Under the Radar Conference This Week
Dealmaker Media may have put together its best annual Under the Radar conference yet. This Thursday in Mountain View, California, more than 30 selected startups will show their wares and some world class technology speakers will offer their perspectives on the state of the industry. It's not cheap to attend UTR, but RWW readers can get a $100 discount by following this link.
Those of us unable to attend should be able to see some of the highlights live via Robert Scoble's cellphone and the streaming video service Qik. Speakers include the WSJ's Kara Swisher, NYT's Brad Stone and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. Presenting companies, which both Richard MacManus and I helped select, include:
Act-On Software | Blist | Cozimo | DeviceVM | dimdim | DocSyncer | ELASTRA| Eyejot | FeedbackFx | filtrbox | Get Satisfaction | HiveLive | HubSpot | JumpBox | kwiry | LiquidPlanner | Magento | Marketo | Mumboe | NetBooks | NuConomy | Orgoo | PageOnce | Ribbit | SlideRocket | SlideShare | SupportSpace |TimeBridge | Tripit | Universant | Vello | Yoics
How "under the radar" are these companies? Some of them aren't so much at all, it's an increasingly competitive startup market for media to be first on. Nonetheless, the UtR folks always put on a great conference. It's one of the few tech events where sessions are as worthwhile as conversations in the hall. I'd planned to be there myself but have been incapacitated by the SXSW flu.
Check out this very well produced video from our friends over at Webware from last year's Under the Radar.
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Have we lost all journalistic integrity? Dealmaker Media events are ok if you are willing to pay to play and want to play the game with them.
Mr. Pepper, the UTR events I've been to in the past were fun and this year's speaker lineup looks good to me. Paid events are nothing new, I noted that here and linked to where you can watch for free. If you've got a more in depth critique it will be news to me and I'd love to hear it.
Mr. Kirkpatrick, I find issue with the assumption that the best startups were selected to speak. UtR charges each company speaking a fee(I believe it's $1500). I'm sure some companies decline the opportunity to speak at their events because a fee is involved.
I have no issue with their charging attendees. If they can get the money, more power to them!
Recruiting companies to speak at the event and then informing them that a fee is involved doesn't support a statement that these are the best unknown companies but these companies are willing to pay to speak at an event.
Mr. Pepper, I don't know how much companies pay after being selected, but they select some good companies. If your number is correct, $1500 is pretty damn cheap.
Actually, the cost is about half of that which is a pretty great deal when compared to something like DEMO.
We're one of the presenting companies and the fee is much more reasonable than DEMO which costs something like $20k to present. If it were free they would be deluged with a bunch of half-baked applications from uncommitted companies. Charging the fee they do is perfectly understandable from our perspective and ensures that the presenters involved have something at stake and take it seriously.
Sean
I agree we Sean. We are presenting as well and the fee is very reasonable. Given the screening and prep the staff did, much of the fee would just cover costs. The DEMO fee is $18K; of course you end up spending more like $40K when you consider all the travel and staffing the pavillion.
To compare UTR to an event like DEMO is a real stretch. First, DEMO is run by a conference pro. Second, a lot of big time publications attend DEMO. Finally, I think the real issue is charging companies and attendees. For a fairly small conference, that's pretty aggressive. You can argue that limits the number of attendees and real quality conferences, but I would counter that it attracts companies that need to pay because they are not getting asked to speak elsewhere.