Under the Radar… it lives!
In 2003, I worked with IBDNetwork to launch an event series called Under the Radar. The idea was this: We picked a startup theme (event #1 was Wi-Fi startups), lined up a few good early-stage companies, and got them to present to a panel of venture capitalist judges, who then voted on the companies' prospects, American Idol-style. We also polled the audience at each event to see which companies they liked -- their results were often different. I moderated a bunch of these evening events, and found them a lot of fun, and very informative. I guess the format worked, since the audience size grew from event to event.
When I went to work for CNET full-time, about a year ago, I reduced my involvement with IBDN, but the Under the Radar series has continued to grow and flourish, and recently the IBDN team launched a series of full-day Under the Radar events. I'm participating as a moderator in one of these events, on May 31, at the Microsoft conference center (map) in Mountain View, CA. I'm handling two sessions:
Social Software Tools @ 1:00 pm
Presenting companies:
Blog/RSS Tools @ 2:45 pm
Presenting companies:
I'm looking forward to learning about these companies (and getting some good blog and column material). If you are interested in attending, tickets are available on Acteva. More information about the event is on the IBDN site. They also have a blog about the event, and I'm told there are blogger passes available (if you are interested, contact Valerie Cunningham).
If you come to the event, come find me after the RSS session and tell me which companies you liked…
Fantastic concept- an idea who's time has come.
Could be the model that really "takes off".
Could it be "big" enough to end up on tech TV?
Posted by: Windy Moore | May 26, 2005 at 07:32 AM