McLean, Virginia (April 17, 2012) – Capital Connection’12, a nationally recognized technology industry conference, is putting advanced mobile technology into the hands of event attendees to share instant feedback on company presentations. Disruptathon will customize its mobile application and Innovation Discovery Platform to enable real-time audience feedback of companies presenting at TechBUZZ and on the Main Stage at Capital Connection’12.

New to Capital Connection this year is the TechBUZZ Showdown. The Disruptathon mobile application will enable the TechBUZZ audience to vote for the “Best of BUZZ” and give the top 3-5 companies an opportunity to advance to the TechBUZZ Showdown. Those companies in the TechBUZZ Showdown will pitch their innovative businesses to the entire Capital Connection audience the following afternoon. One TechBUZZ company will emerge as the 2012 champion.

“We are breaking significant new ground at this year’s Capital Connection,” said Julia Spicer, Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association.  “We are building upon the success of TechBUZZ in spotlighting start-ups and seed-stage companies, and giving the brightest stars center stage in a TechBUZZ Showdown before the entire Capital Connection audience. Complementing this showcase of new innovations is our introduction of a cutting-edge mobile technology that takes event participation to a new level.”

“Disruptathon’s mobile app provides us with a unique opportunity to give entrepreneurs presenting at TechBUZZ and during Capital Connection the benefit of real-time, meaningful feedback about their presentations,” said Thanasis Delistathis, Founder and Managing Partner of New Atlantic Ventures and one of the 2012 Capital Connection Conference Co-Chairs. “The benefit to presenters of the immediate and valuable insights from the audience of successful entrepreneurs, company builders and investors is immeasurable.”

“This year’s conference is truly focused on the entrepreneur, across all stages of growth” said Ms. Spicer.  “The conference program has been built to provide valuable insights, connections and resources to all high-tech company builders, whether or not they are presenting their company on stage.  Our whole audience will enjoy the opportunity to participate directly in the TechBUZZ and Capital Connection program through use of the Disruptathon mobile app.“

In partnership with Disruptathon, the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association, host of Capital Connection, will offer registered attendees a download of the customized Disruptathon mobile application and Innovation Discovery Platform that will feature the Capital Conference’12 and TechBUZZ agenda and the feedback tool for commenting on company presentations. Disruptathon will manage analysis of the feedback data and compile follow-up reports.

Key features in this year’s Capital Connection and TechBUZZ conference:

• Who’s Hot:  A who’s who of “Top Tech” companies from around the country.
• What’s the BUZZ?:  The high energy, fast-pitch TechBUZZ program showcasing what’s new and fresh from Seed Stage startups.
• Easy Access: A new rate structure to make the conference accessible to a broad range of entrepreneurs, angel investors, incubators and companies across all stages of growth.
• Opportunity to Tell the Company Story:  An unparalleled opportunity for early, growth and late stage firms to present business models for investment or showcase their success.

Presenting companies included FastCustomer, Goodzer, SynkMonkey, Sharewith911, SavvyApps (ChickenCoop), PlayMaker, The Mashup App, Vintage Radio, Quotogram and Framesocket.

Categories and top finishers in each:

Overall:

1. FastCustomer

2. Goodzer

3. SynkMonkey

4. ShareWith911

Best presentation:

1. Kevin Yarmosh – Chicken Coop

2. Kevin Dubbs – Quotogram

Best design:

1. FastCustomer

2. SynkMonkey

Most unique:

1. FastCustomer

2. ShareWith911

Best business model:

1. FastCustomer

2. Goodzer

Most disruptive potential:

1. FastCustomer

2. Goodzer

Most liked:

1. FastCustomer

2. ChickenCoop

Here are a few more pics from the event, enjoy!

The selected companies, each representing a fresh platform or approach for mobile apps and websites, include: Chicken Coop, FastCustomer, FrameSocket, Goodzer Local Shopping, The Mashup App, Playmaker, Quotogram, Share With 911, SynkMonkey, and Vintage Radio.

“Having Disruptathon during MoDevEast is a great opportunity to showcase new platforms that bridge the gap between innovation, usability and business results,” said Pete Erickson, founder of MoDevEast and Disruptathon. “We’re excited to have a great crop of presenters who are the best and brightest developers and publishers in the industry.”

MoDevEast offers five tracks for attendees to hear from industry experts from LivingSocial, Gannett, Politico, Discovery Communications, USA TODAY and more. Attendees will learn best practices for mobile business strategy on the main stage in the Gannett auditorium and hone their development skills in four breakout rooms dedicated to mobile development.

In addition, a free Hackathon, MoDevHack, will take place on Saturday, December 3, 2011. Developers, designers and marketers will compete individually or in teams for more than $15,000 in prizes and awards for creating a new mobile app in a matter of hours.

WHAT: MoDevEast2011 Conference and Disruptathon Hottest Apps

WHEN: Friday, December 2, 2011, 8 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. ET

WHERE: Gannett / USA TODAY Conference Center, 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22102

REGISTER: http://modeveast.eventbrite.com/

SPONSORS: USA TODAY, Cynergy, LivingSocial, PointAbout, O’Reilly Media

Overall results and top category finishers were as follows:

Overall:

1. Zenius

2. Hive by Decode Solutions

3. FatStax by Red Funnel Consulting

4. Socialize

Best Presentation

1. Hive by Decode Solutions

2. Zenius

3. Socialize

Most unique offer

1. Zenius

2.  Hive by Decode Solutions

3. Socialize

Best design

1. Hive by Decode Solutions

2. Zenius

3. FatStax

Best business model

1. Zenius

2. FatStax

3. Hive by Decode Solutions

Most Disruptive

1. Zenius

2. Hive

3. FatStax

Most liked

1. Fatstax

2. Socialize

3. Hive by Decode Solutions

Special thanks to Daniel Odio of Socialize for posting video of the event.

All CTIA presentations: http://vimeo.com/30473674

Award ceremony: http://vimeo.com/30475651

The selected companies and the products they are presenting include: Dub Labs presenting CircleBack, Canvas Solutions presenting Canvas, Zenius Solutions presenting NFC payments, Directra presenting Directra, Red Funnel Consulting presenting FatStax, Decode Solutions presenting Hive and Socialize presenting Socialize for Enterprise. Applicants were selected based on their uniqueness of approach and disruptive potential.

“With the emergence of the enterprise mobile app store, companies are leveraging new technologies to disrupt the enterprise status quo and create innovative salesforce, collaboration, security, and privacy solutions,” said Pete Erickson, founder, Disruptathon. “It is a great honor to have our event during CTIA, where the best and brightest in the mobile industry come together to change the enterprise for the better.”

CTIA Enterprise & Applications reflects the evolution of the industry and growing use of mobile technology in business. The event will showcase the increasing benefits of mobile apps in the enterprise and the expanding market opportunities being created.

The Disruptathon event is being sponsored by App47, a mobile enterprise app management platform, and Zerion Software, providers of iFormBuilder.

CTIA attendees at the event will rate each presenter using the Disruptathon Innovation Discovery platform which is available on iTunes and Android app stores as a native app and accessible via browser on all other devices. Disruptathon will take the total weighted average of each score to determine the winners to be announced at the conclusion of the program.

WHAT: Disruptathon: Mobile Enterprise at CTIA

WHEN: October 12, 2011, 1 p.m. PDT

WHERE: San Diego Convention Center − Room 25 A-C

111 West Harbor Drive

San Diego, CA 92101

REGISTER: Free to all registered CTIA attendees.

Fore more information:

http://www.ctiaenterpriseandapps.com/events/eventdetails.cfm/1390.

Steve’s vision and execution has had a profound impact on me and know the same is true for this community. Without it, an entire global economy around technology and apps wouldn’t be where it is today. Android wouldn’t be Android, Windows would still be pushing 6.something and RIM and Nokia would still be comfortable. He was unencumbered by existing business models or “rules” of an industry and wrote his own. Record labels, carriers, device manufacturers and software providers would all have to adjust to the way he saw the world. The lines at Apple stores for his new products are testament to what happens when radical improvements to the status quo see the light of day.

In 1983 when IBM salesmen were still wearing blue pin striped suits and Wang engineers were in lab coats, Jobs was taking his Mac team to the 2nd US music festival produced by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Steve used the excursion as an executive retreat opportunity where he pounded home the following mantra’s; “Real Artists Ship”, “It’s Better To Be A Pirate Than Join The Navy”, and “Mac in a Book by 1986″. It’s no wonder music, design and technology would one day be the foundation upon which the Apple empire would be built.

Cheers to a true pirate.

[9:19] Results time! First order of business: Stephen Smith of WhosHere takes the Virgin Atlantic Airways/UKTI Presenter’s Challenge award and a trip to London.

Now onto the rest of the awards:

Best Presentation:

3. LocalResponse

2. Sponto

1. Votizen

Uniqueness:

3. Angel

2. LocalResponse

1. Votizen

Design:

3. LocalResponse

2. Pixable

1. Votizen

Most Disruptive Potential:

3. Angel

2. LocalResponse

1. Votizen

Most Liked Button:

3. LocalResponse

2. Pixable

1. Votizen

Best in Show:

4. Angel

3. Pixable

2. LocalResponse

1. Votizen

[8:45] Wow, that was intense. 19 presentations in 90 minutes. Some really neat idea, though. We’re breaking now while they tabulate the results. Stay tuned.

[8:37] One last presenter — Brian Razzaque of SocialToaster: “We call this process ‘assisted viral’”

It’s a way to empower a brand’s best ambassadors to share your content with their friends and contacts.

[8:34] Star Studded by AakinaTek: “Women power the social Web through socialization and celebrity news.”

OK, so this is like a stock exchange for celebrities. You trade stars, and their statuses rise and fall with the news in real-time. And this leads to great targeted advertising! “Newsgamification,” they call it. Pretty clever idea.

[8:30] Time for Ryan Maxwell from Curia: “People want personalized news and independent writers. But there’s no distribution platform for independent writers and bloggers.”

Curia gives writers a way to be “up-voted” so that the best content gets the viewership it deserves.

[8:26] Michael Mayernick of Spinnakr: “You’re smart. Your website isn’t. At Spinnakr, we make it simple to deploy targeted messages to users on your website.”

So with Spinnakr, you could, for instance, offer top influencers a special deal, make international visitors feel at home, respond to breaking news in real time… And they’re seeing improved conversion rates up to 30%.

“At Spinnakr, we make your website smarter,” says Mayernick.

[8:23] Yermo Lamers of App Update: “There are hundreds of thousands of great hidden gem apps in the Android market. So how do you find them? The ratings system? It’s a bunch of strangers. We make it easy to see what your specific group of friends thinks about various apps.”

I see: It’s a viral marketing opportunity for apps that can’t break into the top 50. Neat idea.

[8:20] Jeremy Kimble from Hatch’d: “We make it easy for you to share your ideas for businesses.”

Nowadays, we send letters and emails, and all the ideas end up isolated. But with Hatch’d, you get one place for all your ideas and your friends’ ideas too.

Check it out at http://hatchd.it.

[8:18] Kane Sarhan of LocalResponse: “We’re aggregating check-ins from explicit checks-in platforms like 4Square and implicit check-in platforms like Wwitter. Then we process all that information to connect brands and consumers.”

Holy cow! Ads based on their data have a redemption rate of 50%. That’s astounding!

[8:13] Now it’s on to Matt Hills from ProConIt. This is interesting: He’s got the world’s first and only social evaluation tool – “a way to evaluate everything under the sun more quickly, easily, precisely and intelligently—in an easy-to-build, fun-to-use social package.”

ProConIt is like a digital version of the classic pro/con table. Users build their own dashboards by simply asking a question or selecting a topic. Then, with the help of their friends and peers, individual arguments get added, promoted, or rejected. “The cream rises, and somehow we get to the bottom line.”

“Don’t sweat it,” says Hills, “just ProConIt.”

[8:10] David Binetti of Votizen: “The US political system is in desperate need of disruption. So we help people engage, inform themselves, and then act upon the causes that matter to them.”

Seems they’ve archived all the official voting records, and from all that info, they let you explore and learn about all of your local candidates. You can even endorse a candidate through the Votizen platform.

David ends by quoting Tip O’Neil: “All politics is local.” Then he adds — “With Votizen, all politics is networked. We’ve got a vision of a world where out-friending is more important than outspending your opponents.”

[8:05] Jamie Harvey of Sponto (www.sponto.com) was inspired by the lone ant (a pathetic wandering creature like college students, but actually a very social creature that can use the power of communities to discover resources with incredible efficiency).

So Sponto lets you take your phone and then discover new events and parties at universities based on crowd-sourcing what’s hot. “It’s a revolutionary party-detection platform today. But in the future, this could detect things like concerts, shoe sales, even riots.”

[8:02] Onward to Dave Tolliver of Angel: “Social media is inherently anti-social. We keep our friends at arm’s length in black and white characters on the screen, and sometimes we cut them to 14o characters. So we’d like to bring voice back to social media, and with it, the personality of communication.”

Pretty nice. You can record a message and post it right to your Twitter feed with one click. Check them out at voice.com.

[7:58] Loren Appin of Pixable: Facebook has 7 billion photos uploaded to it every month. Yikes! And that’s just Facebook. How do you make sense of all your images online? Pixable, of course. It helps you organize photos from all your different online platforms and even tells you which ones you’re most likely to want. Hey, this is kind of like Awesomize for images, right?

[7:55] Elias Shams of Awesomize shows a video about quality vs. quantity. How do you know if your new friend request is from someone you actually want to be friends with? Well, there’s Awesomize. Not a social networking platform, but rather a way to organize and prioritize all your existing personal and professional contacts.

[7:50] Time for Suzanne Donnehue of FullCircle (formerly MyTalk). Wow! Tonight is the official launch of the Full Circle’s Apple app and Android beta app. “We’ve enabled users to easily create location based groups or communities,” says Suzanne.

Cool, she’s created a group for Disruptathon. Download the app free and check it out.

[7:40] Ben Wagner of LifeKraze: “What do we do? We reward you for what you do.” So it’s a user-to-user reward system that breeds a very positive, engaged user base. Very cool. They’ve also got some cool partners like Reebok and Men’s Health.

Remember one thing, says Ben: “Facebook is who you are, Twitter is what you say. Now LifeKraze is what you do.”

[7:33] Gene Lew of Heywire: “We’re taking mobile, social, and cloud computing, and creating a new paradigm. We do SMS, and we can do it over any IP device and connect to any phone in the world. We can do it anywhere in the world. We can move a phone number around to any of your devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop).” Neat, neat platform.

[7:30] Now it’s mega-entrepreneur Josh Konowe (of eAgent and BrandClik fame) with Uppidy (www.uppidy.com) a fairly ingenious way to “share, store, and search text messages with the people who matter.” Sounds pretty good considering that 8 trillion texts will be sent this year.

“We have thousands of users, millions of text messages archived, and in 35 countries.” It takes 3 motions to public with tools like TweetDeck. With Uppidy you do it with one motion, using your native client.”

[7:25] “Do you know what’s trending about you right now?” asks Mark Zohar of Trendspottr, a real-time service that predicts trends from big data. They’re identifying the most timely, relevant information from a fire hose of content.

They can pull trends at their earliest point of acceleration to provide “Early Insights” in real-time. “For a video, we can predict whether it’s going to go viral, and how many views it will ultimately have.”

It’s free to use for consumers, so give it a try.

[7:22] Remember to follow us live on Twitter tonight (@disruptathon) and use our hashtag (#disruptathon). Real creative, right?

[7:21] Before our next presenter, special shout-out to Kate Nesbitt, one of the top PR pros at McLean-based SpeakerBox communications. Kate wanted to be here tonight, but came down with an illness. Kate, this live-blog is dedicated to you!

[7:19] First up is Stephen Smith with WhosHere (www.whoshere.net). You’ve heard about dating apps. Well, this is the world’s first “undating” app, backed by the investors who created Groupon. Unlike slow, rigid, pressure-packed dating environments, WhosHere is a place for instantaneous, open socializing. Using the location-based functionality of the iPhone, WhosHere matches you with people nearby who fit your interests. Then, it’s free and instantaneous to send them a text, a picture, or even a VoIP phone call. Oh, and it’s all 100% safe. You never have to give out your name, phone number, or even an email address.

Says Smith: “WhosHere lets you meet, mingle, chat, and explore—without labels, expectations, rules, or risks. With WhosHere, you’ll discover thousands of new friends all around you, hiding in plain sight, anywhere you live and everywhere you travel.”

And here’s something unexpected from a social media start-up: WhosHere has over 4 million users and has already reached profitability!

[7:13] First up, Vijay Ravindran talks a bit about WaPo Labs (which Pete describes as “a start-up within a giant company”) and the transition from print to digital at the Washington Post. Really cool stuff happening there. And they’re hiring!

Next, some welcoming remarks from the man himself (Peter Erickson) and a few words about MoDevEast, TED PennQuarter, GeekEasy, and DC Week.

About tonight: “This is about tying you in the audience to the entrepreneur. Everyone here has the capacity to be the next Facebook. And now’s your chance to connect with them.

[6:29] As we get ready to start, how about a shout-out to our sponsors: Cynergy, Deloitte, Gannett, USA Today, O’Reilly, The Washington Post Company, WaPo Labs, MicroStrategy, iFormBuilder, Teqcorner, PointAbout Mobile, and SpeakerBox Communications.

[6:16] Welcome to the Washington Post Building in DC for another prime time Disruptathon event — this one focused on Social Media. We’re expecting close to 300 people tonight to hear from 19 amazing presenters.

Welcome Virgin Atlantic Airways!

The selected companies, each representing an innovative and disruptive area in social media, include: AakinaTek, Angel, awesomize.me, Curia, Invensys Labs, Inc., LifeKraze, LocalResponse, MediaFriends, Mobile Dev Partners, LLC, MyTalk, Inc., Picdish, Pixable, ProConIt, Share With 911, Spinnakr, Sponto, TrendSpottr, Uppidy and Votizen.

“I’m excited that Disruptathon gets to introduce our attendees and supporters to so many creative new companies and products that are changing how we use social media,” said Pete Erickson, founder, Disruptathon. “The event is a testament to the brain power we’re seeing in social media. It’s going to be a great day at The Washington Post along with our host partners Washington Post Labs.”

Disruptathon and The Washington Post Company have partnered to bring together the a diverse collection of disruptive social media companies for an afternoon session dedicated to business, marketing and networking and an evening showdown and awards ceremony to recognize top finishers as well as all finalists.

Disruptathon Social Media offers total industry immersion, intelligence, and connectivity for presenting companies, sponsors and attendees—top-tier access to the thought leaders themselves and to the flight path of the industry.

The Disruptathon audience will rate each presenter using the Disruptathon Innovation Discovery platform. There’s also a “like” button to indicate which technologies the audience would use themselves. Disruptathon will take the total weighted average of each score to determine the top finishers for the evening’s award ceremony.

WHAT: Disruptathon: Social Media

WHEN: Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 2 p.m. EDT

WHERE: The Washington Post Company
1150 15th Street, NW 
Washington, DC 20071

REGISTER: http://disruptathonsocial.eventbrite.com/