I love conferences <3
I love attending them because of three things. The people I meet, the people I already know that I catch up with, and the panels/speakers I get to attend and learn from. All three of these help me to think of things in a new way and motivate me. This should be it’s own post at some point, so know until that time, I love conferences.
The Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference has really been great. I’m writing this paragraph as I’m sitting at a table next to Gary Vaynerchuk, Heather Herr, and Sally Strebel. All really great people that fall into the category of people I get to catch up with that I already know. But have no fear, I also met plenty of new people and caught some fantastic presentation. Below I am highlighting those presentation that I did catch.
I was waiting to put this out hoping there would be video for all of the sessions since there were professional cameras recording, but all I can find are the amateur videos taken with pretty horrible audio. So I’m posting anyway.
Bill Reichert and Howard Lindzon
The first session of the day was Bill Reichert and Howard Lindzon. Bill talked about the “Future of the Future”, a really great talk, and Howard had a fantastic talk where he said at one point, “A business is no longer too big to fail, but you should be too small to fail.”
Derek Neighbors, Andrew Hyde, and Dan Gillmor
The next session I attended was a panel entitled, “The Climate for Startups” manned by Derek Neighbors of Gangplank, Andrew Hyde of Startup Weekend, and Dan Gillmor of ASU Digital Entrepreneurship Program.
Pat Sullivan
Next was “Lessons Learned” by Pat Sullivan Sr. of Flypaper, but more notably the founder of ACT!. Pat had some great points, including:
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Read Everything – Never stop learning. Pat reads Techcrunch as often as he can.
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What distinquishes you from everyone else?
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Focus & Positioning
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No magic bullet
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Be fanatical about details
Matt Mullenweg
Next is Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress. Matt is great. A very funny guy for being so laid back. The main quote I remember from Matt is “Be a pain killer, not a vitamin.” He highlighted that vitamins cost less than a third of what pain killers cost. Lesson is there is much more money in fixing problems rather than preventing problems.
Chris Brogan and Jody Gnant
Next up was Chris Brogan and Jody Gnant. Theirs was an interesting presentation. They basically talked about why you should be on Twitter. Which, with this being an entrepreneurship conference, I’m curious how everyone thought about it that are not New Media entrepreneurs. I kind of cringed a bit, not because of Chris and Jody, but thinking that this turned into more of a Social Media conference with an entrepreneurial slant. So my cringing was me thinking about how things were going from the perspective of those non New Media savvy folks. They needed to hear it, but did they appreciate it? I hope so.
Chris Pirillo
Then we had Chris Pirillo remotely from Seattle being Chris Pirillo, which is a bit spastic. Not saying that is a bad thing, I’m just saying. He’s a spas. :) And I’m way more informed about coffee cups that change color with the temperature. I’m now writing this paragraph 5 days after the conference, and I honestly can’t remember what Chris talked about. But I don’t think that’s any fault of his, I think the video is just harder to concentrate, and I may have been writing the first 5 paragraphs of the post at that time too. :) oops
Gary Vaynerchuk
What can you say about Gary? He’s the only speaker that got a standing ovation… that says something. Gary is full of energy, he is encouraging, he makes you want to make things happen, and he knows his stuff. On top of that Gary is a heck of a guy. I’ve met him several times now, and from day one when I first met him at SXSW last year, he treated me and everyone else with respect and interest. Unlike many of the other New Media “stars” who are clearly way better than me and wish me to know that. Gary is different, thanks for that Gary.
Dan Willis
Finally, we have Dan Willis who had the very unenviable task of telling us about a new program from Microsoft, and he had just listened to about 12 hours of occasional Microsoft bashing. Not so much bashing, just negative comments, with no positive ones. He fielded it well though, and even got me to listen to what he had to say. He was announcing the start of Microsoft BizSpark. It looks interesting for Microsoft users, but I didn’t hear anything about a laptop with Windows to get me to sign up, so I guess I’ll keep plugging away on my Ubuntu Linux.
Francine Hardaway
Francine organizes the conference every year with the help of Brian Shaler and others, so a list of names would not be complete without hers. Thanks for the efforts to get great people to speak. The conference was a hit and well worth the money for a one day conference. I’m already looking forward to next year.
Dude/Dudette! Thanks for coming back, you make my day! :D Contact me at jeremy@jeremyvaught.com and let me know what you are up to.
Cheers!
--Jeremy
623.565.9801
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