Win A Ticket To The Real-Time Stream CrunchUp This Friday

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For the past few weeks, TechCrunchIT editor Steve Gillmor and I have been pulling together speakers and demos for our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp this Friday.  What started as a roundtable and a few demos, quickly grew into a full-fledged mini-conference with 45 speakers, including nearly 20 startup and product demos.  Other than TechCrunch50, I’ve never seen so many CEOs and companies begging to be present at a conference before.

It barely fits into one day, but we’re gonna pack it in.  The CrunchUp is nearly sold out, with nearly 400 attendees signed up so far.  There are about 20 tickets left.  (You can buy one here for $295, and is also the only way left to get into our annual August Capital Summer party).  Some people in Silicon Valley are already complaining about the name Real-Time Stream, so we’ll give away a ticket to whoever can come up with the best alternative name in comments.

I like Real-Time Stream because it captures two important trends which are hitting critical mass right now on the Web: the increasing emphasis on instantaneous information and different strategies for managing and presenting that information in streams rather than traditional Web pages.  As I wrote when we kicked this off a month ago:

What do we mean by the real-time stream?  It’s popping up nearly everywhere you care to look.  Information on the Web is coming to us increasingly in streams. Twitter kicked off the shift, but everyone from Facebook to FriendFeed to Google to AOL is quickly adopting the information stream as a dominant mechanism for distributing data to people exactly when it is produced. As I’ve written before: “The stream is winding its way throughout the Web and organizing it by nowness.” RSS is dead. Long live the stream.

Come up with a better name for the Real-Time Stream and we’ll give you a free ticket to attend.  The CrunchUp agenda is below.  There will be panels on investing in real-time startups,  the emerging stream platforms, real-time search, and how businesses are adapting from a marketing and customer relationship perspective.  I’m equally excited about the demos, which I’ve been previewing.  They will include never-before-seen stream readers (from Seesmic and others), new real-time search engines (Wowd), real-time media demos (Magma), mobile video (Qik), real-time CRM (Salesforce, Bantam), and ways to speed up RSS (WordPress, Netvibes, and more).

Gaping Void‘s Hugh MacLeod designed his 4th commemorative lithograph in honor of our event, “dream big.” It’s certainly inspiring. We’ll live auction one special serigraph during the CrunchUp with proceeds to benefit Electronic Frontier Foundation.

And for those of you who can’t get a ticket, we’ll be streaming the whole conference live courtesy of UStream.  How couldn’t we? We’re going to be pulling 36MB of bandwith into the Fox Theater for the conference.  Meraki will be managing the wireless network for attendees.  ToxBox will help us bring remote participants such as Robert Scoble, who will be in London, via video chat.  If you Tweet about or from the CrunchUp, please use the hashtag #crunchup.  We’ll be using Tinker, from Glam Media Labs, to put up questions and comments from the audience (both live and virtual) who Tweet out that hashtag.  And CC:Betty will create a conversation space to organize and archive all the real-time chatter about the event.


CrunchUp

Friday, July 10
9:00 am – 4:45 pm
Fox Theatre, 2215 Broadway, Redwood City

Get CrunchUp tickets for $295, which include expedited check-in to the August Capital party, 2480 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, 5:30 – 10:00 pm. Press contact: Daniel Brusilovsky

9:00 – 9:45 am
The Real Time Opportunity
Q&A with leading angel investors John Borthwick and Ron Conway, moderated by Michael Arrington and Steve Gillmor.

9:45 – 10:30 am
The Real Time Moment

10:30 – 10:55
Real Time Communication Demos

10:55 – 11:05 am
Break

11:05 – 11:30
Real Time Application Demos

11:30 – 12:15 pm
Real Time Search

12:15 – 12:30 pm
Real Time Mobs
Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble talk about the darker side of the stream

12:30 – 1:45 pm
Lunch

1:45 – 2:15 pm
Real Time Media Demos

2:15 – 2:30 pm
Business Demos

2:30 – 3:15 pm
Real Time Business

3:15 – 3:30 pm
Break

3:30 – 4:45 pm
Real Time Roundtable

More CrunchUp details are here.

Press, please email Daniel Brusilovsky for press consideration to attend the CrunchUp and August Capital outing.

Big Time Thank Yous to Our CrunchUp Sponsors

Product Sponsors: Glam Media Lab’s Tinker live conversation moderation, Tokbox live video chat, Ustream live video streaming, Bantam Live, Charles River Ventures, Microsoft BizSpark and mailspace cc:Betty.

Demonstration Sponsors: Seesmic, OneRiot, PeopleBrowsr, Mashery, IDrive, Sun Start-Up Essentials, Meraki, SocialFeet, Tapulous, Loopt, Grey Goose Vodka, Future Works, Gaping Void, Stormhoek Wines, Silver Moon Desserts, Friendster, LifeIO, and Groovy.

Event Sponsors: Eventbrite for ticketing and MediaTemple for hosting, Topix, Orange, AIM/AOL, ReTargeter, Coveroo, Pandora.

Please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde if you want to sneak into one of our last few sponsor tables. Additional details here.