BlueGlass L.A., a conference designed to promote use of social networking tools for marketing, recently brought together some of the biggest names from the local tech community in an environment where they could have a little fun.
Jason Nazar, founder of Santa Monica online document company Docstoc, ribbed Brian McLoughlin of venture capital firm GRP Partners for denying him funding during the company’s startup years. Angel investor David McClure showed up, sporting a scruffy beard from a recent vacation in Costa Rica.
It was just the atmosphere that BlueGlass founder Chris Winfield was looking for.
“We didn’t give out any speaker guidelines,” he said. “We didn’t want to make it stuffy.”
This was the first conference staged by Tampa, Fla.-based BlueGlass, a marketing company with an office in downtown Los Angeles.
Winfield said he picked Los Angeles to host the first BlueGlass event because he didn’t think that any other L.A. tech conferences had covered his specialty: teaching startups about online marketing.
The July 19-20 conference in Marina del Rey featured sessions about many topics chosen for startups, such as driving traffic to a website and finding funding.
For many of the L.A.-area companies that attended, the highlight of the two-day conference was a panel discussion about funding moderated by Docstoc’s Nazar.
Angel investor Paige Craig bantered with McLoughlin of Century City-based GRP and Andy Liu, co-founder of Seattle startup BuddyTV. The trio got into a friendly debate over the advantages and disadvantages of venture capital, angel investment and bootstrapping.
“Because we’re a startup, the panel was really helpful to us,” said Cassie Rice, co-founder of Santa Monica social media management company SocialBlaze.
For Rice, the conference lagged in its sessions about social media marketing, which she said were too general and didn’t give specific examples about what companies could do to improve their marketing on such sites.
After the conference was over, many turned to Twitter to share their experiences.
“Amazing collection of really savvy marketers,” one attendee tweeted.
More than 200 people attended the event, including the chief executives of digital comic book company Graphic.ly and stock music website AudioMicro. The turnout exceeded Winfield’s expectations – tickets were $495.
“People kept telling us that nobody in L.A. would pay for tickets,” he said.
3-D’s Big Break
Break Media is asking its audiences to grab their 3-D glasses.
The online entertainment company that produces shows aimed at young men announced at San Diego’s Comic-Con International that it will soon add 3-D programs to its flagship site.
Executives at the Beverly Hills company said they plan to launch a 3-D channel on Break.com, which shows sports bloopers, original series and other videos, in coming weeks. Starting in September, Break will rollout three new 3-D offerings – extreme sports show “X3D”; horror show “Scare3D”; and “Life in 3D,” which will feature everyday items such as fish tanks.
Andy Tu, vice president of marketing for Break Media, said that with more films turning to 3-D, the company saw an opportunity to get an early start bringing the format online.
“Everything we know about our audience says that they’re early adopters for the first wave of technology,” Tu said. “3-D on the web will serve them a new trend.”
In addition to Break.com, Break Media operates six entertainment websites that cater to men 18 to 34, including mixed martial arts and wrestling blog CagePotato and online men’s magazine MadeMen.
The new 3-D shows will be formatted to play on standard computer screens, but viewers will need to wear traditional red-and-blue 3-D glasses, rather than newer high-tech models that viewers of new movies such as “Avatar” have used.
Tu said Break Media is in talks with several distributors of “old school” 3-D glasses to find a way to get glasses out to customers at a low price.
“We understand that everybody in the world doesn’t have 3-D glasses in the top drawer of their desk,” he said.
Precious Money
Rockoco Inc., a Pasadena diamond-polishing company, announced last week that it has raised $1.5 million in a Series A funding round.
The round was led by Pasadena Angels, whose member Paul Gloger is Rockoco’s chief executive.
The company was founded at Caltech by Axel Scherer and George Maltezos, also founders of Carlsbad diagnostics company Helixis Inc. Rockoco has developed technology that will polish diamonds with small etchings to increase their brilliance.
Gloger said Rockoco plans to use the funding to move out of its Caltech lab into a new facility and ramp up its business.
Staff reporter Natalie Jarvey can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.
