Circa @ Skirball

In the interest in getting the word out so you can maybe catch these guys while they’re in town, this one’s going to be a hasty paste-together.

In two words: Circa. Wow.

Circa in action

Circa is an acrobatic/dance/circus ensemble of seven performers hailing from Brisbane, Australia (Go Aussie!) that myself and my Brisbane-native buddy went to see last night.

The U.S. premiere notification landed in my inbox from Advance who do a great job informing Aussie expats of acts and events from our home towns, as well as hosting their own seminars and meetups.

Back to the performance though – there are not many dance performances that I’ve been to (especially on post-work weeknights) that I have not wanted to end, but Circa was one I could have watched for hours.

The sheer strength, balance and skill of these acrobats was awesome. The show did not have the glamor of Cirque Du Soleil but what it missed in glitz it made up with in emotion, creativity, purity and heart.

These athletes threw themselves around, balanced on and lifted each other, dangled from straps and trapezes and performed all sorts of gravity-defying flips, somersaults and jumps – all with grace, control and a hell of a lot of trust in each other.

One cast member (in this case Lewis West) had Emma McGovern walk all over his body in sparkly red high heels, which as we learnt in the post-show intimate Q & A, was his responsibility as one of the newest ensemble members. We also heard how there were no tricks in this act, just pure stiletto and flesh, to which the Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz’s “direction” to the stiletto-ee is “Suck it up princess” – Hello Australia and your “drink a cup of cement” encouragement style. I’d love to see more of Lifschitz’s work.

Kudos goes to Freyja Edney who was simply enchanting through the entire show from balancing the weight of a full-grown man on her head, to her pragmatic, burlesque-style hoola hoops solo – she showed those hoops who was boss, scattering them across the stage and walking off triumphantly to let her cast members pick up the pieces. Brilliant.

The Circa ensemble on stage post-performance for Q&A

The Circa website is in a redevelopment hiatus, but will apparently be up March 25 and here’s a write-up on Circa from Canada’s Edmonton Journal.

They tour all around the world (they’ve been on the road for two months and don’t finish up until September) so it is likely they’ll appear in a town near you at some stage – if they do, I recommend you grab the opportunity to see them.

It’s in New York City @ the Skirball until this Sunday March 8, our tickets were $45 + bf which got us four rows from the front. Tickets and more info here.

Go and see it, you will not regret it!

March New York Tech Meetup

After a relocation, it’s a great feeling when you have built a healthy suite of things-to-do-that-you-really-enjoy.

Finding your favorite local market, a fun place to workout, cool little hidden cafés, restaurants and bars and great events all help you feel that little bit more at home, when you’re away from home.

So it’s time to feature one of my faves!

The New York Tech Meetup is a monthly meetup that brings together around 850 of New York’s tech community to see live demos on stage from startups, people with cool ideas, new sites, apps and concepts.

Last night’s was my 8th, and the organizations 68th, meetup. It can be a bit of a shitfight to get your hands on a ticket (they’re $10, but with 16,000+ members the event sells out within minutes of tickets being released), but if you really want to go, you can get yourself there.

My caveat up front is that I’m not hacker, I can’t write code (yet) and I don’t own a startup (yet). I AM a curious soul; as well as a marketing and communications girl that goes to hear about new and upcoming sites, products and services, keep the technical side of my brain whirring, learn about how people are starting their new businesses and to be inspired. And every month I am not disappointed.

The event focuses on live demos of usually just a few minutes each, (no pre-prepared material or death-by-powerpoint) and many are in beta meaning you get a sneak preview into what’s coming.

So lets kick straight into some of the demos featured last night so you get a taste for it.

——————————————-
Social Workout was described as the disruptive future of healthy worplaces. It was apparently in-part inspired by the mammoth staircase at the 51st and Lex subway stop (10 flights in one long go). It it still in beta but the site allows you to set goals, make them public, share them through social media, sign up to other people’s goals, report your progress and more. They don’t have to be fitness goals either, they can be nutrition, de-stress, whatever you like really that helps you to be your best.

I’m a goal-driven exercise junkie and am always looking for new ways to inspire myself, set goals, train for events etc. so I signed up. The process was smooth with a nice touch to select “I am a lady” instead of the standard “Female” button (and I am, right?).

There is apparently a “Bullshit button” coming soon that allows you to call out users that might not (ahem) be telling the whole truth. It is early days in my user experience but so far this site looks pretty neat.

——————————————-

Crowdtap was one of my faves. It launched that day and the demo went through how it provides users with self-service consumer participation, on demand. The site allows brands and marketers to buy crowd participation in the form of polls, discussions, consumer sampling with two distinct areas of “Market with the crowd” and “Learning from the crowd.

The tools make it super easy to build surveys, polls and discussion topics and target who you want to participate. The segmentation looks like it drills down into some nice categories (each further drill costing you a little bit more), the response times sound pretty good and the poll they showed us (which was very simple) cost $40-ish from memory. They are also linked with a fulfillment house for sampling.

Definitely some BIG questions around data skew and reliability, respondent bias, respondent quality (partly dealt with by a “Qual score”, but I like the concept. Interesting concept around linking results with respondents influence on social also.

——————————————-

Clothia, another fave (give me the benefit of being a girl here…). Now I’ve seen a heap of clothing retail/wardrobe display crowdsourcing fashion decision demos at NYTMs. This one finally seemed to take it the step further that I wanted them all to take by integrating augmented reality, to try clothes on virtually.

You can upload current items from your wardrobe (they have a deep etch program built in), items from online retailers and there’s a wish list also. You can craft together outfits on a collage board or IRL on your own body, and you can shout out the result to your friends.

Imagine the (apparently soon to be coming) smartphone app, where you could snap yourself in a retail outlet in a new shirt and see if it really does match that green skirt you have at home, without even leaving the changeroom… Cool.

——————————————-

Radbox is a “productivity application” or in other words, a way to store all the cool videos you get sent during the day so you can watch them easily later. The stand out from this presentation was the presenter, opening his demo with “I’m from New Delhi, the exotic land of snake charmers, and java developers”, and the gags continued throughout.

——————————————-

Tout is another type of productivity tool that covers off email templating, scheduling, analytics. In a common shout-out for the night they reached out to SXSW’ers suggesting Tout as a way to easily template and follow-up the contacts you make. The presenter confirmed that recipients can know if you’ve used tout if they check the mail headers. They’re on a SAN grid mail server at the moment but are starting by integrating with gmail coming soon (suggestion from the audience was to do it quickly!).

Not sure how I feel about this one. Has some good uses eg you can text instructions to “tout” including a recipient email address and it will fire out a stored template email, good for contact details, credentials, that kind of thing but as a writer I weigh in on the side of crafting tailored messages for your audience – then again, this is probably why I work so many hours.

——————————————-

“Hack of the month” was presented by the nychacker union http://www.nyhacker.org/ – they also plugged the great Code for a Cure 24hr hackathon to benefit the Lymphoma Research Foundation

So Tim Soo was hack of the month with his invisible instruments – virtual instruments that work by an iPhone app talking to a Wiimote, talking to a laptop (I have simplified this to oblivion I know, but in the interest of not writing a novel, the link is just prior. Let me clear something up, Soo is also a Med. student and codes in his spare time – I am in awe. His blog subtitle is “cursing the limited hours in the day” – love this. Scary to think about what this guy could achieve if we gave him more hours…

——————————————-

Dinevore – the best way to pick a place to eat. This site returns places to eat, suggested by users you’re following. It integrates with your existing social networks, but the cool part is being able to follow “lists” that people create so if you see a foodie you trust, or want to find out what your chipotle-obsessed friend thinks are the best places to eat, you can follow their list.

The demo didn’t totally win me over on how it differentiates in a cluttered category from sites like Yelp, but the lists, trusted network and real foodie concentration seem to be the factors that would set it apart.

——————————————-

Ohours is the creation of NYTM’s own Nate Westheimer (first time I’ve seen him demo anything of his own) and it connects interesting people by allowing them to host “open hours” and secure slots in other people’s “open hours”. Again a pitch for SXSW
attendees to use it to meet up during the event. The last addition was videochat and coming soon will be more social integration.

Nate mentioned during questioning that he was wary of “reviews” and was trying to steer clear of gaming components.

Ohours is an intriguing concept borne from a wholesome place of encouraging people to open their schedules up, just a little bit. Which I like.

——————————————-

The New York City Economic Development Corporation is holding a workshop on March 17, 2011 regarind a $2.58bill federal funding program (couldn’t find the link sorry!). NYC Seed‘s summer program focusins on digital content, advertising, e-commerce and mobile, program starts mid-June. Applications start tomorrow.

——————————————-

And the very last but not least was Chart.io, described as Google Analytics for databases. They have 1900 companies on the waiting list to work with them, and that’s gotta be a good sign. I’m tired so I’ll keep this one brief but the functionality was very cool, you should check it out.

——————————————-

And that brings it to a close! If you aren’t lucky enough to be in New York to catch one live, you can livestream it here on the first Tuesday of each month: http://nytm.org/livestream/