Crunchies Wrap Up - A Big Thank You To The Community
Michael Arrington
29 comments »
Thank you to everyone who attended the first Crunchies event last night to honor startups in categories ranging from “best business model” to “best time sink” (pictured right is Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic/Wordpress, showing off his award for Best CEO).
If you were not one of the 900+ people to attend the event live last night in San Francisco, you can watch a video of the entire event that Mogulus recorded here. People are still uploading photos, but you can see them on Flickr under the tag “2007crunchies.”
Congratulations to all of the winners, as well as all of the nominees. It is my honor to have covered most of them since they’ve launched, and to see how well they’ve done is awesome.
And thank you to our co-producers, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat. Having this be a multi-blog event was an important step, and shows how blogs can compete hard for stories and still come together to collaborate when it is good for the community.
Media Coverage
Lots of blog coverage continues to roll in. Mainstream media was also all over the event. Alice radio, which hosts the no. 1 local morning show, kicked things off with two on air mentions. ABC and Fox covered the show locally and ABC also covered it nationally during the 11 pm news (see video clips above). NBC also covered the event - we’re uploading clips now.
AFP here.
“Friday’s event was the first glitzy Internet start-up love-fest in San Francisco since the Webby Awards began here in 1996 during the famous dot-com boom.”
Highlights
The highlight of the event for me was the best gadget category. John Biggs from CrunchGear recorded an overview video that was a crowd pleaser (see video below).
Apple won the award for the iPhone. But we simply could not get anyone from Apple to attend and accept the award. Fake Steve Jobs stepped in and recorded a video accepting for them. I’ve seen the video at least a dozen times now, and laugh harder every time I watch it:
The live performance by the Richter Scales of their Here Comes Another Bubble song was another highlight. I wish we could have ended with them, but their schedule forced them to go very early in the show:
Thank You
Thank you to the sponsors of the 2007 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Founders Fund, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including Ask, Framr (an ecommerce start-up offering custom picture framing, launching tonight), Lotus Vodka, Intel Capital, Lehman Brothers, Meevee, RealTimeMatrix’s Vortex, Searchles, our official live streaming partner of the night Mogulus, our official ticketing sponsor amiando, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.
And thanks as well to everyone who worked hard on the event from the participating blogs. In particular, Heather Harde, our CEO, put in a heroic effort to get everything in place moments before the event began, and the teams from all four blogs really pitched with multiple all-nighters the last couple of days in to make the night go well. Special thanks to video blogger Sarah Meyers for giving us three straight days of her time to work through all of the video work for the event.
Great show. The Mogulus stream was really good.
Enough self-promotion and self-congratualtions for nothing more than a certainly profitable Techcrunch promotion event.
Get over yourself. Please.
The Fake Steve Jobs video is hilarious.
@2, lol - the only real winner is TC from this event
biggs is a weirdo.
lol - at fake steve’s comment on how scoble will show up for anything, including a burger king opening.
Photos here… http://www.helluvajob.com/sboj.....ageIndex=0
The bone hammering monkey thing is still showing up in my dreams. Soon … soon I hope … this will stop. I want the scary clowns back.
Hey guys — can you post our Crunchies video too? (Radar Networks - Twine - CoolWhip video). You have our permission!
For anyone who wants to see the full version you can find it on my blog http://novaspivack.typepad.com
“Dress up?” (ABC video above) Most of us showed up in street clothes… very, very non-Hollywood event. Hooray for that!
Lawrence is spot on. Fake Steve Jobs video was funny. Biggs, not so much. And the Twine video - about the dumbest thing I have ever seen.
Still, to Mike and crew, congrats on the award show and further expanding the TC brand.
If you were not one of the 900+ people to attend the event live last night in San Francisco….Holy Crap~ where did this number(900?) came from michael?
(good marketting tactic ;). I was present at the event but dint find more than couple of hundred people.
Unfortunately, I had to witness this via web cam in my hotel room down in LA.
- Fake Steve Jobs was funny but his rant could have ended sooner.
- Gabe Rivera sounded so funny and awkward in his acceptance speech. Gotta love him!
- What was the deal with the repetitious lame-ass music after giving every award?
Otherwise, not too bad for a first Crunchies …
On a technical note - you need to do something about that John Biggs video player - it starts to pull the video down even if you don’t click the play button - inevitably slowing the page/site down a lot. Putting a whole bunch of flash video players on a single page is never a good idea.
Yes, that player is messed up. Here is the John Biggs video on YouTube
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jez88kAbcSE
Steve Jobs video was the highlight…hopefully the awards will only get better. Thanks to everyone that gave http://www.stickychicken.com best wishes for our launch on Wednesday, January 23.
Fake Steve Jobs’ video is certainly the funniest bit here. But Da Vinci’s statue of David ? Euhm, no. Michaelangelo made that one. Duhu. Begs the question whether he did this on purpose to make fun of real Steve Jobs’ arrogance & intellect or because he just didn’t know himself.
Well Done!
kudos to mogulus
@10
No surprise the attendance was inflated (what would Arrington write about a company who claimed more than 4x the customers they actually had???)….since this was a publiclity stunt and that is all.
Hey, it’s Sergio here,
I am a writer and filmmaker based in Milano, Italy.
Just came across a filmmakers competition posted by filmbay.com
it says its free, so no admission costs, etc.details below,
enjoy, ciao,
Sergio Nasrim
—————->
Filmbay Launches the First Online Film Marketplace & Self Distribution
System
Filmbay, Ltd. (Cd/b/a Filmbay), with the URL http://www.Filmbay.com,
announces the launch of the first Internet marketplace for worldwide buyers
and sellers to search and option feature motion pictures, short films,
documentaries, music videos, music, screenplays and more. In addition,
filmmakers, sound composers and others can sell their titles individually as
DVD, CD or other formats via an online shop and auction.
Never before has the global film industry had a centralized online
marketplace, communications centre, distribution outlet and community in one
website. As a result, the independent film industry was once scattered all
over the world. Writers, Actors, Directors, Music Composers had been
separated not only geographically by country, but even more so by being
represented by a guild, union, or agent which often imposed limits on their
ability to engage in independent film production worldwide. Filmbay erases
these limits. The idea of creating such this important Internet venue
originated with Filmbay’s founder and President, John Paul Trutnau, and his
personal assessment of the current global film marketing process:
“I was tired of always hearing the same complaints from filmmakers, actors,
writers and other artists of not being able to find true global
representation for their work and for themselves.” says John-Paul.
“The Internet offers a unique way to unite people from all over the world in one media platform and create a global market place.” It took over 3 years to develop and fine tune the Filmbay concept and website. “Filmbay is similar to a Hollywood Studio, minus the hierarchies, but offers better opportunities for directors and producers to showcase, distribute and sell their products.
Jorn Ross, a university graduate and computer programmer, as well as
Sanka Abeysinghe, a graphic and web designer, assisted Trutnau in making his
project come alive. And now Filmbay allows buyers and sellers of film, as
well as general consumers who are interested in new and independent
cinematic products, to come together in a unique and innovative setting.
The website also enables global communication among all members who are
actively involved in the process of making a film. In this way, Filmbay
becomes a one-stop shop for the global independent film community. It even
features a Pitch Area where new projects are presented to this highly
dynamic film community who are looking to get involved.
Is Filmbay only for filmmakers? “Not at all, Filmbay is open to all creative aspects that relate to film, so for example a music composer or rock band can sell their own CD on our site, without a big label behind it.”
Additionally, academics can publish their work, e.g. an essay, M.A. or PhD
Thesis related to media studies. All Filmbay members can post their bio and
Showcase, even sell their work online. Job Forums, Classifieds and filmmaking tips are also available.
“Film Creation and Film Consumption should be fun, if possible. Nowadays the hierarchies among the film production teams are shifting – that is what our website is all about: to offer your services to each other on an open platform.” By uniting all creative forces on one platform there are so many new opportunities to communicate and collaborate.
And since Filmbay is always online, it provides a 24/7 platform for the
independent film community to come together, exchange, collaborate and
communicate, as well as buy and sell films, scripts, music and more.
For more information, visit Filmbay at:
http://www.filmbay.com
AP2 02602
Reuters 3-20163
re attendance - we had a sell out of 916, and more than that showed up for the party afterwards. Well over 1,000 people rolled through the theater last night.
Sounds like it was great event.
Guy singing “Here comes another bubble” has really good singing voice.
@2: Right on.
This blog is starting to be like Myspace.
ROFL @ Fake Steve Jobs. “Scoble shows up at every event. Even Burger King openings”.
Not to mention the “Should I pick iPhone or Nokia 1010(?)”
Great videos and it looks like it was a great show. There are times when I wished I lived in the States
Big Success.
http://simongeorgeinc.googlepages.com