Mr. Karnjanaprakorn (Photo: About.Me)

The Principal of New York

Before Mayor Bloomberg signed up for Codecademy, before General Assembly signed its first lease in the Flatiron—even before Peter Thiel started paying kids to skip school—Skillshare founder and CEO Mike Karnjanaprakorn was trying convince New York investors to finance his peer-to-peer learning startup. He billed the company as the Etsy of education, since it set up a market for anyone to teach—and learn—practical skills through an affordable hands-on class, starting at $25 a night. (The hybrid online classes that Skillshare launched this August, with Livestream office hours, start at just $20 a night.)

But in 2010, two years before The New York Times dubbed 2012, “The Year of the MOOC” (massive open online course), venture capitalists weren’t biting. As with hardware and clean tech, investors begged off education—burned by one too many startups shut out by the gatekeepers of traditional K through 12 and higher ed. “Some of my favorite notes that we got from investors were, ‘We don’t think education is a big market,’ ‘We think education is a shrinking market’ and ‘We don’t think people enjoy learning at all after they graduate,’” he said. “‘You have to get a master’s in education before you can teach,’ was another.”

Economic realities like persistent unemployment, mounting student debt and an army of jobless graduates without the skills to fill open positions quickly proved otherwise. The time was right for Skillshare’s modernized approach. Through its online platform, the company promotes the classes, procures students, processes credit cards and books rooms for in-person offerings—often in a tech company’s lounge or lecture hall—all in exchange for a percentage of the sales.

In the early days, Mr. Karnjanaprakorn, whose previous employer Hot Potato was acquired by Facebook, and his co-founder Malcolm Ong, a product manager at game-maker OMGPOP, gravitated toward the kind of programming and entrepreneurship classes they wanted to take, like Mr. Karnjanaprakorn’s popular course, “Launch Your Startup Idea for Less Than $1,000.” As the Silicon Alley refrain goes, meeting tech people is easy: just take a Skillshare class and drop by General Assembly.

Skillshare’s emphasis on nonacademic classes with real-world application paved the way for other local players like CourseHorse, Lore and Codecademy. Signing up felt less like an indulgence than a practical necessity. “There’s a real-world application” to Skillshare classes, he said, “something that you could use immediately.” Headlines about an instructor quitting his day job with the $100,000 a year he made teaching Ruby on Rails to aspiring programmers helped attract instructors as well.

In 2012, the company expanded to other U.S. cities like San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, and kicked off its large-scale online-only classes with an offering from Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson—a Skillshare investor—that reached 2,500 students all over the world. Mr. Karnjanaprakorn said that it would take him two years to teach that many students if he taught every week here in New York City.

Mr. Karnjanaprakorn compared making a case for accessible education outside of a university to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. “If the first phase is awareness and huge institutional change,” he told The Observer, “The second step is making something that will fix it or being a company that tries to solve it. I can feel that happening. It’s less about why should people learn. Nobody asks that question now anymore.”

Next: Rick Webb, Tumblr: The Undercover Ad Man

Back to the beginning

Mr. Flombaum

On a windy evening back in April, Betabeat took a Skillshare class with Designer Pages founder Avi Flombaum called, "Be One of the Cool Kids: An Introduction to Ruby on Rails." We emerged a modicum cooler, with a much better understanding of Ruby, but nowhere near ready to touch an SDK.

"Does that make sense?" Mr. Flombaum asked repeatedly, thoughtfully checking in on whether his pupils understood why "hash is like a vending machine." Once he got into the weeds, the best we could do without a programming background was nod politely and pretend.

That helps explain the need for his newest venture, the Flatiron School, which attempts to the close the gap between a dilettante and a skilled app developer.

Together with Adam Enbar, a venture capitalist at Charles River Ventures, Mr. Flombaum has bootstrapped the Flatiron School. It will offer three months full-time classes--as opposed to sheepishly ignoring those Codecademy emails--in app development for $5,500. In fact, it seems like one of the more practical--or at least immersive--attempts to address structural unemployment--where the labor force isn't equipped to fill open jobs.

"By the end of the semester, students will have built and contributed to Ruby-based web and iPhone applications," he told Betabeat by email, noting that the school will put a technical emphasis on the full stack--and finding students a job. "We're excited about creating a talent pipeline not just of coders, but rather, professionals in general." Considering Mr. Flombaum attracted enough interest as a SkillShare instructor to quit his CTO gig, he seems up for the task.

The first class, which starts tomorrow, has a diverse group of 20 students, including a lawyer, graphic designer, and poker player. "It was really important to us not to accept 20 bankers, even though I'm sure they'd make amazing programmers," he said.

Mr. Flombaum compared the workshop format to creative writing courses, with an adaptive approach to finding the best way to instruct students, "whether I'm giving a lecture, or we're turning to our educational partners CodeSchool and Treehouse for some unique content, or reading and discussing some of the great books O'Reilly donated, or bringing in some experts from the tech community in NYC."

But all work and no play makes Jack (or Jill) a bad coder. Hence incorporating classes on deejaying (paging Kevin Systrom!), knot tying, and dance. "Programming is really about managing complexity, about breaking things down into small parts and then recombining those individual pieces to make new things," he explained. "That abstract talent can be flexed in a variety of skills, whether it's seeing the individual phrases and beats of a track and how they can be overlaid and mixed into others when DJ'ing or about understanding the various tension points and loops in a knot."

The cofounders' presence in the startup scene will come in handy considering Flatiron School's focus on career counseling. "Over the past year I've mentored and placed a handful of my Skillshare students," said Mr. Flombaum. "I'm honored to have a pretty good reputation in the community and it's been a pleasure connecting my students to some of the startups I love."

But the scope of potential employers doesn't look exclusively at startups. "When considering jobs for students, we're looking for companies that invest in people," he said, "And I don't think that it is an exclusively startup trait. After that, it is really all about fit for the students. We want our students to be happy at work."

To that end, Mr. Flombaum said Flatiron School will be hosting "a reverse job fair" on December 6th where tech companies can meet students and hear about their projects. "The dream is that they will all have offers by the new year," he said.

The initiative seems more like a labor of love than the next General Assembly, which has expanded to London and Los Angeles in the past year.

Everything from the office lease on West 26th Street, to the 20 Ikea tables and chairs, to student scholarships were funded by the two cofounders. "We're really not looking for outside investment," Mr. Flombaum said. "I think education is all about quality. And I think venture capital is all about scale." Local businesses have also offered donations. ErgoErgo has given the school 20 standing-desk-killers and the New York Health and Racquet Club has subsidized gym membership and planned fitness classe.

"I'm still trying to get a hold of Hill Country, as it is right across the street, about doing a weekly BBQ, but no luck (yet)," he said. "The idea is to create a decentralized campus, finding partners to provide the facilities and experiences the students need rather than sink millions into building yet another campus in NYC."

Pieratt. (Photo: Brooklyn Beta)

eBay announced on its blog today that it has acquired Svpply, the NYC-based social shopping site that curates personalized collections of clothing and products. Located on Broome Street in Soho, Svpply raised $550,000 in seed funding back in 2010 from investors like Founders Collective, Spark Capital, SV Angel, Dennis Crowley and Jason Hirschhorn. Since then, Svpply has been bootstrapping itself to 620,000 product views per week and 140,000 registered members (as of May).

Last May, founder Ben Pieratt offered a candid perspective on first-time entrepreneurship, admitting his vulnerability. "I have zero experience or expertise in building a company," he wrote in a 2011 blog post. "So I'm learning on the fly."

Mr. Pierrat summed up a list of things he'd need to learn how to do, or Svpply would fail. Hey, in startup parlance, we'd say an acqui-hire counts as quite a success.

At least Svpply's other cofounder, parallel entrepreneur extraordinaire Zach Klein, brought some experience to the team. Mr. Klein is a partner at Founders Collective, and has had a hand in a plethora of successful startups. He cofounded Vimeo and BustedTees, helped launch CollegeHumor, worked as chief product officer at Boxee and serves as a director for both Skillshare and Svpply. According to AllThingsD, Mr. Klein linked up with Svpply in the spring of 2010 when he "connected with Ben Pieratt, a Boston-based designer who started Svpply in late 2009."

eBay's blog post suggests that the move to purchase Svpply is largely an acqui-hire:

With Svpply.com, eBay gains access to technology talent to further improve the shopping and selling experience for its customers. Svpply.com assets – including a talented team of six designers and developers – are well-suited to help eBay advance more personalized experiences and merchandising options on eBay.com.

Based in New York (see the office, above), the Svpply.com employees will work on merchandising, non-search discovery and browsing.

eBay has been aggressively ramping up its presence in New York as of late. Back in November, the online auction platform acquired NYC-based Hunch, a personalized recommendation engine. Then in April, eBay snapped up a massive 350,000 square foot office in the Flatiron. Guess they needed a few more devs to fill up those desks.

Svpply insists in a blog post that the site's not going anywhere anytime soon. "Svpply is not going away," it reads. "We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day—allowing our loyal fans to explore beautiful products and stores, all of them hand selected by the community."

Greg Leppert, Svpply's third cofounder, said the Svpply team would work on both eBay and the Svpply site. "We'll continue to build Svpply and our community and apply what we learn to eBay," he told Betabeat by email. Mr. Leppert also said that Svpply will not be rolled into eBay, but that both sites will remain distinct from each other.

"We’re excited to join the eBay and Hunch teams in the new state-of-the-art technology development center in New York City!" Svpply added in a blog post. Shake them pom-poms, y'all.

Additional reporting contributed by Nitasha Tiku.

(photo: flickr user USFWS Pacific)

Job Search CareerSonar, a new job search site designed to help users discover the most promising career opportunities by integrating their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, just announced their private beta launch. You can try out the site now with an early access invite.

Pets PetFlow, a New York-based scheduled pet food delivery service, just announced that it fulfilled more than $2.5 million in pet food and supply orders during the month of July. The company projects it'll generate more than $30 million in sales by the year’s end.

Filters Are your Instagram photos not looking grainy enough lately? If so, you may want to check out StrutType, a new photo app designed to replicate the process of using a strut folding camera. Apparently, the app applies a series of filters, canvases, textures, light leaks and other aging techniques to “render an authentically antiquated image.”

Sharks Now every week can be Shark Week with Zite’s new shark category, which launched Monday. The “personalized magazine” app figures out the things you like to read (in this case, about sharks) and apparently gets better at catering to your taste as you use it.

Intermediary TheyPosted, a site that aggregates pictures posted by celebrities to various social media sites, just announced its launch. Billed as a “searchable firehose of pictures posted by celebrities,” the site advertises that “you don’t even have to be on Instagram and Twitter to see what the Stars are posting.” As further evidence to this point, the company brags that TheyPosted was the fourth organic search for “Michael Phelps Instagram” during “the first few days of the Olympics.” So, if you really want to see what celebrities are doing on Instagram without being on Instagram, this is the site for you.

One stop shopping Hearst Digital is partnering with Mulu to integrate the muluBox shopping widget on Seventeen.com. Designed to make web content more easily shoppable, muluBox enables customers to shop directly for products mentioned in videos and slideshows. A portion of proceeds from muluBox purchases on Seventeen.com will go to support Stomp Out Bullying.

Inc.5000 Inc. just released its 2012 list of the 5000 fastest growing companies in the U.S. Congrats to the three New York companies that made the top 50: Livestream (12), Spongecell  (27) and OnForce Solar (43).

Coming to America The Berlin based startup Trademob is debuting smartBoost—no longer just a powdered energy drink but a data analysis software program designed to help app marketers increase user retention, in-app engagement and app store ranking. The company already has operations in Berlin, London and Paris, and plans to move a full time team of five to ten employees to New York over the coming months.

Online ed Less than two weeks after Skillshare announced the launch of hybrid classes, CEO/Co-Founder Michael Karnjanaprakorn has seen unprecedented interest in his class “Launch Your Startup Idea for Less than $1000,” with 2,584 students currently enrolled.

Back to school The NYC-based ed-tech startup Schoology just announced the opening of the Schoology App Center, featuring over 20 apps built on the Schoology collaborative learning platform for K-12 classrooms.

Apply now Incline, a social enterprise which offers training classes to military veterans looking to start a career in technology, is now accepting applications for its six-week Introduction to Web Development Intensive Course.

Conference Tickets are now on sale for DataGotham, a conference celebrating the NYC data community which will take place September 13-14 at NYU Stern. Speakers will include Steven E. Koonin, the founding Director of NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, and Michael P. Flowers, the Director of both New York City’s Policy and Strategic Planning Analytics Team.

Mr. Karnjanaprakorn

Last week, Skillshare, the disruptive teaching platform backed by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, announced a big expansion: incorporating an online element into its classes. Rather than relying on its popular in-person workshops, which Betabeat has personally employed to brush up on our coding and financial modeling skills, the startup opened its doors around the globe with "Hybrid" classes that combine those in-person workshops with "project-based online learning."

Skillshare cofounder Michael Karnjanaprakorn came up with the idea for this hybrid approach when he was teaching his own class, "Launch Your Startup Idea for Less than $5000.″ Instead of just lecturing at students, he began asking them to present their ideas at the end of class and the results dramatically improved, leading to the creation of actual startups like RentHackr and Hashpix.

"We learned that there’s a major difference between education and learning. Education is what someone tells you to do. Learning is what you do for yourself," Mr. Karnjanaprakorn told Betabeat by email this afternoon. "The traditional way of education forces square pegs into round holes. It’s a one-size-fits-all solution that forces people down a predetermined path. But, what could education look like if it were many-to-many? Where students taught each other and teachers were students? What if you designed a learning experience around passion, real-world skills, community, collaboration, and creativity?"

Based on those principles, the Skillshare team developed a philosophy they like to call "Collaborative Learning," which emphasizes learning through action, with others. "It starts by replacing lecturing with doing, teaching with facilitating, and competition with collaboration," Mr. Karnjanaprakorn added. That project-oriented approach jives with the startup's early emphasis on practical skill-building. (It's also worth noting that Collaborative Fund is also a Skillshare investor. Synergy!)

The company was careful to make good on the promise of collaboration and not merely swap out in-person lectures for online ones. "We were really focused on not innovating on top of a broken educational model by moving lectures online in a video format," said Mr. Karnjanaprakorn. In a blog post, Skillshare broke down what the new format will look like:

How Hybrid Classes Work
1. Real-world projects. Students learn through a hands-on project by doing, making and collaborating.
2. Less lecturing. Teacher acts as a facilitator by designing a project, curating resources, and providing feedback to students.
3. Online Discussions. Students can ask questions, share links, and get feedback from other students around the world.
4. In-Person Workshops. To foster a collaborative learning experience, students will meet in-person to collaborate and work on projects together in their cities.

If moving the classroom online brings out your inner procrastinator, don't worry, Skillshare is still offering its local in-person option. IRL classes are open around the U.S., but are offered most frequently in New York and San Francisco. However, there's a strong incentive to try out the hybrid model, including a class from investor Fred Wilson entitled, "How to Be in Business Forever: A Lesson in Sustainability."

As you can see in Skillshare's hybrid offerings, which covers how to write like David Sedaris, DIY jewelry making, and something "sneakerology," the platform is not just for early adopters anymore. "We're starting to see a lot of students and teachers outside of the tech community," Mr. Karnjanaprakorn noted. "We've launched some successful new classes within the advertising, culinary, photography, style, creative arts, and maker communities." Once the normals start signing up, things tend to get more fun.

Guests mingle on a Long Island City rooftop before demos begin

More than 150 people braved last night’s land hurricane--technically called a derecho--to attend Coalition for Queens’ second Queens Tech Meetup at Hunters Point Plaza in Long Island City.

Unfortunately, the crowd of young professionals was only able to enjoy rooftop views of the Manhattan skyline for a short while before the clouds came rolling in. Thankfully, the demos inside provided plenty of amusement, including a tug-of-war match and a feline photo shoot for mycatandi.com.

Charlie O’Donnell, a partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and the event’s first demonstrator, was astounded by the turnout of the meetup.

“I think I probably went to the fifth or sixth New York Tech Meetup and we were a whopping 30 people,” Mr. O’Donnell told the audience. “Now I look at like five times the amount of people in the room at the second Queens Tech Meetup and it’s really unbelievable.”

Mr. O’Donnell spoke about his outlook on the future of the tech scene in New York and how he sees Queens fitting into it.

“A couple of years from now you’re going to be able to walk across the bridge and go to one of the preeminent engineering and applied sciences school in the country and the only place you can walk to from there is Queens,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Obviously this is a transportation hub; it’s actually one of the few places that is convenient to get to via the G train.”

Last night’s event also included demonstrations from Skillshare, OKFocus and Aereo.

Leighann Farrelly, community development manager at Skillshare, an online learning marketplace, shared a free lesson in teamwork with the audience through a tug of war match. But she also shared news about Skillshare’s collaboration plans with Coalition for Queens to provide affordable, high-quality tech education in areas such as computer programming, digital marketing and entrepreneurship on CUNY campuses in Queens.

“We’re starting to see people in need of tech skills, and if you go through the traditional education spectrum, they’re super expensive and not that accessible,” Ms. Farrelly explained. “We have the same mission as Coalition for Queens, which is that we need to provide people with more opportunities to be a bigger part of the New York tech scene.”

OKFocus, a full service digital agency run by Ryder Ripps and Jonathan Vingiano that's notorious for PR stunts like that fake Kanye West site, was also in attendance. They demoed a new website called My Cat and I that detects cats in photos. The team explained that the site demonstrates OKFocus’ goal to create concept-driven work that stands out in function and design. Plus, the Internet's affection for cats is well-documented.

Finally, it was Aereo's turn. Nick Sallon, the startup's director of content and business development, and Chris Mckay, Aereo's customer service manager were both on hand to demo the subscription service that enables New York City residents to view locally broadcasted television streamed online. Aereo, introduced by Coalition for Queens founder Jukay Hsu as "a TV platform so disruptive everyone's suing it," recently won a dismissal of injunction brought against it in a lawsuit by 17 broadcasters including ABC, NBC and CBS.

A few months ago, Aereo's CEO Chet Kanojia demoed his service to a packed house at the New York Tech Meetup in Manhattan, eliciting a roar of wild applause.

In Queens, the Aereo team showcased the service’s features and carefully addressed questions from the audience concerning the lawsuit. While they declined to provide much insight on the legal battle, Aereo's representatives told the audience that the startup is considering plans for growth because of its recent lawsuit win. However, they haven't yet decided which cities will be included in its expansion.

We just hope it's not Kansas City, since getting Google Fiber first has undoubtedly spoiled them.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated that Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia was present at the Queens Tech Meetup and demoed the service. Betabeat regrets the error.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can follow him at @garysguide and reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Want to hang out with former President Bill Clinton? Well of course you do! He will be in town this week to talk about his Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) at the Sustainable Operations Summit.

Funders & Founders are organizing an event called "Love, Sex, and Tech," an 800-person dating startup show on Apr 19 in San Francisco. Now, whenever one encounters the words love, sex and tech in the same sentence in an event title the obvious next step is to go check them out, right? ;)

Internet Week NY, that annual week-long geek fest celebrating NYC's thriving internet industry & community, is coming up soon (May 14-21). So hurry up and go grab your Insider / HQ Pass and get ready to party!

Okay, and now let's see what glorious tech events are happening in the Alley this week...

Foursquare Day 2012!
Its 4/4^2 and you know what that means ;)
Monday (Apr 16), all day

Fashion 2.0: Social Commerce
With Rooly Eliezerov (President & CFounder, Gigya), Mark Curtis (Founder & President, enter:new media), Kat Griffin (Publisher, Corporette), Kerry Twibell (Senior Biz Dev Director, Hearst Magazines Digital Media) and Max Samis (Biz Dev, Bitly).
Monday (Apr 16), 6 p.m. @ GreenHouse, 150 Varick Street

Media Research: Where the Jobs Are
With Alan Wurtzel (President, Research & Media Development, NBC Universal), Dossie McCraw (Director, Audience Research and Program Planning, HBO), Tom Ziangas (SVP, Research, AMC Networks) and Howard Shimmel (Exec VP & Chief Revenue Officer, The Nielsen Co.). Moderated by Beth Rockwood (Senior VP, Discovery Communications).
Monday (Apr 16), 6:30 p.m. @ The New School - Theresa Lang Center, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd Floor

Founders@Fail Avi Muchnick: Aviary
Wherein you learn all about Radical Transparency, Jim Carrey and the ballsy way (is there any other?) to run a startup ;) With Aviary CoFounder & CEO, Avi Muchnick.
Tuesday (Apr 17), 6:30 p.m. @ Dogpatch Labs, 36 E. 12th Street, 2nd Floor

food+tech Spring Get-Together
If you love Food and you love Tech, then you are not gonna wanna miss this one!
Tuesday (Apr 17), 7 p.m. @ Idle Hands Bar, 25 Avenue B, Downstairs

TSLs Crowdfunding and Cocktails
With Slava Rubin (CoFounder & CEO, IndieGoGo), Brian Meece (CEO, RocketHub), Jonathan Marino (Editor, PEHub), Berkeley Geddes (CEO, GrowAmerica) and others.
Wednesday (Apr 18), 4:30 p.m. @ 37 West 57th Street, 6th Floor

April NY Enterprise Technology Meetup
Special talk by Melinda Chang of nPower. Demos including MokaFive, iRise Studio MX, Nelite and Temboo.
Wednesday (Apr 18), 6:30 p.m. @ Cooley, 1114 Avenue of the Americas

Indiegogo presents HOW TO BUILD FROM AN IDEA / A Creative Forum
With Presentations by Jason Wishnow (TEDTalks), John Martin (Vice.com) & Marissa Shrum (Mother Advertising).
Wednesday (Apr 18), 7 p.m. @ Projective Space L.E.S., 72 Allen Street, 3rd Floor

New York Tech Day
Science fair for around 200 tech startups of all sizes to showcase their companies to the NYC tech community.
Thursday (Apr 19), 10 a.m. @ Lexington Armory, 68 Lexington Avenue

NY Video 2.0 Meetup
With presentations by The Shorty Awards, MyPod Studios, Rocketboom and Digital Laundry.
Thursday (Apr 19), 6:30 p.m. @ Aol HQ, 770 Broadway, 6th Floor

Entrepreneurs Roundtable 46
Featured speaker Bo Peabody (Venture Partner, Greycroft / Co-founder, Village Ventures)
Thursday (Apr 19), 7 p.m. @ NYU Stern Rm I-70, 44 West 4th Street

Startup Roundtable Series 10 - How to Build an Insanely Great Startup
Panelists include Adam Rich (@AdamMatthewRich) (CoFounder, Thrillist & JackThreads), Vin Vacanti (@vacanti) (CoFounder & CEO, Yipit) and Dan Kurani (@dankurani) (Founder & CEO, Thumb).
Friday (Apr 20), 1 p.m. @ Cooley - The Grace Building, 1114 Ave of the Americas, 46th Floor

NYU Stern Entrepreneurs Exchange Summit 2012
Rockstar lineup with Dan Porter (CEO, OMGPOP), John Maloney (President, Tumblr), Erick Schonfeld (Former TechCrunch Editor), David Tisch (TechStars), Mike Brown (AOL Ventures), Kevin Nazemi (Done), Alexa von Tobel (LearnVest), Neil Blumenthal (Warby Parker) and David Teten (ff Venture Capital).
Friday (Apr 20), 2 p.m. @ Paulson Auditorium, Tisch Hall, 40 West Fourth Street

SkillShare Penny Conference
Hang out with the incomparable Baratunde Thurston (The Onion), Charles Best (DonorsChoose), Zach Sims (Codecademy) and others.
Friday (Apr 20), 2:30 p.m. @ The NY Times Center, 242 W 41st St

Assembled Capital: A Founders Guide to Fundraising
Amazing line-up of speakers including Anthony Casalena (Squarespace), Anu Duggal (Exclusively.In), Brian Meece (RocketHub), Charlie O'Donnell (Brooklyn Bridge Ventures), Dave Lifson (Postling), David Tisch (TechStars NYC), Ellie Cachette (ConsumerBell), Eric Weisen (RRE Ventures), Jeremy Fisher (Wander), Jerry Colonna (Flatiron Partners), Seth Bannon (Amicus), Shane Snow (Contently) and Spencer Fry (Carbonmade).
Saturday (Apr 21), 9 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

More on the horizon…
Q&A with David Lee of SV Angel on Apr 23 @ Tisch Hall
StartupWeekend and Lean Startup Machine Global Alumni Party on Apr 24 @ Goodwin Procter
Mobile Dev Camp NYC on Apr 28 @ Aol Ventures
May NY FinTech Startups Meetup feat. Betterment and Edison Ventures on May 02 @ Day Pitney
Music & Gaming Startup Weekend NYC on May 04 @ General Assembly

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can follow him at @garysguide and reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

NYU ITP (where foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley got his start) is now accepting applications for ITP Camp. What is ITP Camp you ask? Well its like ITP Classic put in the blender and smooshed into a month! It is ITP’s test kitchen, its R&D arm, its back of the napkin. It’s the place they encourage you, their faculty, former students, colleagues, and community to experiment, challenge, and play. Intrigued yet? You can apply here.

The good people at SkillShare are hosting their first ever education conference, Penny, at The Times Center on April 20th. Great line-up of speakers including the incomparable Baratunde Thurston (The Onion), Charles Best (DonorsChoose), Zach Sims (Codecademy) and much more.

The 2012 User Experience Awards is now open for submissions. Get more details here and buy tickets here.

And now lets see whats going down in the tech parts of town this week...

Hack and Tell: Round 16: Ivan Drago went down in 15, but we're still going!
5 minutes to show off your hack, and 5 minutes for the audience to applaud, cry, laugh, inquiry, snore, chew, stand, sit, dance, grow, interact, etc :)
Monday (Apr 09), 6:30 p.m. @ Meetup HQ, 632 Broadway, Ste 901

NYC Music Technology Meetup
Demos by Limited Run, Music Dealers, VYou, Spinrs, BandsInTown, WeAreHunted, Maestro.fm and a Kinect hack!
Monday (Apr 09), 7 p.m. @ Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn

NJ Tech Meetup 23
Featured Speaker: Tad Martin (Collective[i], Overstock, Gear.com). Demos by Meddik, Patient Communicator and Inquisit Health.
Tuesday (Apr 10), 6:30 p.m. @ Babbio Center at Stevens Institute Of Technology, 513 River St, Hoboken

Women in Design & Technology Series: The Future of Fashion: Trendsetting in the High-Tech Age
A discussion with Mariah Chase (President & Co-founder, Send The Trend). Moderated by Julia Lovallo (Member, Damsels in Design and Co-Founder, 4eCreative).
Tuesday (Apr 10), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

Investor Feedback Forum: Future Energy
With Kef Kasdin (General Partner, Batelle Ventures), Ann Partlow (General Partner, Earthrise Capital), Willem Rensink (GameChanger, Shell International Exploration & Production) and Yanev Suissa (Venture Capitalist, New Enterprise Associates). Pitches from Kristen Cleven (Green Charge Networks), Adam Rein (Altaeros Energies), Beth Stewart (United Catalyst), Michael Newell (Ener-G-Rotors) and more.
Wednesday (Apr 11), 6:30 p.m. @ NYU Stern Business School - Kaufman Management Ctr, 44 W 4th Street

Design + Tech: Stories of Collaboration from the Past, Present and Future
With Keenan Cummings + Eric Jacobsen of Wander, Renda Morton + Andy Pressman of Rumors and Robert Lenne + Craig Spaeth of Art.sy
Wednesday (Apr 11), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

ER Accelerator Happy Hour
Applications now open for ERA June 2012 class
Thursday (Apr 12), 6:30 p.m. @ Connolly's NYC, 121 West 45th Street, 3rd Floor

Appsumo presents #Techdrinkup - Open Bar @ Inc Lounge - The Anniversary Party
A party for NYC's brightest and savviest people in tech to get together at exclusive NYC venues and mingle over drinks and food.
Thursday (Apr 12), 8 p.m. @ Inc Lounge, 224 W 49th St

FounderMatchup New York
Are you a marketing wizard looking for a Ruby on Rails guru? Are you an MIT mastermind whose ideas need a customer sales 007? On Friday the 13th, come meet your match!
Friday (Apr 13), 6 p.m. @ Dogpatch Labs, 36 East 12th Street

Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy (BLIP) Legal Hackathon
With Art Chang (Tipping Point), Sherwin Siy (Public Knowledge), Andrew Rasiej (Personal Democracy Media and NYTM)
Sunday (Apr 15), 9 a.m. @ Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn

More on the horizon…
An Insiders Guide to Angel Fundraising on Apr 17 @ General Assembly
Founders@Fail Avi Muchnick: Aviary on Apr 17 @ Dogpatch Labs
April NY Enterprise Technology Meetup on Apr 18 @ Cooley
AWS Summit 2012 | NYC on Apr 19 @ Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
New York Tech Day on Apr 19 @ Lexington Armory
SkillShare Penny Conference on Apr 20 @ The NY Times Center

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

Mr. Fisher. (LinkedIn)

Branch is billed as a curated discussion platform, but we've also found it to be an excellent tool for eavesdropping.

Today, Josh Miller--the founder of Branch who thinks San Francisco is 'too nice'--started a conversation on the platform entitled, "Houses, Schools, and Town Squares – Building Next Generation Social Products." Several tech heavyweights chimed in to discuss a  metaphor coined by ex-Facebooker and current Path CEO Dave Morin that compares Facebook to a town square--prompting Eric Fisher, who wrote Facebook's Social Design Guidelines to help you build great social experiences, to protest that the social network is actually "centered on individuals and their friends which is a very self-serving, egocentric model."

The discussion started with this prompt:

Facebook has built the cities, they’ve built the town squares, and they’re more of a general social network, he said. Path, on the other hand, is more like the home, as if adding each friend is filling out your dinner table.

On Twitter, Mike Karnjanaprakorn--CEO and cofounder of Skillshare--added, "If Facebook built the cities and Path is building the houses, Skillshare is building the schools."

Mr. Miller started a discussion about this approach to design on Branch, and Mr. Morin and Mr. Karnjanaprakorn both weighed in.

"The Internet is like the Wild Wild West. But over time, you can see certain infrastructures being put in place. AOL created the roads, Facebook created the Town Square, PayPal created the bank, Twitter created the newspaper, Path is creating the home, and Skillshare is creating the school," said Mr. Karnjanaprakorn. "We still need a sheriff."

Mr. Morin agreed. "I think Mike hit the metaphor on the head," he said.

But then another voice chimed in. It was the voice of Mr. Fisher, whose former title at Facebook was "Social Design Evangelist."

"On the contrary, Facebook is NOT a town square," he wrote. "In fact there's little sense of community at all. It's centered on individuals and their friends which is a very self-serving, egocentric model that does little to help people actually work together, as would a town."

Da-yum. That's definitely a burn coming from someone a source says wrote Facebook's social design guidelines.

It appears Mr. Fisher is building his own version of a town square, which is probably why he doesn't like the idea of Facebook overtaking that moniker very much. His LinkedIn lists him as the founder of Townsquared, Inc., a "social platform that helps organizations grow niche communities."

"It's not like I don't love it," he clarified on Branch. "I'm just as needing of praise and self esteem as anyone else. But I do not define a "town square" this way and I believe something like Skillshare, for example, is among the many missing links."

It's no secret that "the tech-savvy crowd has grown tired of Facebook," but it's certainly interesting to see one of its ex-employees admit the whole model is "self-serving" and "egocentric."

We can't really blame Mr. Fisher. After all, Facebook is self-serving and egocentric. Plus, we'd be upset too if we cut out before making bank on the IPO.

Columbus Circle as seen from CityMaps

WICKA WICKA. Turntable.fm is in the big leagues now as the young music based social platform signs deals with Sony BMG, Universal, EMI and Warner, TechCrunch reports. Turntable has over one million users now and a new mobile app since September.

HIPSTARTER. San Francisco based Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform with offices in Soho that competes with Kickstarter, announced the perfection of their "gogofactor," a proprietary algorithm that ranks projects based on popularity and viability. This makes Indiegogo the only crowdfunding platform with this type of merit-based ranking functionality. Your move, Kickstarter.

TAP TAP WHO'S THERE? After wandering around like a lost child in the woods for a bit, Taap.it is back with a newly stated purpose and redone app. Taap.it, originally touted as a hyper-local, mobile-first version of Craigslist, has Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare integration to bring users information about local events and businesses. Users can also follow friends, hunt for deals, make wish lists and compete in weekly contests.

MONEY. Knodes, the company on a mission to make social network data accessible and meaningful, just announced a $250 thousand Knodes Fund for the "best products, websites and applications built on the Knodes platform." Companies who want a chunk of that change should apply here beginning May 1.

SCHOOL OF TECH. General Electric teamed up with Skillshare and debuted their new "GE Works" campaign last week at SXSW. The "GE Garages," which look more like train cars or truck trailers sans wheels, invited participants to make an iPhone case, play with a laser cutter, cold saw and 3D printer. Sexy stuff. Excuse us while we wipe the steam from our glasses. The garages will be appearing in Houston Cincinnati and San Francisco soon.

SEARCH DOJO. Q-Sensei, a German-American "multi-dimensional" search engine that organizes data sets based on various descriptions, correlations and metadata simultaneously, is laying down offices in Downtown Brooklyn. The startup, which raised $2.5 million in seed funding in 2009, serves enterprise clients that need to search the oodles of data on the Internet, in private networks, on private computers and hand-held devices. Q-Sensei also has an API that lets businesses to build their own search apps.

JETSET. Wanderfly, a site for sharing and finding travel recommendations, just went live with a refreshed site and already won best design at last week's LAUNCH in San Francisco. We must admit, it looks good.

THERE'S A MAP FOR THAT. CityMaps just re-emerged from its NYC beta cocoon and went live in San Francisco and Austin for the first time. The maps sort of look like the "clients" page of a big name ad shop but despite the harsh logo-on-white scheme, the site has a ton of useful features such as Foursquare integration with tips, photos and check-ins, integration with daily deal sites and tweets from businesses—like a digital sidewalk sandwich board. A brand new iPhone app rounds out CityMaps' big changes.

WORK IT! OMGPOP needs a mobile QA tester to test mobile games and log bugs. Every boy's dream. Apply here. ZocDoc wants a software engineer and Table Tennisseur with OOP language experience who is driven by an "unknown force to change healthcare for the better." Applications go right here. Lean Startup Machine is looking for a workshop coordinator, web engineer and a "sales or sponsorship hacker." Find job descriptions and apply here.