clearspring - the widget network.

This week there are two big events that Clearspring will be at. One on each coast.

On June 9 to 11th, O’Reilly’s Graphing Social Patterns conference will be in the Washington, DC area. Organized by our friend Dave McClure, the conference is one of the premier events that addresses and discusses the issues surrounding the Social Web. A West coast version of the event was held in San Diego back in March of 2008.

Clearspring will be at Graphing Social Patterns East in a BIG way. In addition to being a Gold Level sponsor, our CEO Hooman Radfar will be giving a talk on “Widget Strategies & Social Platforms” and our Director of Product Management for Analytics Jodi McDermott will be on a panel entitled “The Joy of Widgets: Everything You Want to Know But Were Afraid to Ask” with folks from CenterNetworks, Goowy Media, RockYou, and Sprout.

On June 11th in San Francisco, our friend and CEO of RateItAll Lawrence Coburn is moderating a panel with SF New Tech entitled “Widgets up the Wazoo!” Our Director of Business Development Mike Harkey will be sitting on the panel and demoing Launchpad.  There will also be representatives from Seeqpod, Gydget, Triggit, Add to Any, Disqus, and Sprout. This will be a great opportunity to hear about the issues around widgets from the leaders in the space.

If you’re going to be at either of these events, come find us and say hi.

Next week, a few of us are going to be on the road going to some really cool conferences.

I’ll be attending the Tech Cocktail Conference in Chicago, IL on May 29th. It’s being hosted and organized by our friend Frank Gruber and his comrade Eric Olson. They’re the duo that has held the Tech Cocktail mixer events all over the country.

The conference has a packed lineup. Speakers include Web luminaries such as Dick Costolo of FeedBurner, Jason Fried of 37signals, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV and many others.

I’d love to meetup with as many folks as possible. If you’re coming to the event, drop me a line - justin@clearspring.com.

Secondly, two of our engineers Roger Studner and Austin Fath (also company co-founder) will be attending the Google I/O conference in San Francisco on May 28-29th.

The conference is a great opportunity for developers to talk about how they can push the boundaries of Web applications and use Google’s different Web technologies. There will be sessions on things like “AJAX & JavaScript, APIs & Tools, Social, Maps & Geo, and Mobile.”

If you’ll be at the event and wanna meet up with Roger or Austin, just leave a comment in this blog post and i’ll make sure it gets to them.

Well, we’re all pretty excited for the conference Widget Web Expo. The leading experts from the widget industry will come together on June 16th to the 17th in New York City to discuss all issues within the industry, everything from a creative to technical.

Our very own CEO Hooman Radfar will be giving the opening keynote on the 16th. He’ll be covering how widgets can be utilized to have your content and marketing campaigns reach entirely new users or better engage your existing ones.

Secondly, our Director of Product Management for Analytics Jodi McDermott (aka WidgetGirl) will be speaking on widget analytics on the 17th.

If you’re going to be at the conference and see Hooman or Jodi, make sure you grab them and say hello. We’re all fun friendly people and love to meet new folks.

Also… if you wanna follow Jodi as she goes and presents at conferences, friend her on Twitter.

I’m excited because this weekend, April 18-20th, is PodCamp DC. It’s a “a free UnConference that helps connect you to other people interested in blogging, podcasting, video on the web, social networks and new media to learn, share and grow your new media skills.”

I’ll be speaking to podcasters on Saturday about the importance of “Making Your Video Shareable.” Should be a fun talk and discussion. Clearspring also has the pleasure of being a sponsor of the event. We’re psyched to be associated with it.

Unconferences are so much fun. They’re a great way to meet and collaborate with some of the smartest people in the industry. I’ve never been disappointed.

So… if you’ll be attending the event, drop me a note or find me and say hi. I’d love to meet-up.

Back by popular demand, local tech recruiter Robert Neelbauer and company are holding another Social Matchbox DC this evening. It’s an opportunity for Washington DC startups to meet local tech enthusiasts and job seekers. It’s kind of like start-up speed dating.

Our very own recruiter extraordinaire Ian Jones will be there representing Clearspring. We’re currently looking for people to fill numerous positions, like: Web Developer, Data Analytics, Java Engineers, Controller, Billing Analyst, Helpdesk/Desktop Jr. Level, Sr. Operations Engineer, and Yield Manager.

Clearspring will be sponsoring the food for the event this evening.

If you’re coming to the event tonight, make sure that you find Ian and say hello. If you can’t make it to the event, e-mail us at jobs@clearspring.com.

When I walked into the office yesterday morning, it dawned on me that I hadn’t been in the office for a week. I’ve been traveling and attending conferences so that I can meet and talk with as many of you as possible.

Last week I was in New York City for AJAXWorld. I filled in for our CEO Hooman Radfar at a talk he was going to give on “The Social Aggregator - Widgets Reshape the Social Web.” It went really well. We had the room filled with about 40 people. There was a lot of great discussion about how the Web is getting broken into pieces via widgets and about the current state of consumer-facing and enterprise tools that are bringing the pieces of the Web back together. For a good overview of the talk, check out Sean Michael Kerner’s post at InternetNews.

Unfortunately, I was only at AJAXWorld for the last day of the conference on Thursday. I had a fantastic time meeting people within the AJAX community and listening to some of the sessions. I would have loved to do more.

On Tuesday, I attended the SNAP Summit in San Francisco. It was also a fantastic conference. It focused on “the business and design of social applications.” This is such a fast growing space. It was a blast meeting a lot of the people who are behind the top social applications.

Some of the other highlights from the SNAP Summit was getting to hear from Dave Morin the Senior Platform Manager at Facebook and Jim Benedetto the Vice President of Technology at MySpace. I also had the pleasure of seeing two of my favorite bloggers speak: interface designer Joshua Porter from “Bokardo” and Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang from “Web Strategy by Jeremiah”. Later that night, Jeremiah hosted and helped organize a blogger dinner, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed.

So… what’s next? Next weekend I’m headed to Rochester, NY for BarCampRochester3, which we’re a sponsor of. As I’ve mentioned in the past, we’re big fans of BarCamps. They’re a great venue for getting folks together to discuss ideas around the Web, technology, and everything.

If you’re in Rochester, please drop me a line. I’d love to meetup. My e-mail address is justin@clearspring.com

Also… if there are any developer events happening in your area in the upcoming months, let me know about them. We’re always looking for new opportunities to get out there and meet with the community.

Our master of all things mobile Rich LaBarca will be speaking at the local user group Mobile Monday DC on Monday, March 17th at TeqCorner. He will give a talk and lead a discussion entitled, “Leprechauns? Demystifying The Mobile Content Value Chain.”

I have been to a few Mobile Monday DC events and they’re great opportunity to meet members of the local mobile industry. So come and join us on St. Patrick’s Day for discussion, good times, and probably pints of green beer later in the evening.

Just as I’m getting home from Austin, our CEO Hooman Radfar is going to be hitting the road again. He’s speaking at the Digital Hollywood Media Summit and AJAX World.

The Digital Hollywood Media Summit is in New York City, NY on March 12-13th. Hooman is speaking at a workshop on the 12th entitled “Widgets as a Platform: Content, Commerce, Communications.” He’ll be speaking with folks from RockYou, KickApps, Slide, MuseStorm, and Turner Broadcasting System. Sun Yung of Oppenheimer & Co will moderate.

AJAX World is also in New York City, NY from March 18-20th. Hooman will be giving a talk on “The Social Aggregator - Widgets Reshape the Social Web.”

As always, if you see Hooman or any Clearspring employee at an event or a conference, come up and say hello. We’re quite the friendly bunch. We always love meeting folks who are doing new and interesting things on the Web.

This last week I had a blast in Miami at BarCampMiami and Carsonfied’s Future of Web Apps. It’s obvious that there is a vibrant Web and technology community in Miami as well as Florida in general, which is really exciting.

BarCampMiami hosted more than 300 people. Numerous sessions were given on a variety of topics. Many folks gave demos on the projects or applications they were working on. Some of the memorable demos for me were Aviary, Santiago Siri’s demo of Popego, and Kevin Marks discussions of the Social Graph API. I also spoke on “Widgets: Your Content. Everywhere. (.pdf of slides)” to a packed out a room.

Special kudos to the BarCampMiami organizers: Alex de Carvalho, Brian Breslin, Chris Saylor, and Nick Dominguez. It was a great event and I’m glad Clearspring got the chance to sponsor. I hope to come back next year. If your city is doing a BarCamp, drop me an e-mail. I’d love to hear about it and possibly come out..

Future of Web Apps was also a blast. Seeing speakers like Kathy Sierra from Creating Passionate Users and Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV was a highlight. By far, the best part was all of the different friends I was able to make during the breaks and party after the event, like the FreshBooks guys, Jose Castillo, and many more.

Kudos to Ryan Carson, Mel Kirk and the Carsonified Crew for making Future of Web Apps a great event! I’ll definitely be back

I look forward to meeting more of you a future events around the country, like SXSW.

Well the fun doesn’t stop after BarCampMiami/Future of Web Apps or Graphing Social Patterns. Here at Clearspring we’re continuing to travel to developer conferences around the country to meet with as many of you as possible.

Next up on the docket is Microsoft’s annual MIX conference in Las Vegas from March 5 - 7th.

One of our ninja developers Dylan Greene will be representing Clearspring at MIX. He’s been working on a demo video to unveil at the Show Off competition about how the Clearspring widget platform will support Microsoft Silverlight. If you see Dylan, make sure that you stop him and say hello.

On Friday, I’m also heading out again. I’m off to the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference, in Austin, TX from March 7 - 11th.

I’m really excited about SXSW. It will be my first time. A lot of my friends have gone for the last three or four years and have regaled me with their stories of meeting up with developers from all around the world.

My goal is to meet up with as many people as possible. If you’re going to be at SXSW, drop me an e-mail at justin@clearspring.com.