So as of last night I am an official Sony Cierge (pronouced See-Urge) member. But what exactly is Cierge? I couldn’t find a website for it (that’s how exclusive it is I guess) but Wikipedia had a brief explanation:

The Sony Cierge Group is an invitation-only membership-driven premium support program offered typically to executives of large companies, celebrities, and other similarly-situated persons. Cierge Membership offers immediate access to upper-tier techs and immediate and on-site repair or replacement of any Sony product.

Well now I feel special. Thanks Sony for a fantastic dinner at Soho House. We had a chance to play with some of their new products and I left there in desperate need of BRAVIA… Just in time for my new apartment. My favorite little gadget though I have to say was the Rolly, an MP3 player that dances and flashes lights to the beat of the music. Check out the video below. How cute is that?! They might rename it the Break Dancer after last night.

My female social media counterparts, @juliaroy and @lucyblair, joined me for the fun. I had the pleasure of meeting another remarkable social media lady – Peg Samuel (@socialdiva), the CEO and founder of SocialDiva.com, a go-to resource for all you urban socialites. I did a search for “Soho House” on Twitter and it so happened that @socialdiva was sitting 10 feet away from me doing the same exact thing!

Stay tune for a follow-up review on Sony Cierge, “Insider Access to the Sony Experience”.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the second Mashable NextUp NYC, which brought together some of New York’s most successful web start-ups to share their experiences, challenges and lessons. Presenters included:

Scott Belsky, Founder and CEO of Behance
Philip James, CEO and Mark Angelillo CTO of Snooth
Melanie Notkin, Founder and CEO, Savvy Auntie
Michael Galpert, Co-Founder of Aviary
Closing presentation by Adam Ostrow, Editor-in-Chief of Mashable

Main take-aways from Behance

Behance creates products and service that organize the creative world to make ideas happen. Scott Belsky’s presentation was particularly inspirational. I had the pleasure of being one of the first people to test Behance’s Action Method project management tool while working as a Senior Agent at Undercurrent. It’s an excellent tool, specially when instituted within an entire team or organization.

1. Behance Network is nominated for a Webby for best portfolio/self-promotion category. Click here to vote.
2. Best practice upon reflection – they develop everything in house.
3. Hire based on initiative, not experience.
4. Find and try to solve frustrations
5. Operate with a bias towards action – They sometimes have standing meetings instead of sitting meetings at Behance.
6. Tilt the balance of power towards design. Being a design centric business that employs technology that follows design, not the other way around.
7. Value the experimental education as compensation
8. Darwinian Prioritization – based on the idea that actions should own their own ecosystem

Main take-aways from Snooth.com

Snooth is the world’s largest and fastest growing community of wine lovers.

1. Groucho Marx Syndrome – nobody wants to partner with you because no one has partnered with you.
2. As a start-up you don’t have the resource to do more than one thing well. You need to be like an F1 car – single minded, single goal, single use and do that one thing better than anyone.
3. Use what’s there, use what’s free, use what’s open, use it all.
4. Benefit from a thriving community – If others have been there, go there. Google everything related to your business, ask the mailing list and listen to bloggers.
5. Give back to the virtuous cycle – post your solutions, join the discussion and collaborate with others

Main take-aways from SavvyAuntie.com

The first community for cool aunts, great aunts, godmothers and all women who love kids.

1. SavvyAuntie is entirely self-funded and recently got nominated for a Webby in the family/parenting category – Click here to vote
2. Twitter @savvyauntie has been on her top 5 referrals since she launched last year and has lead to many press mentions and marketing opportunities.
3. Mashable’s first post about SavvyAuntie lead to her first advertising inquiry the first day she launched.
4. “Save your money for your legacy”. You might not know what your dream is now but when it comes to you having the resources to get it started is key. Read Melanie’s inspirational post “Wait for It”

Main take-aways from Aviary.com

Edit images, create mind-blowing effects, design logos, find colors, collaborate, and more. All you need is a web browser.

1. Design costs are higher than necessary because the amount of people who can use software to create art is limited.
2. Underlying magic of aviary – development focus on tool platform and shared code elements means that new tools can be built rapidly and efficiently. Community Focus – rights, royalties and attribute tracking, users communicate, teach and share, open API access.
3. Be open, listen to your community and think of ways to make things easier and more fun for people.

Main take-aways from panel discussion

NYC vs. Sillicon Valley

It is easier to find talent in New York because people are more passionate, pragmatic and less “drunk” on the technology buzz. The New York tech community is a more close niche group of professionals working more often on what they belief in. There has been a huge growth in the web tech industry in New York in the past two years. There is advertising money in NY but there are only about 15 venture capital groups and very few support consumer products. Sillicon Valley has over 600 venture capital groups, which can make it easier to find funding, but has also lead to a disconnect between technology and consumer needs.

How to get coverage for your start-up

Provide something that is post worthy. A pitch should tell a story that is easy to understand and relates to their audience of the outlet you’re pitching. Go where your journalist is, whether it be Twitter, Facebook, their blog, etc and engage in authentic conversations with them.

Thanks to DUB and Sun Startup Essentials for their sponsorship and Mashable for planning a great event.

Here are some unique last minute Halloween Costume ideas from my buddies around the web (I’ll be updating it throughout the day some come back and check in a bit):

Also, check out these New York City Halloween events:

The Promised Land
A Twenty Four Hour Adventure of
Myth + Mischief + Masquerade
The Danger

Halloween Costume Party at a Fantastic Loft space with killer views.
Open Bar and passed drinks all night long from 10pm until 4am
$20.00 admission please pay cash at the door
Loft website
Facebook Event Invite

New York City Village Halloween Parade

Thanks to the YouTube bootlegers for letting me relive my Madonna weekend. I went to her last two performances of the Sticky Sweet tour in Madison Square Garden, which were filled with some pleasant surprises. Below are the best moments of the concert:

Britney Spear’s Video Cameo during “Human Nature”

Madonna wilds out during “She’s Not Me”

Madonna Vogues for the first time since Re-invention World Tour (2004)

Madonna “Into the Groove” while jumping rope with Keith Haring

And last but not least, some good old Sarah Palin hatin’. On The Saturday performance Madonna said, “this is what Sarah Palin’s brain sounds like when she’s thinking” while scratching her guitar strings for a good minute.

Bloggeries of the Week – a weekly post recounting the events and absurdities of my week on and off-line:

The spot light on @yiannig, @juliaroy and @lucyblair at the TweetupNYC event on Monday. The CEO of Twitter was there along with some awesome Twitter folks. Great to meet you guys face to face.

Last night I walked over to Webster Hall for the NY Web 2.0 Meetup hosted by NYC NextWeb. The presenters brought their A game to introduce some remarkable startsups, making up for lack of free booze. One particular service stuck out:

Only a week out of the Alpha box, founder Jason Im described HeyCosmo’s personal assistant service as your interactive “bitch”. He demonstrated the Concierge and Blaster applications, which combines social networking, location-based features and the telephone to help you get things done. An example of how HeyCosmo hopes to better your life would be finding a service and also scheduling an appointment for a time that works on both ends. It does so by making the phone call for you. That’s not to say that all the work is taken off your hands – you still have to tell the service what your requirements are so that its robo-call technology can convey the message appropriately and set up appointments on your behalf.

It’s location-based features helps you find nearby services and places for you and your friends to meet up. HeyCosmo will also help select a time for group outings, enabling your friends to enter in numbers (i.e. 2 for 2:00) to indicate their availability. Chief designer David Im tells me that there will be more than twice the amount of applications offered through HeyCosmo in the near future, including a blind dating service. Crazyblindsdates will have some competition.

HeyCosmo has a long road ahead. Their first obstacle towards mass adoption will be to overcome most people’s hatred of robo-call technology. Most restaurants will hang up the phone within seconds upon hearing a robot asking them to press 1 if they have a table for 30 at 9pm (that seemed to be the case during the demo last night). From a marketing perspective, I think HeyCosmo can tackle these chanllenges by ripping a page off the Yelp manual and focusing on a grassroots, offline-online strategy for raising brand awareness. Mainly, hiring community managers in major cities to do the following:

1. Foster relationships with restaurants and other services
2. Build a localized network of influencers and brand ambassadors
3. Distribute stickers (and other premiums) that businesses can use to show that they support the service
4. Reward brand ambassadors with monthly events in their favorite venues (this also strengthens relationships with venues)
5. Seek local sponsors to help you fund the brand’s offline activity

They could also use a copywriter to fix awkward copy and grammar mistakes on their site.

Melanie Notkin, recently founded Savvyauntie, a community for “non moms”. Melanie delivered impressive research behind this often overlooked demographic. She also showed some impressive short term results in traffic using social media (zero ad cash). The sound effects on her presentation were a bit too much (piercing at times) but she made up for it with her incredible charisma.

Anthony Casalena, Founder of Squarespace, gave a brief history and product demo. The platform seems like a dream come true for RSS and HTML retarded bloggers like myself. Anthony was defensive when an audience member asked him about his poor customer service. A bit too defensive. Anthony: “I can’t believe you’re asking me that in front of 200 people!” Some advice to Mr. Casalena – a person who is interested enough in your brand to communicate any issue, specially in front of 200 people, is a potential customer and likely brand ambassador. This is how the interaction should have gone:

Audience member: I heard your customer services is not very good.

Casalena 2.0: I’m sorry to hear that you or someone you know had problems with our customer service. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. We’ve grown exponentially in the past 12 months and have made significant investments in our customer service offerings. I would love to get together with you after the presentation if you’re free and offer you a month free trial to test out our platform and customer service for yourself.

A proactive response that puts people’s needs first is key. What Anthony overlooked when responding to that questions was that in addition to the 200 people in the room, web-savvy audiences can often broadcast their thoughts to thousands of people within seconds. In this case, the audience member was Julia Roy, social media blogger with Twitter influencer. After the presentation, CEO Dane Atkinson came over in an attempt to ameliorate the situation, offering Julia a direct line of communication.

hashtags: #heycosmo, #nextweb