I judged the NFTE Quarter Final competition at a local San Francisco high school today. One of the pitches was made by Jocelyn Hernandez. Her startup is called Functional Couture.

Here's a video of her pitch to the judges: (Skip to minute 3:48 to see her start presenting)

Jocelyn, let me know if you see this blog post by dropping a comment below, and I'll give you a bunch of feedback on your pitch!

I judged the NFTE Quarter Final competition at a local San Francisco high school today. One of the pitches was made by Mariana Ponce. Her startup is called Mariana's Corny Cup.

Here's a video of her pitch to the judges: (Skip to minute 3:30 to see her start presenting)

I judged the NFTE Quarter Final competition at a local San Francisco high school today.  One of the pitches was made by 9th grader Simran Pabla.  Her startup is called Ready4Rain.

Here's a video of her pitch to the judges: (Skip to minute 1:39 to see her start presenting)

Here's some feedback for Simran -- please feel free to give her your feedback here as well:

The new Contour+2 camera is like a fine Italian sports car... built in the 1980's, before they got their quality control process figured out.  Awesome and stunning, yet deeply flawed and aggravating. 

There's an organization that's all about mobile called the "MMA".  No, not the Mixed Martial Arts group, but rather the Mobile Marketing Association.  ShareThis sent me to its 2013 Forum in NYC last week.

At the Forum, one speaker really stood out:  Trish Mueller, the CMO of The Home Depot.  Her talk about how THD is effectively using mobile inspired me to write a blog about "inherent vs. enhancement engagement" in mobile.

Another great thing that MMA did was having someone draw a visual representation of what was being discussed on a huge 4' by 8' piece of posterboard in real-time.  They they displayed these visual representations of the panels & sessions in the conference area.  I don't know if it was MXM that was actually providing the service, or just sponsoring it, but t was really powerful and well done.  

Here's an example of someone in the process of drawing on the board as the panel was happening:

Just returned from my trip, sitting at my desk:  Top pile is cards I don't recognize (straight to the trash), smaller pile at  bottom are cards I'm following up on.

Whenever I speak at a conference like I did last week, a bunch of people always come up afterwards to hand me their business cards.