Stacey Higginbotham from GigaOm visited our Austin office earlier this week to provide us with new perspective from (yet another) established journalist recently turned blogger. We also learned that Om Malik is returning full-time to work in March, which was great news. Stacey is new at GigaOm and is covering the chip market, networking/telco and also looking for new start-ups.
One of the things she said that seems to be taking off among her reader base is private beta invites. We did one of these for a client we launched at DEMO last fall, Fluid Innovation and it was received very well-received. The beta invite actually helped us secure an in-person meeting with BusinessWeek. Basically, the concept entails a company providing a person with private access to a beta software product, in which they can view and/or run a demo. The people that receives the private invites typically receive a certain amount of other invites that they can pass along to (trusted) friends, which fuels very strong word-of-mouth buzz. She said she is seeing a lot of enthusiasm within the IT/social media sector for these types of new product demos, and obviously media are responding to the concept as well.
We also spoke about the Austin market in general. Stacey wrote a story later that day about her take on the market in "Recipe for a High-Tech Hub".
Speaking of hubs, Austin will be an entertainment/interactive hub over the next two weeks with SXSW starting on March 7. This show is so large it brings $95 million into the Austin area! It really does take this town over, and it's nice since our office is literally in the center of it all! Stayed tuned for more, as LP&P will be there. In fact, we are hosting a happy hour on Thursday, September 13th at 5 p.m. at One2One Bar on 5th St, between Congress and Brazos, on the rooftop. If you are in Austin for "South by", please join us!
