I went to a conference on Thursday and Friday. Not the kind where a thousand people meet in a hall. This was an opportunity to visit a workplace of a company, in a group of 20 or 30 people. Most of the host companies have a business plan that features innovation. Conference is free, or you can pay $90 to sign up a few days earlier.
The web page to select a company to visit –Organized by Time of day. Each hour and a half time slot. One hour presentation, and a half hour travel time to the next location. Twenty industry categories, color coded in a column on the right.
AIA SF Visited American Institute of Architects – AIA SF is on Sutter Street, in the Financial District. Presentation by Bonnie Bridges, partner in a firm that prepares workspaces for startups that just got a ton of money. She hopes her projects have a useful life of 5 or 10 years. Sigh.
CoLiving in the Western Addition. SF House Tour. Who are these people?
StumbleUpon – Groundbreaking startup from years ago. Suggests webites you might like. Sold several times. Most recently, EBAY sold it back to the founder. I couldn’t get to SOMA district fast enough. The subway train never came.
AppMesh – Founders worked at SalesForce.com for six years. SalesForce is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) company. Two ideas, 1. Sales managers love it but salesmen have too much work required. 2. You are going to use your phone, not your computer. They got 3 million backing to spend. Rented prime space on Grant Ave, a block and a half from Chinatown.
See their workstations pushed out of the way for the presentation.
650 Townsend – A building housing 20 startups. Toastmasters Officer training happens next door at 600 Townsend. The largest tenant is Practice Fusion. They produce freeware for health records. Doctors get to pocket more money instead of paying many thousands for the Epic medical records system. Supported by ads for Pharma products. Also easier to learn than Epic.
Game tables at 650 Townsend.
USF Professors. New Data Science curriculum. Remember when Computer Science was a new curriculum? Undergrad curriculum 4 years and masters 1 year program.
Hightail – The only host company I visited that was serving free beer. Began as YouSendIt. Allowed you to send bigger attachments than email. Now you can store all your files there. Very technical presentation. This woman didn’t pay the $90. She paid $40 to park her car.
NewCo07a SeaGlass Restaurant – At the Exploratorium. The presentation theme was they want your food to raise questions in your mind. The plight of the honeybees. They served a sample dish of honey in the honeycomb wax. You could chew on that for awhile.
New home of the Exploratorium,
