reliable.

Digital networking in London & Surrey - thebluedoor guide

We thought we'd share a list of digital networking events that thebluedoor attends on a fairly regular basis - based both in Surrey and London. If you can go along to any of these, please do say hello:

TEDxTuttle - Tuttle Club: a regular meet up (Brighton, Reading and London based) which tend to happen every Friday and lots of people on the circuit, generally freelancers, go. There is an interesting looking conference on the 17th September!
Measurementcamp - this is a regular meet up in London which discusses the merit of online measurement and tries to drill down into best practice. It is headed up by a big name in the industry – Will McInnes.
TechCrunch – there are a number of events that are organised by this publisher and it's an exciting environment to be in.
Open Soho – they have a Facebook page and event announcements are normally shared via @PaulWalsh on Twitter.
Chinwag – these events are excellent and they are beginning to go down a training route.
eConsultancy – really valuable events and an informative organisation overall.
NESTA – innovative and quite a unique organisation.
Sun Start-up Essentials – sponsored by Sun, these are really good events.
First Tuesday – these have a dot.com feel and actually happen every other Tuesday, usually pulling in some charasmatic speakers.
Mobile Guildford – very mobile focused, it is still growing in its popularity but we've enjoyed those we've attended.
The Hub – quite a public sector focus, but with a wide range of speakers.

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