BricaBox Blog

Hey everyone, who’s going to South by Southwest this year?

Check out SXWhere.com — a quick but super useful thing we pulled together for the SXSW festival. It’s a place to post parties that are happening.

Also, please spare a Digg for it and head over here.

As I mentioned on my blog, SXSWhere is not only a super useful way to post and find events (and see who’s going) — SXSWhere is also a great demonstration of how easy it is to build social content websites using the native functionality of BricaBox (including that date support Kyle just rolled out).

Set-up time was under 5 minutes and design time (Kyle played with the CSS and made a few nice graphics) was probably about 1 hour.

So, 1 hour and 5 minutes to this! — it’s why we think we’re doing something kinda special.

Thanks!

We’re demoing BricaBox at the NextWeb / NY Web 2.0 Meetup here in New York City tonight (info below)

At the event, we’ll be showing off some of the great new features coming up in our launch. Please come out to Webster Hall to support us and grab some free food, if you’re in the New York area.

Thanks.
N & K

The NextWeb’s NY Web 2.0 Meetup will be held tomorrow, Monday, February 18th, at Webster Hall. The event begins at 6:15pm and will have FREE FOOD (sponsored by Gusto), Free WiFi, drink specials, presentations, and informal networking before and afterwards. Presenting this month is/are:

1. Brian August, Webster Hall
2. Eric Litman, Washington VC
3. Nate Westheimer & Kyle Bragger, BricaBox
4. Michael Grushin, ReviewBasics
5. Sam Lessin, Drop.io

Please RSVP and let us know if you’ll be joining us for the event. Follow this link to RSVP: http://newtech.meetup.com/21/calendar/7115544. If you’re not a member, you may join by clicking here. You do not have to be a member to attend!

Photocredit: Willotoons

I should be packing, or QAing BricaBox, or writing up a press release, or, well, a lot of things… instead, I’m writing to say how excited I am for this trip to Vegas we’re about to take.

In a few hours, I’ll meet Kyle at JFK airport and board our JetBlue flight to Las Vegas. When we land (around noon), we’ll head to the hotel (the Hilton), and then immediately head to the Convention Center, which is right across the street. After setting up (nothing to set-up, really — just make sure everything is there), we’ll head back to the hotel to push out whatever major updates we need to before opening up to the world (actually, while Kyle is coding, I have a few important errands to run).

Then it’s time to party and shmooze. We’ll be heading to The Conversation Group’s party at Hard Rock Cafe, for sure. Other parties are sure to jot across the Twitter feed and we’ll find ourselves at those too. All this before finally heading back to the hotel again to get ready for a big next day.

On the day of the Expo, both Kyle and I will be “manning” our booth — booth 502, to be exact. We’re super excited to be right next to AdaptiveBlue, another New York, and much more semantically advanced, company. I’ve met Karen, the head of Engineering, back at the Supernova Mixer in NYC, but have yet to meet Fraser and Alex. This will be fun.

What to expect from BricaBox:

We’re launching what we’re calling a “public alpha” of the platform. Really, it’s a public beta mixed with a private alpha (the beta being the outward facing sites and the alpha being the publisher site of the platform). Either way we cut it, we expect to be one of the freshest companies there (I don’t know of anyone else launching there), though certainly one of the more technologically awesome.

More launch news will come out later regarding the launch (that’s the “press release” I was talking about).

Lastly, expect us to live blog a little. If we’re not live blogging it’s probably because we’re talking about BricaBox and meeting all the great folks at the conference. I’ll also probably do a little Twittering, so head there or “follow” innonate if you’re interested.

So things are kicking along nicely for BricaBox. With what good news shall I begin?!

• Winning 2nd Place in Sun Microsystem’s Startup Challenge at Startup Camp?
• BricaBox Launch at Blog World Expo?
• New BricaBox Headquarters?
• Next week’s Feedback Forum and a first peek at BricaBox?
• Interview with John Havens of Blog Talk Radio?

Here it goes:

News Item #1
We’re proud to say that BricaBox won 2nd place (after a double tiebreaker) at Sun Mircosystems’ “Best Startup” Contest at Startup Camp NYC. There were over 25 companies who entered and they were all awesome. Congrats go to our friends at UpNext for their 1st place finish. Also, a big thank you to Sun and the Startup Camp folks (David Berlind & Co). Also, big thanks to our friends Charlie and Alex of Path101 and Michael of A.viary for their help in the competition. It was a swell event and we had fun (by the way, I hosted a fun session called the “Business of APIs” inspired by the Mashery Conference I went to, and will post about it on my blog later this week).

News item #2:
We now have a phase 1 launch date! On November 8th, we’ll be down in Las Vegas for the Blog World Expo and from that location we’ll set some of the first sites “powered by BricaBox” live on the world. We’re really excited and will have more info about that launch soon. (Also, if you plan on being there (Las Vegas, Nov 8 - 9th), drop us a line on the contact page and or just come find us at booth 502.)

News item #3:
Next we should tell you about our new home on 23rd Street. Actually, we can’t really tell you much about it yet. That will also be its own post in the coming future. But let’s just say that we’re super happy to be in a very cool incubator space for the next few months as we transition into some longer-term startup space we’re actually helping build!

News item #4:
Next Monday, the 29th, BricaBox will be presenting at NYCE’s Feedback Forum. Spaces are limited, so if you’re interested in stopping by, checking out BricaBox and giving us some constructive criticism, please do!

News item #5:
While at Startup Camp, I had the good fortune of getting interviewed by Blog Talk Radio’s own Director of Biz Dev John Havens (most of you know him for his contributions in organizing PodCamp). Anyway, I had a great time — despite the fact that it was so early in the morning — and you can check out the interview here (or embedded below).

Even more news soon, but thats it for now.

APIs, mash-ups, data: these are integral parts of BricaBox. So, while I’m out in San Francisco next week, I’m going to hit up The Business of API’s Conference.

The premise of the conference is “how you can make money with your API,” more or less. What I’m going to the conference to find out is who wants to take their API and put it in the hands of millions of consumers. Right now, most companies think “How can I get as many developers and possible to use my API.”

We ask a different question: “How can everyday people use your data to enhance their own content?” This model takes the onus off developers to find the best use of data and opens the marketplace for premium data from tens of thousands of code-warriors to tens of millions of real people (not that you’re not a real person if you code!).

Anyway, if you plan on attending the conference and would like to meet up, be sure to email me at my first name on this domain dot com. (BricaBox)

See you there,

Nate

We’ve been pretty hush, hush theses days, haven’t we?

That’s about to change.

Starting today, with our submission to the TechCrunch20, we’re going to slowly open up to the world and reveal, bit by bit, the revolutionary software we’re working on called The BricaBox Platform (we just say “BBX” for short).

What’s BBX?

At this point, we can say the following about…

… what we do:

• As I said back at the May NY Tech Meetup, BBX is much like a swiss army knife. Lots of tools, one package, perfect for “camping” (see alternative meanings).
• Our tag-line is “Social Knitting” — so to clue you in, we’re knitting three things together on one platform: content, APIs, and people. Do we do mash-ups? Yes. Is it a social networking platform? Kinda. Is there anything like it? No. Do you want one? Of course, so you’ll give us your email address below and get on the wait-list.

… how we’re powered:

• The coding is all Ruby on Rails, which is something Kyle will write more about down the line (among other things! he’s not one of those boring coding geniuses, thank goodness!).
• Our hosting is with Engine Yard, allowing us to scale at ridonkulous speed. If you’re in the RoR business, they’re the best. We’ve tried the other “big guys.”

So, subscribe to our RSS feed, stay-tuned, and check back here often. In the meantime, get on our product announcement/beta list:

This week I’m out at Web2Open. If you’re here and would like to say hi, “twitter me” at “innonate” or just shoot me an old-fashion email from my blog’s contact page.

Anyway, I’m super excited to me here and I’ll be talking about all the awesome, super secret things going on with the BBX Project.

I’ll also be talking about what’s going on in NYC, as Michael Galpert and I plan on holding a session called “nextNY: Silicon Alley 2.0″

More on that later, on my blog.