We’ve seen a lot of contest/giveaways pop up on Twitter, but I think Humanity is really raising the bar a notch with their Summer Tweet’away Contest. Not only will Humanity be giving away a snowboard, but they’ve secured other companies as sponsors of the contest that will be offering prizes as well. Each of these companies will be featured on the Humanity website as well as on the Humanity twitter page. Local company Alamofire, makers of the iPhone game Gowalla, will be giving away an iPhone 3GS.

If you’re on Twitter and a fan of snowboarding, you should definitely check this out.

Name:  John Harvey

Title    : Owner/President

Email    : john.harvey@thehappyhourlocator.com

Give us the 30-second elevator pitch on your company

The Happy Hour Locator is an internet advertising website with the target market being the business traveler. We will feature 20 of the best establishments around a 10 to 15 mile radius of each airport in Texas for now but soon will be nationwide. We will provide photos of each establishment, their specials and music so the traveler will already know what to expect before they arrive their destination.

Tell us about the founders, who they are, backgrounds, and why they are passionate about your company

We have started a web-based advertising company that has only one mission. To have larger numbers of people frequent your establishment and purchase more of your goods and services. Once they see how great your Happy Hour is, they will want to come back, over and over again, along with telling all of their friends. The word of mouth will be very, very BIG! The idea for this type of advertising started in 1991 with an overwhelming response. The cost of the print media was too much to incur. So we waited. Now we have decided to bring it to the internet.

All you have to do is check out our web-page and click through the various items like the “Free Food”, the “Happy Hour”, the “Entertainment” along with the “Drink Specials”. Like a member will be able to do. We will shoot pictures in the best areas of your establishment that you, yourself can change at any time. Daily specials, food changes, parties, adding your very own music! Along with holiday pictures. You’ll be able to maintain your very own page all year long (if you wish) or we will do it for you. You will have a way to check your page every minute of the day and make any changes any time you’re ready.

Do you have funding? How much?

No, but we are looking for an investor or investors. We would only need about $30,000.00 to $50,000.00 to launch the website.

What are your startup’s goals for this year?

We want to complete all of the Dallas Fort Worth area with 20 best of the best establishments featured near the DFW Airport, Meacham Airport in Fort Worth which will include the Sundance Square area and the Stockyards and Love Field Airport which will include the West End. Then we can move on to Houston, Austin and San Antonio.

Stay tuned to the blog for the latest information on upcoming SpringStage events in Fort Worth.

** again, in case you didn’t remember… I’m a developer at Squeejee and therefore am intimately tied to this project.

So, what the heck is this Floxee thing anyway?

Floxee is a platform to bring your Twitter flock together. To boil it way down, Floxee is essentially groups for Twitter; get a bunch of Twitter users and aggregate them and their tweets in one location.

Of course we offer a bunch of features to go along with that, including:

• an archived and searchable tweetstream
• detailed tweetstream and stats page for each flocker
  • we pull in data from Follow Cost and TwitterCounter
  • ability to follow the person directly from their page
• stats for your flock including most followed/conversational/political/active
• community backchannel

Some neat features in the pipeline include the ability to vote up tweets in the tweetstream, css customizations and content management for certain portions of a site.

Our goal with Floxee is to make it incredibly easy for anyone to create a directory of Twitter users with all these features. Of course, there are some very interesting potential applications, especially around business use and branding/marketing. Zappos is well known for encouraging employees to use Twitter and aggregating it all, along with official company accounts, on their website at twitter.zappos.com. Floxee puts the ability to create the same strong sense of community and company branding in the hands of any business or organization with just a few clicks.

Currently, Floxee is in private beta. If you would like to participate please visit http://floxee.com and complete the signup form at the bottom of the page. We anticipate moving out of the beta period soon and rolling out a variety of paid accounts that should suit a wide variety of users.

Floxee is being used to power (amongst other sites):

This quote came through my tweetstream today (thanks @startupstudent). Of course, I re-tweeted it, but I’ve been thinking a bit about it the rest of the day. I’m always sort of thinking about what distinguishes an entrepreneur from a small business owner and I think the elements of the above quote really define an entrepreneur.

“…always searches for change…”

In your startup, change is coming whether you want it to or not. The people who are seeking it out are going to be prepared, and one step ahead of the competition when it comes time to make adjustments. Don’t underestimate the value of this. Rapidly changing products, customers or any number of things could tear your startup down in heartbeat. Seek it out before it finds you and be ready.

“…responds to it…”

You HAVE to take action on things that are changing if you want your company to stay alive. Do customers want something else out of your product? Has your market shifted? Have you uncovered something more lucrative and need to adjust your goals? Has the macro-economy tanked and you need to slash your burn rate yesterday?

Your rate of responsiveness will have a pretty direct correlation to your ability to stay in front of the competition and stay on top of your own business.

“…exploits it as an opportunity…”

This is the crux of the whole thing. As an entrepreneur EVERYTHING should be viewed as an opportunity, even if it’s something most people would consider a negative event. The entrepreneurs that succeed will be the ones who saw opportunity where others saw roadblocks and executed on an advantageous solution.

Benefits of Attending:
·         Get an inside look at the VC industry as the panel of leading Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors reveal what kind of deals their looking for in the recession, best & worst ways to get their attention, plus additional advice for start-ups.

·         Meet  Entrepreneurs trying to raise capital during these challenging times.

·         Network and chat with attending Investors and get their personal take on the current economic climate and how it’s affecting their investments.

Entrepreneurs to Meet Active VCs & Angels at FundingPost’s Dallas Event

In a time when networking is a necessity, FundingPost makes introductions at the “Dallas Early-Stage Venture & Angel Conference.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Dallas, TX –May 20, 2009 - FundingPost (www.FundingPost.com) is proud to announce its “Dallas Early-Stage Venture & Angel Conference,” to take place on June 4, 2009, at the Sheraton Suites Market Center. FundingPost has organized over 150 sold-out venture events over the past eight years.

Despite the bleak economy, there are still investors looking for quality deals, and this upcoming event will give entrepreneurs access to some of the leading early-stage Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors in the area. Additionally, as many entrepreneurs wonder what it takes to secure financing during these challenging times, investors will be offering valuable insight during the panel discussion. The panel of Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists will address trends in early-stage investing, hot sectors, the best and worst ways to get their attention, as well as additional advice on how to grow your business during the recession. As with all FundingPost events, there will be pitching and plenty of networking time for the entrepreneurs to meet the investors!

Speakers for this event include:

John Filla, Houston Angel Network
John C. Adler, General Partner, Silver Creek Ventures
Dan Klein, Director, Hunt Ventures
Ben Doherty, Angel Investor, The Fat Cat Club

“We are excited to be hosting another event back in Dallas! Last year our event sold out and the entrepreneur community in Texas has continued to grow,” said Joe Rubin, Director at FundingPost. “We will be bringing both Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists, all of whom are actively seeking new deals.” Tickets to attend the event are available online at: http://www.FundingPost.com/event

For more information on the Investor conference and other FundingPost events, call 800-461-5509 or visit the website at http://www.FundingPost.com/event

ABOUT FUNDINGPOST:
FundingPost is an entrepreneur and investor network reaching more than 250,000 executives and 7,500 Venture Capital and Angel Investors across the nation each month.

For over eight years, FundingPost has worked with thousands of Angel and Venture Capital Investors and Entrepreneurs. FundingPost has hosted over 8,500 CEOs and 500 Venture Funds at events in 17 cities nationwide, as well as providing a Dealflow magazine and a deal-exchange Website that sees introductions of Investors to Entrepreneurs every day. FundingPost’s mission is to reach investors and entrepreneurs in every medium possible - both online and offline. For more information: (www.FundingPost.com)

Contact:
Deborah Hertlein
FundingPost.com
800-461-5509
press@fundingpost.com

Here’s a quick list of some of the cool new features in the site (from the Squeejee blog):

1. Searchable tweetstreams This is big folks. Just take a look at all the folks in Congress who tweeted about the stimulus.
2. Powerful list filters The old site had a number of useful lists. We’ve combined those into a single view to let you slice and dice the directory any way you want. Go ahead and filter by party, tweeting status, state, etc.
3. Slick new zoomable follower charts Follower charts now let you zoom on the date axis
4. Backchannel This is your chance to talk back to Congress. Just include the #tweetcongress hashtag
5. Auto-linked text You asked, we listened. Now @usernames, #hashtags, and URLs in tweets are auto linked in the tweetstream and RSS feeds.
6. New stats rankings We now display rankings for follower count for Twitter overall, for Congress, and for party. We also show the most conversational and political tweeters based on @replies and tweet political content.

Also of note is that Tweet Congress is now powered by Floxee, an open source twitter directory plugin built for Ruby on Rails apps. Floxee was also developed by Squeejee in an effort to improve on the initial release of Tweet Congress and will soon power TweetIllinois.org and GovTwit.com.

RSVP: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2375869/

The SpringStage Fort Worth Startup Happy Hour is all about bringing the local entrepreneurial community together and making valuable connections.

Our mission is to build a vibrant startup community here in Fort Worth and foster local entrepreneurship.

This event occurs on the 3rd Monday of every month.

This event follows in the success of the Dallas Startup Happy Hour that Alex Muse has been putting on for the past few months. Through the event many entrepreneurs/startups have met co-founders, made contacts with local VCs, received valuable feedback on their ideas, found employees and angel investors and broadened their network with great contacts.

We look forward to building the same sort of success here in Fort Worth and hope you will join us!

PLEASE NOTE: Please don’t come to sell your goods or services. The purpose of the event is for entrepreneurs to connect to empower each other through the development of a community of startups. The purpose is NOT to build a business networking group or lead generation group. Again, PLEASE DON’T COME TO MARKET YOUR SERVICES OR SELL YOUR GOODS.

• Fort Worth Jelly

  Wednesday April 8, 2009 at 11:00am
  Billy Miner’s Saloon

  150 W. 3rd Street
  Fort Worth, Texas 76102 Get Directions

  Come on down to the Fort Worth Jelly!

  A jelly is a casual co-working event, held at some location on some sort of time-scaled basis. For the jelly here in Fort Worth, it’s at random times, and random locations… but primarliy once or twice a month at Billy Miner’s Saloon from 11am on.

  Get more info about jelly at http://workatjelly.com and more info about co-working at http://coworking.pbwiki.com.

  The Fort Worth jelly is an attempt to start fostering the co-working community here in Fort Worth. We want to get all of us entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers, telecommuters, etc together, hang out and have a good time while trying to get a little work done. As we start to build this community of folks, we’re also looking very keenly on starting a permanent co-working space somewhere downtown. If you’re interested in that please let us know!

• Fort Worth Startup Happy Hour

  Monday April 20, 2009 at 5:00pm
  The Flying Saucer Draught Emporium

  111 E. Fourth St.
  Fort Worth, Texas 76102 Get Directions

  The SpringStage Fort Worth Startup Happy Hour is all about bringing the local entrepreneurial community together and making valuable connections.

  Our mission is to build a vibrant startup community here in Fort Worth and foster local entrepreneurship.

  This event occurs on the 3rd Monday of every month.

  This event follows in the success of the Dallas Startup Happy Hour that Alex Muse has been putting on for the past few months. Through the event many entrepreneurs/startups have met co-founders, made contacts with local VCs, received valuable feedback on their ideas, found employees and angel investors and broadened their network with great contacts.

  We look forward to building the same sort of success here in Fort Worth and hope you will join us!

  PLEASE NOTE: Please don’t come to sell your goods or services. The purpose of the event is for entrepreneurs to connect to empower each other through the development of a community of startups. The purpose is NOT to build a business networking group or lead generation group. Again, PLEASE DON’T COME TO MARKET YOUR SERVICES OR SELL YOUR GOODS.

We’re planning on putting on another Jelly next Wednesday the 8th. Hope you can make it!!

Thanks, what the heck is a jelly?

A jelly is a casual co-working event, held at some location on some sort of time-scaled basis. For the jelly here in Fort Worth, it’s at random times, and random locations… but primarily once or twice a month at Billy Miner’s Saloon from 11am on.

Get more info about jelly at http://workatjelly.com and more info about co-working at http://coworking.pbwiki.com.

The Fort Worth jelly is an attempt to start fostering the co-working community here in Fort Worth. We want to get all of us entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers, telecommuters, etc together, hang out and have a good time while trying to get a little work done. As we start to build this community of folks, we’re also looking very keenly on starting a permanent co-working space somewhere downtown. If you’re interested in that please let us know!