Got a great startup idea and want to get the attention of someone that might be able to make your dream come true?

Then head over to Twitter and tweet your brilliant idea to @PerfectBusiness along with the hashtag #micropitch and you to might get the ear of Richard Branson, or at least some flunky that has the ear of someone who has the ear of someone  … well you get the idea. The main thing though is that this attempt at a viral campaign of some sort is intended to publicize a startup conference called – yup you guessed it – PerfectBusiness; which Branson is helping to get off the ground.

If you can fit your brilliance down to 111 characters you could be a winner which will get you the following

Winners will get two tickets to the conference, airfare to L.A. included, and business coaching to turn the Tweet into a meaningful, complete company plan. There’s even the chance Branson and team will choose your idea and get some VC funding on board.

Source: Fast Company :: Got Biz Idea? Tweet @Richard Branson 4 Chance 2 Turn in 2 Real Company

Got to admit it’s a great way to cut through the public relations bullshit startups like to wrap around themselves.

Use Twitter to get the ear of Richard Branson is a post from: The Inquisitr

Conferences can be a lot of fun especially when you get the ones that are dedicated to things that feed our imaginations. As much fun as they can be though there is no denying that we get to see the really strange and sometimes head shaking fans who take the whole conference going thing to heart.

Nowhere do we see this more than at things like the big comic conferences, such as the annual San Diego Comic-Con. Now I haven’t gone to any of these comic type conferences but I gotta tell ya if SDCC is any example of what happens I’m not sure I want to because there are some pretty strange folks out there. It’s one thing to be a fan but some of these people carry it a little too far I think.

The Smurfs?? … uhm how about a big No!

 [via newsarama]

And the sins of the father not to mention the silliness shall be visited upon their poor children.

[via StarWars.com Blog]

Apparently not even Lego’s are immune from being co-opted by their silly human overlords

[via StarWars.com Blog]

Anyone point these folks to the G.I. Joe Redneck Tailgate party please.

[via My Modern Metropolis]

Sorry dude but this Batman of yours – please go away before I puke or suffer a really bad acid flashback

[via My Modern Metropolis]

But then it can all be rescued by a gorgeous fan who does it right (yum)

 [via newsarama]

Comic-Con photos show how strange we can be is a post from: The Inquisitr

Did you know that in the next little while that there is going to be six major (?) conferences being held all on the single subject of Twitter?

Wow, pretty impressive eh. Just for those who might not know about them let me breakdown the list for you:

• 140 Characters Conference
• Media140 Twitter Conference UK
• TWTRCON SF 09
• 140/The Twitter Conference
• Perkins Madrona Twitter Conference 09
• Twitter Boot Camp

I have one simple question to ask – Why?

I mean seriously folks at what point does all this nonsense surrounding Twitter just get to be a little too much. This is a brain dead simple web app (even if Oprah screwed it up) that is becoming potentially less useful as time goes by. If it’s not being swamped by spammers it’s being taken over by marketers. Not to mention the fact that its one big drawing card, real-time search, sucks lemons.

How much can be said about Twitter that we really need to have all these conferences?

After all it’s not like the speakers at all these conferences are going to be limiting themselves to 140 characters in their speeches. The unfortunate part of this is that this is probably only the start of conferences dollars to be wrung out of Twitter.

Twitter silliness hits the conference circuit is a post from: The Inquisitr

While I wasn’t able to attend the SXSW conference on my own I know a couple of friends that were going to be there and so I figured that courtesy of the uStream embed that Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins (The Inquisitr man in the field) had on his page I would spend some time watching the goings on. Now it is pretty cool that we have things like uStream where we can watch live feeds of different meet-ups but in some ways I think we still have a very long way to go.

It is easy say that it is the spontaneity that makes these types of video streams fun and cutting edge but in some ways I think it contributes more to the amateurism of the medium as it stands today. One glaring problem I noticed was the sound quality which fluctuated between being totally absent to overly loud I spent much of my time with my fingers on the volume button for my speakers.

The one other thing that irritated me is not knowing the name of whoever was talking. It is especially bad if you happened to jump into the middle of a conversation. Would it really be so hard to add a little bit of professionalism by showing a quick overlay of the name of the person speaking. It’s not something that would have to be done all the time but come on anything is better than trying to follow a conversation and not having a clue who the person talking is.

uStream is really cool and having it as an option to be able to follow events like what is happening at SXSW is great but a little bit of professionalism in presentation sure couldn’t hurt.

Some thoughts about SXSW and uStream is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ve noticed a trend lately (actually I noticed it back when I worked at Microsoft and my bosses kept refusing to buy booths at conferences, saying they didn’t return the ROI, but that trend has grown and grown big time). Big companies are throwing their own parties to get news out inside of going to big trade shows. Last night I was at Facebook’s party, where they told everyone they had just passed 140 million users. That deserves a blog post of its own, but we’re here to discuss the trade show crunch.

Earlier in the year we attended a day-long event where Electronic Arts introduced a bunch of bloggers to Dead Space, here’s our video with the producer of that.

I’ve watched as Apple invites a few hundred bloggers and journalists into a conference room at its headquarters in Cupertino and gets the news out to the world without having to go to an expensive venue.

What changed?

Continue Reading >

Are bloggers & social networks killing the big shows? is a post from: The Inquisitr