Gawker: valleywag, poptech

Once again, Vanity Fair leaves geeks at the kids' power table

Owen Thomas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Preeminent among the magazine world's kingmaking power lists is Vanity Fair's New Establishment, which appears in the October issue — on newsstands in L.A. and New York today, but not in the Bay Area for another six days. Silicon Valley gets similar short shrift: The names who make it there are predictable bigs like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, or Hollywood-crossover types like Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee turned movie producer. Walt Mossberg, now employed by New Establishment perennial Rupert Murdoch, also squeaked in. The consolation prize Vanity Fair offers: Its "Next Establishment" list, reserved for the likes of Twitter's Ev Williams. It's a marvelous piece of New York media trickery — flatter the geeks by making them feel included, but corral them into a side room so the real power brokers aren't offended by comparison. True, the "Next Establishment" suggests that these are people who might matter in the future. But in saying that, Vanity Fair's editors are also sending the message that right here, right now, its "Next" nominees are nobodies. On this year's list:

Wendi Deng Murdoch, MySpace China
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace
Max Levchin, Slide
Robin Li, Baidu
Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
Elon Musk, SpaceX
Ali and Hadi Partovi, iLike
Mika Salmi, MTV
Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh
Quincy Smith, CBS
Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital
Evan Williams, Twitter
Andrew Zolli, PopTech

Big-brain conference seeks blogger

Paul Boutin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:00:06 EDT

PopTech, the only tech conference whose door I deign to darken, is looking for a part-time blogger to do about 15 hours a week of paid work for this year's event. Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe and former Pepsi/Apple chief John Sculley created the annual gathering, timed to October's peak autumn leaf season in Maine. It's like TED without the over-the-top zillionaire celebritard factor. It's not like SXSW at all. It'll make your mind hurt — in that good way.

Reclusive egghead conference now open to you

Paul Boutin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:01:43 EDT

I hate conferences — boring masquerades whose true mission isn't collegial thinking, but business development and self-promotion. The exception is PopTech, a tiny get-together held in bucolic seaside Camden, Maine, each October at the height of the colorful autumn foliage season. Organizers Bob Metcalfe and John Sculley deliberately chose the location as the furthest possible spot from Silicon Valley's inbred excess. It's like a TED for New England-y wonks. Instead of PowerPoint or product demos, people who actually do stuff get up and present their ideas, often engaging in unscripted "gotcha" debates. This year the whole thing will be webcast live starting today at 9 a.m. Maine time. Valley snobs, wake up: Schoolkids in Maine now get free iBooks in seventh grade, thanks to former PopTech star Angus King. At this hour, they're already eating your lunch.

PopTech goes the weasel

Nick Douglas — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:20:01 EDT

Live, from PopTech — well, not quite. A few days ago, organizers from PopTech 2006, the multimedia futurist conference that started last night, told press-pass-carrying journalists:

The conference this year is completely sold out...press will be asked to cover the event from the Pop!Tech Screening Room...The room is right around the corner from the main conference room and is specially furnished with Steelcase furniture and HP Plasma Screens. Best of all, you can snack in the Screening Room.

"Around the corner" means out the door, down the sidewalk and around the corner - exiled press doesn't get to go in the same door with the $2500-ticket attendees. Then they watch a high-def version of a live stream available to anyone on the Net.

But oh boy, snacks!

So which bloggers ponied up the cash and which took press-pass second class? PC Magazine's Gearlog is in the screening room, writing, "It took me most of a day to get up here from New York, but you can watch it from the comfort of your cubicle." Cheeky blogger Robert Scoble says, "I'm so jealous I'm not at PopTech." Meanwhile, blogger Jason Kottke says he's in the audience.

So why did PopTech bother inviting journalists at all? No editor wants to send his reporters to Maine just to watch a conference on TV, and isn't it cooler just to let the attendees blog it?