It wasn’t so much the predictions as the discussion that was most interesting at last night’s annual predictions dinner, organized by the Washington Technology Industry Association. Will Twitter be acquired in 2010, and why? Who will have the dominant cloud computing platform in the next couple of years? What kind of startup are you looking to build or finance, and which areas are you staying away from?

A panel of Seattle-area tech entrepreneurs and investors gamely took the bait and had some lively exchanges over the course of an hour. OK, these guys all know each other, and we’ll take what they say with a grain of salt since it’s a public forum—but here were some of the most interesting points they made. (You can read more comprehensive recaps of the panel on Brier Dudley’s blog at the Seattle Times, and soon on TechFlash by moderator John Cook.)

The panel was split 3 to 2, with the narrow majority guessing Twitter will get bought next year. Andy Sack of seed-stage fund Founder’s Co-op predicted Twitter will make more money than Facebook in 2010 (surprising, given the current disparity in the other direction). Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate firm, said Twitter should charge for search (as it has begun to do in partnerships with Google and Bing). Kelly Smith from Curious Office and the startup Pressplane argued that Twitter could be “absorbed by a big company,” but “it’s going to go nowhere.” By the end of the evening, Sack was predicting that Microsoft would buy Twitter next year.

There was a consensus that 2010 could be a big year for acquisitions. Bill Bryant of Draper Fisher Jurvetson boldly predicted that Amazon will buy Netflix, Blockbuster, and Hulu, while opening brick and mortar “Amazon media stores.” Greg Gottesman from Madrona Venture Group said Cisco might buy EMC (for VMware) and Seattle-based F5 Networks, while Microsoft might buy Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone. Sack predicted Adobe would pick up Seattle photo-editing startup Picnik. Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.) would buy Seattle’s Cheezburger Network, and someone would buy Redfin.

Looking back on 2009 for a minute, the big deals that were questioned by the panel included Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture (Gottesman said it just didn’t make sense strategically) and …Next Page »

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Tom Huseby says he’s finally able to go home and not worry about seeing his family’s savings stuffed under his mattress. “The panic is over,” he says. “All of a sudden, things are getting a lot better. It doesn’t feel much better now, but it is.”

Huseby, a noted Seattle-based venture capitalist with SeaPoint Ventures, Oak Investment Partners, Hunt Ventures, and Voyager Capital (and the Godfather of what we’ve been calling the “Qpass mafia”), was giving his 30,000-foot view of the economic landscape and VC market at today’s Mobile Northwest 2009 conference in Seattle. He also drilled down into some of the most pressing challenges in the mobile space, as well as what the startup opportunities are. Just a few highlights here:

“Unemployment is going to slow growth across any consumer business. If you’re in mobile, I hate to tell you, but you’re in the consumer business. I do think there will be liquidity in mobile startups,” Huseby says. “Most startups are going to have to earn it the old-fashioned way, they’ll have to grow over a long time. You’re going to have to survive during a roller coaster ride. Every single company will have to go rushing to the bottom, and then do the slow, clanking ride to the top.”

In terms of startup opportunities, it helps to think in terms of what wireless carriers need. Huseby calls himself “fairly carrier-centric.” As he puts it, they are big customers that are predictable (once you understand them) and they generate huge amounts of cash. He laid out the top three challenges for carriers today—absolutely critical to understand if you’re an entrepreneur trying to get their attention with a new product.

—Bandwidth. There’s “tremendous pressure on carriers” to provide more bandwidth to support people’s exploding need for data connectivity wherever they go, Huseby says.

—Costs of bandwidth. “Oh my God, how are you going to pay for it?” he asks. With such a competitive market, Huseby thinks costs for consumers will actually go down. “I think they’re not going to get the money from us, they’re going to have to get it from advertising. Advertising revenue will absolutely help pay for the bandwidth.” (The problem is that mobile advertising revenue is still relatively small and doesn’t usually go to carriers.)

—Holding onto consumers. “If they’re going to pay for it with advertising, they need to get a much firmer grip on their customers,” Huseby says. He sees this as a crucial issue for the coming decade. “The next viral social network has to work hard to make [ad revenues] accrue to them. Carriers have to be very conscious of the demographics of their customers. They have to get their customers anchored in.”

After his talk, I had a chance to ask Huseby about some other areas of interest, like mobile search. He says he’s generally staying out of that space, but is looking at location-based services from the perspective of retail stores and local advertising.

We’ll have more from the conference soon, so watch this space.

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Where is “the cloud”? It’s everywhere and nowhere; it’s the power of algorithms distributed across entire networks but concentrated down to the screen of your wireless laptop; it’s the sum of all the world’s on-demand computing jobs, churning away in big data centers in secure, undisclosed locations, flinging their inputs and outputs across the electronic ether. But for one day, at least, the nucleus of the cloud will be in a definite place: Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, the venue for Xconomy’s December 10 Cloud³ Forum and its companion event, CloudCamp Boston.

That 3 in the title of our event is an exponent, as in “Cloud Cubed.” The first time Xconomy organized a cloud computing seminar, back in June 2008, the urgent questions in cloud computing still centered around the basics—was the cloud secure? private? reliable? Today, vendors are on their way to solving most these fundamental technological challenges. But in their place, there’s a new welter of implementation-related questions.

Which cloud service model would your company be best off using—Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service? Should you build a private cloud, tap a public one, or think about hybrid models? How much money can you really save by turning to the cloud—and how much will you have to spend? Which cloud services are startups and big enterprises really using today, and which are still hype? Which cloud players do entrepreneurs need to know about beyond the Big Seven (Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, Sun, and VMware)? And where is the cloud heading—what new services and opportunities are being opened up for entrepreneurs?

When we sat down to design the agenda for this year’s cloud forum, we realized that there are so many of these important questions on the table that we couldn’t just call the event Cloud²—so we jumped straight to Cloud³.

We’re assembling a crack crew of industry experts for Cloud³, including representatives of big cloud infrastructure providers such as Akamai, Microsoft, and Iron Mountain; startups making the cloud more useful to other companies, such as Cloudswitch; and companies leveraging the cloud to provide services to their own customers, such as Allurent, Litl, Pixily, and Sonian. The half-day session (from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.) is designed especially for entrepreneurs, investors, and technologists, and our goal is to make sure that every attendee has a chance to learn from (and network with) the practitioners who are building and exploiting real cloud services.

We’ll release the detailed agenda for the event soon, but here’s the general picture:

• Keynote talks by Tom Leighteon, chief scientist at Akamai, and Yousef Khalidi, of the Windows Azure team at Microsoft.

• “Cloudbursts”—a series of presentations by six local startups offering innovative cloud services and/or making creative use of the cloud.

• An interactive “unpanel” exploring the nuts and bolts of how companies can best tap cloud services led by Sim Simeonov, a former partner at Polaris Venture Partners who now heads executive advisory service FastIgnite.

• A progress report from Eric Nakajima from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the Holyoke High Performance Computing Center in western Massachusetts.

You can see the full speaker list for Cloud³ here, and you can register for the event here. Early bird registration is available for $95—but we urge you to reserve your place now, because after November 23, the price goes up to $150. (We’ve also got a limited number of student tickets available for $30, and students can apply for event scholarships through the Stay in MA Program.)

We’re pleased to announce that we’re partnering with the CloudCamp organization to turn December 10 into a full day of cloud computing discussion and learning. CloudCamp Boston, an unconference for early adopters of cloud computing, will take place in the same space at Microsoft from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. People who sign up for CloudCamp (registration is free) not only get discounted admission to Cloud3, but are welcome at a joint networking lunch from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m., which is hosted by Xconomy and Microsoft.

If you have questions about the event, please feel free to contact me at wroush@xconomy.com.

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I’m not going to do justice to this event. Let’s just get that out there right now. There were some great speakers and panels at yesterday’s Entrepreneur University in Bellevue, WA, organized by the Northwest Entrepreneur Network. But this isn’t about them. This is about the crowd-pleasers that brought an otherwise productive day to a close. That’s right—this is about pornography and Bacon Salt.

Not necessarily in that order, though. About a year ago, I profiled Bacon Salt, a couple of ex-Jobster guys in Seattle who hit upon a recipe for success: make everything taste like bacon. Their strategy of social media promotions—together with their natural charisma and some great-tasting food products (I can vouch for Baconnaise too)—has led to national exposure on ABC News, Oprah, Jay Leno, and the Today Show, not to mention a couple of segments on Jon Stewart (you can watch them here and here) that started it all.

Bacon Salt co-founder Dave Lefkow gave the closing keynote at the NWEN event, telling his company’s story from the beginning. From starting a food company on $5,000 (won from America’s Funniest Home Videos) instead of the $20 million usually expected in the industry, to fundraising and growth, to marketing and profitability, and now to Operation Bacon Salt—airlifting the company’s bacon-flavored condiments to U.S. troops in places like Afghanistan.

Through it all, Lefkow stressed the importance of finding evangelists for his products—including a couple in Virginia who tattooed the Bacon Salt logo on their legs. “These are people we don’t know,” he said. Bacon Salt also started a website in response to some kids who have snorted Bacon Salt…and put video clips on YouTube.

There are a few more updates to the story. He says Bacon Salt is “currently developing the world’s first meat-flavored personal lubricant.” I still don’t know if Bacon Lube is real or a joke, but Lefkow says he has found a company to manufacture it, and we can expect it in 2010. Other new products will include Bacon Pop (popcorn, not soda) and Bacon Ranch (a dressing, I think).

On a more somber note, Lefkow announced a charity event to benefit children with cancer. His four-year-old daughter was recently diagnosed with leukemia. The “Bacathlon,” billed as the world’s first bacon-themed athletic competition (including an eating contest), will be held the night of November 19 at Heaven Nightclub in Pioneer Square.

The last session at the NWEN event, after a few cocktails, was “Entrepreneur Idol”—seven lucky contestants got to pitch the audience and a panel of media judges (including yours truly) on their startup idea in 60 seconds. This is not an easy thing to do. Of course, we judges had the easy job of sitting back and giving our critiques; I hope some of the feedback was actually useful.

If there was one lesson, it was this: porn wins. Danielle Morrill got everyone’s attention by pitching her idea for a live video streaming adult-content service aimed at couples, called StreamHer.com (like Ustream, but for porn). After that, pitches on business productivity, IT consultancies, and mobile apps felt, well, less stimulating.

In the end, our judges’ picks were Firestarter Labs (T.J. Goan), which does software and services to create better presentations; Buzzeromatic.com (Andres Krogh and Matt Steckler), a Web service for granting front-door access to apartments and condos; and yes, StreamHer.com (Danielle Morrill). I’d also like to thank Jim Byers, Michaela Romanova, Nick Reed, and Gaven Kanemori for pitching us on their cool ideas and companies.

I was told afterwards that I was the “Randy” of the Idol judges. Better than Paula Abdul, I suppose.

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Just came back from the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association’s annual meeting in downtown Seattle, where 500-plus biotechies and distinguished guests (including more than a few local politicians) gathered for a quiche-and-berries breakfast and some keen networking.

The keynote speaker was Elias Zerhouni, the former director of the National Institutes of Health and now a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Just a few highlights from his talk here:

Zerhouni laid out the top five challenges in public health, as he sees it. Nothing too surprising, but a good way to frame the whole healthcare discussion:

1. The shift from acute to chronic conditions. (“This is a worldwide issue,” he emphasized. “This is the new global health horizon.”)

2. Aging population.

3. Health disparities.

4. Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. (Pandemics, for example.)

5. Emerging non-communicable diseases. (Things like obesity and depression, the latter of which the World Health Organization predicts will be the No. 1 cause of disability and dysfunction for people aged 25-44.)

As a world-class radiology researcher, Zerhouni also spoke to the scientific challenges the industry faces. He said the fundamental scientific barrier to doing “translational” research—that which leads to new products like drugs or devices—is the complexity of biological systems involved in diseases. “The explosion of data does not equate to explosion of knowledge,” he said. (This is a common theme across all fields of science and technology.)

On this front, Zerhouni stressed the importance of both external and internal sources of innovation. Meaning, the state of Washington should “find ways of bringing in collaboration on the translation or creation of knowledge.” He pointed out that “building relationships with the Asian Rim is probably your strategic advantage.”

For the politicians in the audience, Zerhouni noted, “Today when you get elected or not elected, the main driver is jobs, jobs, jobs.” He said his dream is that in a few years, biomarkers and healthcare stats will impact political campaigns, to the tune of, “In my district, Body Mass Index has dropped from X to Y.” (Luke previously reported on the issue of jobs being the driver of public support for biotech.)

The last issue Zerhouni addressed was a particularly interesting one: culture wars around science and technology. “Don’t be oblivious to the political, cultural, and moral aspects” of biotech and biomedical work, he said. “Be careful to not assume that everyone in the world believes what you do is holy and good.” Having dealt with the profound issues of evolution vs. creation in Washington DC—most notably in the context of stem cell policy—Zerhouni was sharing some hard-earned wisdom that everyone in the room could take home with them.

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Want to know what the real opportunities are for startup companies and investors in the field of Web search and information discovery? Or what happens when you put Google and Bing in the same room? You’ve come to the right place.

We’re putting the finishing touches on the program for our next Xconomy Forum, on the future of search and information discovery. It’s all happening on the evening of November 30 in Seattle, at the University of Washington (Kane Hall, Walker-Ames Room). You can see the writeup and program here.

In addition to our panel—which includes Brian Bershad from Google, Harry Shum from Microsoft (Bing), Steve Hall from Vulcan Capital, and Oren Etzioni from the UW, Madrona Venture Group, and Farecast—we’ll have a series of “bursts” from some of the most exciting startups working in information discovery today.

We have confirmed short presentations from four startups:

—Evri, led by CEO Will Hunsinger. This Seattle company is trying to reinvent Web browsing by understanding the content of Web pages and the connections between entities on the Web, using semantic algorithms.

—SEOmoz, led by CEO Rand Fishkin. This Seattle-based firm focuses on search engine optimization and Internet marketing, helping companies around the world boost their Web traffic and expand their business.

—Topsy, led by CEO Vipul Ved Prakash. This San Francisco startup is working on a novel search engine for social media, starting with Twitter. It’s what people call “real-time search,” and it’s based on Internet conversations, not documents.

—Sage Bionetworks, led by CEO Stephen Friend. This Seattle-based nonprofit is trying to do for biology what Twitter and Facebook did for social networking, and what Linux did for open-source software. It’s a tall order, but search technology is key to allowing biologists to find and share results in a common global database.

We’re really looking forward to the discussions on Nov. 30, and hope to see you there (registration info here).

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The Fifth Conference on Clean Energy, one of the biggest events of the year for New England energy and cleantech entrepreneurs, is coming up November 12 and 13 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. For the second year in a row, I worked with the organizers of the conference—the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center and the Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition—to produce a podcast previewing some of the themes that will be featured prominently at the event, ranging from the state of energy investing to the role of stimulus funding for energy startups, the Obama Administration’s performance so far on energy policy, and the significance of A123Systems’ recent IPO for other energy startups hoping to go public.

My guests for the podcast were Jon Karlen, a general partner at venture firm Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston, and Russ Landon, a managing director in the Boston office of Canaccord Adams, a research and investing firm.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the play button on the widget below, or you can download it and listen to it on your computer or mobile player.

I’d like to thank Jon and Russ for taking the time to speak with me, as well as the conference organizers for inviting me to host the podcast once again. Thanks also to Suzanne Moran and her crew at Lois Paul & Partners for setting up the recording session and producing and hosting the podcast. You can see Lois Paul’s blog post about the podcast here.

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My head is exploding trying to keep up with all the tech-business events going on around Seattle these days. Here’s a quick guide to the most prominent ones on my brain, in the hopes of saving you some stress (and keeping you up to date):

—Last night’s “Women in Tech” event from TechFlash was a smash hit, with a first-rate panel and networking. You can check out recaps of the event here and here. Yes, the crowd was predominantly women. I’m surprised more tech guys weren’t there to soak up the diverse perspectives and add their own input (or to get a date).

—Tonight’s panel on “the changing face of venture capital” at the University of Washington (computer science and engineering) should provide some spirited discussion of the unique challenges that investors and entrepreneurs are facing in the current climate. It’s an all-star lineup of local VCs: Mark Ashida from OVP, Greg Gottesman from Madrona, Ron Howell from WRF Capital, Bill McAleer from Voyager, and Cam Myhrvold from Ignition.

—Also tonight is the Clean Tech Open’s Pacific Northwest Regional Awards gala at the ACT Theater in downtown Seattle. Gov. Chris Gregoire is giving the keynote address, and will be followed by the announcement of three Northwest finalist winners (cleantech companies) who will then move on to a Western regional competition.

—Next week brings NWEN’s “Entrepreneur University” on Nov. 5 at the Bellevue Hyatt. It’s an all-day extravaganza about starting, growing, and managing your own company. Don’t miss the talks by Jennifer Mintz Clark, Andy Sack, and the Bacon Salt guys, or the “Entrepreneur Idol” pitch competition. (I’ll be there as one of the judges.)

—That same afternoon, on Nov. 5, Microsoft chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie is speaking at UW, as part of the computer science and engineering department’s Distinguished Lecturer Series. Mundie will talk about how software and information technology can help solve our most pressing global challenges and reshape scientific exploration. (I’ll need to go quantum so I can be in two places at once that day.)

—On Nov. 6, the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association (WBBA) is holding its annual meeting at the Sheraton Hotel downtown. Elias Zerhouni, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, is giving the keynote.

—A bit further out, Nov. 18 is the night of the Washington Technology Industry Association’s annual “predictions” dinner event at the Grand Hyatt in Seattle. John Cook of TechFlash will put some of the usual VC/entrepreneur suspects on the spot about their thoughts on 2010. On a separate note, WTIA recently announced that applications are now open for its 2010 Industry Achievement Awards, which will take place on March 4.

—Last but not least, Xconomy is organizing an evening on “The Future of Search and Information Discovery” (and Seattle’s role in shaping it) on Nov. 30, at the University of Washington (Walker-Ames Room in Kane Hall). We’ll get Google and Microsoft to share the stage, and surround them with some compelling VCs and startups, to talk about the technical problems and business opportunities in Web search, real-time information discovery, social media, and user interfaces.

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Last Wednesday, October 21, it was our privilege at Xconomy to provide a stage for a conversation between two legends of the investing world. The guest of honor was Peter Brooke, the founder of Advent International and TA Associates and the man most widely credited with spreading the idea of venture capital and private equity investing to the world outside the United States. Interviewing Brooke was Terry McGuire, the co-founder and general manager of Polaris Venture Partners and chair of the National Venture Capital Association.

The discussion, which ranged from inside stories from Brooke’s investing career to the health of the VC and PE industries amidst global economic uncertainty, drew a packed audience to the 26th-floor conference room at event host WilmerHale. We plan to bring you a full writeup of the event, as well as a video, a bit later—but we thought we’d tide you over with a few pictures from the event.

All of the photographs here were taken by Kevin Vogelsang, a 2009 MIT engineering graduate who volunteered to handle the camera for the evening. You can click on the photos to see larger versions.

Peter Brooke (left) and Terry McGuire

Left to right: Peter Brooke, Bob Buderi (Xconomy), John Chory (WilmerHale)

A full house of listeners.

Left to right: Richard Kane (Advent International), Peter Brooke, Michael Ristaino (Advent), Alex Earp (Bank of America)

Left to right: Linda Hellstrom (Halloran Consulting Group), Laurie Halloran (Halloran Consulting Group), Vijay Chandra (Babson College)

Left to right: Chris Sheehan (Common Angels), Doug Moon (JP Morgan), Greg Calkins (Xconomy)

Terry McGuire (left) speaking on stage with Peter Brooke

The audience at WilmerHale listens raptly.

Peter Brooke (right) answers a question from Terry McGuire.

Howard Anderson (Sloan School of Management, MIT) engages Brooke from the floor.

Audience member Wei Yong puts a question to Brooke.

Left to right: Terry McGuire (Polaris Venture Partners), Howard Anderson (MIT), Ruzwana Bashir (Harvard), Pat McGovern (IDG)

Left to right: Noubar Afeyan (Flagship Ventures), Bob Buderi (Xconomy), Vinit Nijhawan (Boston University)

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He is one of those people who defies description in a few pages, let alone paragraphs. Sure, Nathan Myhrvold is the founder of Microsoft Research and CEO of the Bellevue, WA-based “invention firm” Intellectual Ventures. But besides information technology and business innovation, he’s a renowned expert in such ridiculously diverse fields as astrophysics, mathematics, paleontology, and photography. He’s also one of at least three tech billionaires to speak at the University of Washington this month.

A few weeks ago, Myhrvold spoke to a crowd of students, faculty, and guests about another one of his great loves: the science of cooking. (His resume as a chef includes winning the world championship of barbecue and working at Rover’s in Seattle’s Madison Valley neighborhood.) As part of the computer science and engineering department’s Distinguished Lecturer Series, Myhrvold’s talk covered everything from food safety myths and a tour of Intellectual Ventures’ kitchen lab facilities, to computer simulations of heat intensity above a barbecue grill. He was joined on stage by chef and biochemist Chris Young of Intellectual Ventures, a veteran of the renowned Fat Duck restaurant in England.

Myhrvold and Young have been working on a 1,500-page book on the state of the art in cooking science for about three years, together with a staff of 15. “It’s like a restaurant without diners,” Myhrvold joked. “Unfortunately, it’s also like a restaurant without revenue.”

The focus of the book is to illuminate the cutting-edge science behind cooking techniques, and to stimulate people’s curiosity about food while also being practical for chefs. “There’s a revolution in cooking going on today. If you keep doing the old thing over and over again, you don’t actually need to know why it works,” Myhrvold said. “If you want to do things that are new and different and unusual, it really helps to know why.”

Highlights of the talk included high-speed (6,200 frames per second) video of a popcorn kernel popping and a water balloon bursting; discussion of what happens to food when you subject it to 40,000 times Earth’s gravity (“kind of a cool thing to do to food every now and again”); and the creation of a batch of almond-based ice cream using liquid nitrogen.

Here are just a few things Myhrvold left us with:

1. Cookbooks are like software. Someone in the audience asked Myhrvold when the cooking science book would be available. “A damn fine question,” he replied. “I come from a history …Next Page »

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TechStars, the startup incubation and seed investment fund based in Boulder, CO, and Boston (as of this year), is holding its annual reunion event in Seattle on November 4. (See a couple of local VC blogs here and here.)

As part of the event, a number of TechStars companies that are raising money will make pitches to investors. There will also be a panel discussion on angel and venture investment trends, featuring Brad Feld of TechStars and Foundry Group; Andy Sack from Founder’s Co-op; Steve Hall from Vulcan Capital; David Cohen from TechStars; Greg Gottesman from Madrona Venture Group; and Chris Sheehan from CommonAngels. (Full disclosure: Chris is a member of Xconomy’s board of directors.)

Last February, when Brad Feld spoke to a crowd of tech entrepreneurs and investors in Seattle, there was some hopeful speculation in the crowd about whether TechStars might set up operations in the Northwest in the future. Nothing new on that front, but this reunion event in two weeks can’t hurt for down the road.

It sounds like the event is invitation-only, and meant for local angel investors and VCs. We’re looking forward to a stellar gathering, and will see what comes of it.

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Search is hot again. Just when you thought Google had it all figured out, the Internet landscape has changed. Microsoft’s Bing has debuted to a generally positive reception, and signaled that the search war is far from over. The rise of Twitter and social media has spawned intense competition in the emerging field of “real-time search.” Advances in semantic understanding of the Web have led to new opportunities in Internet search for startups and big companies alike. Indeed, the world of online information discovery is being transformed dramatically—and much of the action is happening here in Seattle.

So I’m pleased to announce that Xconomy’s next Seattle event, on November 30, will tackle some of the most compelling questions in this exciting field. What are the most disruptive new technologies, interfaces, and business models in Web search? How is the proliferation of social media and smart mobile devices influencing companies’ strategies in information discovery? How should entrepreneurs and investors discern the real problems—and the most promising opportunities—in this industry? What lies beyond the current state of the art in search, and how will the field evolve in the next five to 10 years?

For one evening, we are bringing together some of the world’s experts in search and information discovery—and some of the deepest thinkers in computing, software, and entrepreneurship. This group includes Brian Bershad, Google’s Seattle site director; Harry Shum, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of search product development (Bing); Oren Etzioni, professor of computer science at the University of Washington, the founder of Farecast, and a venture partner at Madrona Venture Group; and Steve Hall, managing director of Vulcan Capital, who has put seed capital to work in a number of intriguing search-related startups, including Evri and Gist.

The moderator of the discussion will be Ed Lazowska, the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the UW. We will also be adding to the program in the coming weeks with short presentations (“bursts”) from startups working in the search and information discovery space.

This star-studded event will take place on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle. We’re still finalizing the exact room location, but will keep you updated. I’ll be the emcee, and will be passing around the microphone to elicit a bunch of good questions from the audience, for what we intend to be a highly interactive conversation. We’re looking forward to having a great crowd on Nov. 30.

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Demo conference executive producer (and VentureBeat founder) Matt Marshall and his posse will be in town next Thursday scouting out startups interested in unveiling their companies or products at the spring edition of the semi-annual tech event.

We’re planning on knocking back a beer or two (or maybe something stronger) with Matt and the Demo gang—and hope to see you there. It all takes place at Vox Populi at 755 Boylston Street, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Matt came to town this summer in a scouting trip for Demo’s fall event, which just took place last month in San Diego (one of Xconomy’s cities). It was a great evening and this one looks to be even better. There will be cool startups, Demo vets, and other great folks. At Demo, if you aren’t aware, selected startups do six-minute onstage demonstrations of their newest products or concepts.

Not only is it free (registration is required, though), the first 38 folks through the door get a coupon for a free drink. (It’s supposed to be 40, but Wade and I plan to be there first). Register here.

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I can’t do justice to a comprehensive review of yesterday’s FiReGlobal (West Coast) conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seattle. Instead, I’ll just give a few of my key takeaways. The all-day event, organized by Strategic News Service, focused on how to solve some of the most pressing problems in technology, business, and society—in areas as diverse as broadband access, entrepreneurship, education, sustainability and the environment, political discourse, human health, and mobile devices.

The sweeping conference had the tagline, “Global technology driving local solutions.” Interesting, as that’s sort of the reverse of Xconomy’s mantra, which is reporting about local stories with global impact. But I think they’re two sides of the same innovation coin.

So, in “ESPN plays of the day” style, here’s my top 10 list from the conference (if only I had the video to go with it):

10. Setting up entrepreneurial zones. A panel led by Ty Carlson of Microsoft proposed denoting special “R&D zones” from Oregon to British Columbia geared toward supporting startups in fields like renewable energy, sustainable farming, and biotech. The idea would be to offer tax credits and other incentives to create a more entrepreneurial culture in the Northwest, especially in rural areas.

9. What government should and shouldn’t do. Investor and entrepreneur Martin Tobias of Seattle-based Kashless said, “Startups and investors can’t make a 10-year bet when you have a two-year tax credit.” Those conditions freeze out small companies, especially in costly ventures like energy. So government should create open markets and set minimum market sizes for new technologies, Tobias said. But it shouldn’t pick the technology winners themselves.

8. Northwest tech startups do the Olympics. Tom Guthrie, CEO of Seattle-based Twisted Pair Solutions, said his company has helped numerous agencies on the Olympic Peninsula inter-operate their radios—a key problem in disaster response and other scenarios. Twisted Pair, which is backed by Ignition Partners and other investors, is also working on a laser system to deliver broadband signals. Meanwhile, Paul Manson, CEO of Vancouver, BC-based Sea Breeze, talked about his company’s project to build a high-voltage, direct-current undersea cable between Victoria, BC, and Port Angeles, WA. This would be a fast, controllable power transmission component of a smart grid; it should be under construction by mid-2010, he said.

7. The world according to Dell. In a chat with Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service, Michael Dell said he is excited about China and the rest of Asia as fast-growing economies. He anticipates a U.S. recovery from the recession, but says, “I don’t think you’ll see an immediate snap-back.” And he likes South America as an emerging market (Dell does sales of more than $1 billion in Brazil alone). But Europe, not so much—he sees a lot of uncertainty in the workforce there.

6. Get ready for Dell smartphones. “Mobility is absolutely the theme,” Dell said. He was talking about the relative importance of desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices to …Next Page »

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The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) has announced its lineup of 12 presenting companies for the Venture Northwest 2009 investment forum, to be held on Oct. 29 at The Nine’s Hotel in Portland, OR. The Seattle-area companies are Calidora Skin Systems, Doxo, Lucid Commerce, and MicroGreen Polymers, while the Portland-area companies are Advanced Inquiry Systems, Cularis, DesignMedix, Elemental Technologies, Giftango, Prolifiq, Second Porch, and Wicked Quick.

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Do you ever sit down with a friend who wants to show you all their latest vacation pictures? (Maybe not as much since photo-sharing sites took off.) Well, yesterday’s kickoff of the Distinguished Lecturer Series at the University of Washington’s department of computer science and engineering was just like that—if your friend were Charles Simonyi, a software billionaire, showing you videos from a $35 million vacation in space.

Simonyi, the father of Microsoft Word and Excel, and now head of Bellevue, WA-based Intentional Software, regaled the crowd of a couple hundred students, faculty, and guests with stories and videos from his second trip to space last March. Simonyi rode a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station (ISS), docked and spent some time there, and returned safely to Earth, looking none the worse for wear. He is an outspoken proponent of space tourism, and he pointed out that Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, is currently making his way aboard the space station as “the first clown in space” (and the seventh space tourist ever).

Just a few interesting tidbits that stood out to me:

—Seattle and Mercer Island look very pretty from space. “You can’t see the Great Wall or the Pyramids, but you can see Sea-Tac,” Simonyi said. You can also see clouds, lightning storms, and jet contrails, the latter especially over North America. Watching the sunrise from orbit is spectacular.

—The instruments on the spacecraft look refreshingly antique. You think they’d be slick and modern-looking, but the inside of the Soyuz and space station look like they’re out of a 1970s sci-fi movie. In fact, some instruments date back to 19th century designs (”tried and true”), and software on the rocket runs on an Intel 386 processor from the ’80s. “Older chips are more resistant to radiation,” Simonyi explained.

—Bodily functions are funny in space. You wear a lightly applied tourniquet to keep blood flowing in your legs; you get a puffy face from lack of circulation; the toilet is an engineering marvel …Next Page »

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The role of information technology in healthcare reform is such a huge, sprawling topic that it’s hard to make any real progress in just an hour or two of discussions. Yet that’s just what transpired at a stellar event last night called “Healthcare-IT—Innovations That Will Transform Healthcare Now and in the Future.” It all took place at the Herban Feast in Sodo Park, South Seattle, and it was organized by the Washington Technology Industry Association.

Over some fancy appetizers, a distinguished panel of technologists, executives, and entrepreneurs debated everything from the technical and cultural issues of privacy and security in electronic medical records to who’s going to get a piece of the $19 billion in federal stimulus funding for digital healthcare; everything from whether consumers really want e-health enough to drive regulatory changes to—and this was particularly interesting to Xconomy—what the real opportunities are for startups in the space. The panel showcased some of the first-rate expertise we have here in the Seattle and Portland regions.

Moderator Joel French, the founder and managing director of Nephalios Group, a management consultancy, kicked things off by saying the whole healthcare debate boils down to four things: a cost problem, quality variability, access and coverage, and wellness. In each of these issues, IT plays an important role. “You can’t really share information if it’s not digital,” French said.

With that, it was open season on the panelists:

—Henry Albrecht, CEO of Bellevue, WA-based Limeade, an online health and productivity startup making software-as-a-service for employers (we reported Limeade raised money in July).

—Carla Corkern, CEO and chairman of Bellevue, WA-based Talyst, a company that makes software and systems to help pharmacies manage medications in hospitals and long-term care facilities (we reported on Talyst’s broader strategy and funding in June).

—Luis Machuca, CEO of Hillsboro, OR-based Kryptiq, a maker of collaborative software that lets healthcare providers share information with patients, labs, and physicians (we’ve reported on some of Kryptiq’s deals and customers, including NASA).

—Mohan Nair, executive vice president and chief marketing executive of Oregon-based Regence, the largest health insurer in the Northwest (he has a background in tech entrepreneurship).

—Michael Raymer, global market strategist and general manager for Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group (we’re reported on HealthVault, the company’s Web platform for medical records).

For the next hour, some tough questions flew out from the audience, and among the panelists. Here are my takeaways from the discussion:

1. “The magic pill is data liquidity.” That was from Luis Machuca, who argued that patients need to be able to own and access their own digital health information and use it to get better healthcare. “Universal health will fail, everything will fail, if we don’t have data liquidity and digitization,” Machuca said.

2. An open market, human behavior, and connectivity are important too. Nair argued that the present closed marketplace for healthcare services encourages entitlement instead of earned rewards. Albrecht noted that we should pay more attention to behavior, and less to technology. Raymer added, “Data liquidity needs to be coupled with tools to empower people to make changes, and connect people together.”

3. If you want better healthcare, go to jail. “We see the best compliance for …Next Page »

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‘Tis the season for startup-pitching events. Last week, it was the Zino Society’s investment forum in Seattle. Today it’s the DEMOfall09 conference in San Diego, where four Northwest companies are presenting. And tonight there is nPost’s networking and demo event for tech startups at the Columbia City Theater in South Seattle.

But there is also a notable newcomer to the scene. Alibaba, the Hangzhou, China-based Internet commerce firm, and Inc. magazine announced today the semifinalists in their U.S. entrepreneur competition, called “Newpreneur of the Year.” Thirty entrepreneurs will compete in six cities across the country, including Seattle, for 12 spots in the next round of competition, where the public will vote for the businesses they think have the most potential to revive the economy. (The other cities are New York, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, and Los Angeles.) The final round will take place on Nov. 18 in San Francisco, where one winner will take home $50,000, and four others will split another $50,000.

The Seattle semifinalist event is on Oct. 20 at the Edgewater Hotel. Five local entrepreneurs will pitch their companies and ideas, ranging widely from alternative energy, medical devices, and retail, to the decidedly low-tech world of kitchen and fashion accessories. The winners will move on to the final 12 in the nation. Here’s a snippet on each of the Seattle contenders:

—Jessica Aceti will be pitching Cap-sac, a modern line of convertible accessories, including a fanny pack for your head. The product folds into itself and can also be used as a purse. (This I have to see, though it’s safe to say I’m not the target audience.)

—Steven Bohannon from Bainbridge Island, WA, will pitch Feed Your Mind, a vending machine company focused on providing healthy, nutritious, and entertaining alternatives to traditional vending offerings. Its product mix includes crossword puzzles, games, new and used books, playing cards, maps, and nutritious snacks. Machines will be placed strategically where consumers get stuck waiting—at hospitals, airports, bus and ferry terminals, and so forth.

—Burt Hamner of Seattle will pitch Hydrovolts, the renewable energy company we’ve profiled before in Xconomy. Its key technology is a hydrokinetic turbine that can be placed in a water current (like a canal or stream) to provide electricity for up to a dozen homes. Hamner is no stranger to pitch competitions; Hydrovolts won the “audience favorite” prize at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network’s First Look Forum last March, and took home the $50,000 prize in the Zino Society Green Investment forum in May.

—Cindy Sawyer of Bothell, WA, is pitching ToweLocs, a locking device that keeps kitchen and hand towels secured, and prevents them from falling to the floor. It may sound mundane, but it’s the kind of simple, stylish home accessory that might just take off if it solves a real problem for people.

—Joel Smith of Edmonds, WA, will pitch Forward Mobility, a line of medical mobility products to help disabled customers maintain their independence. The company is looking for funding to finish the production tooling of its new walking leg brace, the Freedom Leg, which allows a person to walk on an injured leg with zero weight put on the knee and below.

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The DEMOfall 09 conference, billed as “the launchpad for emerging technology,” kicks off today in San Diego, with company presentations and new product launches officially starting tomorrow morning. The Seattle and Portland, OR, metro areas are well-represented in the mix, with three Seattle-area startups and one Portland company scheduled to present their stuff. That’s all according to VentureBeat, which co-produces the conference.

It’s a big deal in the tech industry, and a great opportunity for a select group of startups. Here’s a little bit about each Northwest company that will take the stage:

—Intelius, based in Bellevue, WA, provides background checks and identity theft protection for consumers and businesses. Back in May, we reported that the company acquired Spock, the Silicon Valley-based people search engine, for an undisclosed amount. Intelius was founded in 2003 and is led by CEO Naveen Jain, the founder of InfoSpace.

—Point of Wealth Systems, based in Portland, OR, has developed a method that allows employees who make their money in cash and tips (waitstaff at restaurants, for example) to deposit their earnings into a secure register for savings, retirement, or investment purposes. Point of Wealth was formed in March 2008 to bring financial services to this new market.

—Symform, based in Seattle, has been honing its cloud data-storage product in beta trials (and a pre-launch version) since the spring. We first profiled the company back in February, and in April, Symform announced it had raised a $1.5 million Series A round from OVP Venture Partners. Its basic idea is to offer cheap, efficient, and secure data storage and backup services to small and medium-sized businesses.

—Enroute, based in Bellevue, WA, is giving a sneak preview of its product—a unified system to help businesses find the most efficient way of shipping packages from A to B. Enroute is one of the finalists from the Zino Society investment forum, which took place last Thursday in Seattle. It is in the running for a $50,000 Zino investment prize, to be announced within the next few weeks.

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The results of last Thursday’s investment forum organized by the Zino Society are still wafting through the Seattle business community. Six finalists were chosen for two $50,000 investment prizes—Photon Machines, Enroute, and Giftango in the “tech” category, and MicroGreen Polymers, Harbor Wing, and Zero Crossing in the “non-tech” category. Zino founder and CEO Cathi Hatch tells me her team will have to select the two winners more quickly than expected, probably by the end of this month, because some of the finalists are getting ready to close outside investment rounds.

The Zino Society has invested close to $13 million of angel financing in startups over its four-year lifetime as a business-social network that connects investors with entrepreneurs. Investor members vote on the companies, and the fund makes investments from a common pool. Hatch says one of her key takeaways from last week’s investment forum is that the passion of entrepreneurs is crucial to a broader economic recovery. “Innovation is really what’s going to help drag us out of the doldrums,” she says. And the 28 presenters from the Zino forum are the “poster children” for innovation, she adds.

Hatch also told me some intriguing tales from Zino’s history. Having a nose for this sort of thing, I thought a few of the piquant tidbits could be turned into somewhat unconventional lessons for any startup venture. In fairness to Hatch, she did not lay them out as lessons in entrepreneurship, so these takeaways are strictly mine:

1. Don’t be afraid to change course.

Hatch says she originally started Zino with the idea that it would be about wine investments. People could invest in wineries, software involved in tracking wines, and so forth. Hatch asked one of her angel investors to help develop a logo, which to this day has a grapevine running through it (see image above). “Before we got to our first investment meeting, I decided this makes no sense,” Hatch says. “If someone invests in a winery, they’re not going to invest in a second winery. They’re going to want to diversify.” At Zino’s first investment forum, only one pitch had to do with wine. Since then, the group has been open to all kinds of startups—though wine remains a peripheral theme to Zino’s events (more on that below).

2. Don’t label yourself prematurely.

At last year’s Zino Zillionaire investment forum, presenting companies were asked to sort themselves by “tech” versus “non-tech.” One company gave itself a non-tech appellation, and didn’t win an award—but Hatch says the investors would have voted for it had it been in the tech category. So at this year’s forum, Zino uncorked the categories and let the investors decide for themselves. There was no hard-and-fast rule, but “non-tech” ended up including companies focused on materials technology and physical products.

3. Do choose your name wisely.

I asked Hatch where the name Zino came from. She says she used to be in the restaurant business, where names are particularly crucial. Names that start with “Z” are good because people remember them, she says. Hard vowels are preferable as well. Lastly, Zino rhymes with “vino,” which takes us back to the original idea behind the group. At its forums, receptions, and dinners, Zino often invites wine makers to attend and serve their featured vintages. At last week’s forum, the attending wineries (all from Washington state) were JLC Winery, 428 Wines, and San Juan Vineyards. As David Brent would say, el vino did flow.

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