Announcing a Live Chat With MeetMe Founder Catherine Cook

Streaming live on Mashable, MeetMe founder Catherine Cook will answer questions from readers on Aug. 9 at 3 p.m. ET (12 p.m. PT). As part of the Young Entrepreneur Council’s program, YEC StartupLab, Cook will be appear live via video chat broadcast on this site.

Catherine Cook is the co-founder of MeetMe, the public market leader for social discovery.  

Cook co-founded myYearbook with her brother Dave in 2005. The company merged with the Quepasa Corporation in November 2011 and in June 2012 rebranded to MeetMe, Inc. Cook is responsible for creating some of the most important applications on the site, and has been instrumental in driving the site’s growth by conceiving the next popular features. As part of MeetMe’s management team, Cook continues to drive innovation toward its mission — to be the best place to meet new people.

Cook graduated from Georgetown University in 2011, where she majored in OPIM and marketing. Many media outlets have covered her work, from CNBC, MTV, ABC News, Fox News, CosmoGirl, BusinessWeek, the San Francisco Chronicle and CBS.

StartupLab is a free virtual mentorship program created by The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only non-profit organization comprised of nearly 500 of America’s most successful young entrepreneurs who have, collectively, generated tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. StartupLab uses a Facebook app and a free, plug-and-play social media campaign to help millions of entrepreneurs, small business owners and startup founders from all industries launch and grow new businesses via live, interactive video chats, educational content and mentorship forums.

Check Mashable tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m. ET (12 p.m. PT), when Cook will answer questions from the audience live via video chat.

You can also sign up for an email reminder of the chat by visiting this registration page.

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Announcing The 2011 Chinese American Film Festival

November 3, 2011 | Adam Cuttler |

“Everybody was kung-fu fighting” From November 16th to the 22nd San Francisco’s 4-Star Theatre (Clement St @ 23rd Avenue) will play host to the Chinese American Film Festival.  With an admission price of just $5.00 for any one of the 19 films and a fairly good mix of different genres there really is no good excuse as to why you shouldn’t make it to at least one of these screenings.  As for me, I’m mostly excited for the action flicks, Bodyguards and Assassins, My Kingdom, and the Chinese animated answer to that kung-fu fighting Jack Black Panda, Legend Of A Rabbit.

The complete schedule along with trailers for most of the films can be found after the jump

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Announcing the CloudBeat 2011 Innovation Showdown

At our new CloudBeat 2011 conference (Nov 30-Dec1), we’ll be holding an “Innovation Showdown” to showcase the coolest, most disruptive products leveraging the cloud.

We’re opening the nomination process today, and we’ll be selecting 10 finalists on Oct 31 to present their products/services to the event’s full audience. The event will be at the Sofitel Hotel in Redwood City.

To be nominated, a company’s product or service will need to be leveraging the cloud in a disruptive way. The more revolutionary the idea, the more chance we’ll select them as a finalist.Nominations can include startups or established companies with brilliant new ideas. We’re giving special consideration to products that are new, or that haven’t been widely publicized yet.

We’re looking for products that will change how businesses serve customers, empower employees and deliver tangible value to investors.

Here’s how it will work. Finalists will have four minutes to showcase their innovative cloud technologies live at CloudBeat 2011. Live at the event, our team of sages — made up of industry experts, venture capitalists, and actual enterprise customers — will provide feedback on the products/services presented. Ultimately, our sages will recap the highlights of the competition and determine the winner.

The Showdown winner will be announced onstage at CloudBeat 2011 and will receive a VentureBeat editorial profile, introductions to investors and/or relevant potential customers in our network, and other prizes yet to be announced. Additionally, the audience will get to choose its favorite new product/service. The winner of the “People’s Choice” award will also be announced live onstage.

To submit your company/product for nomination, go here. Deadline for submission is Oct 31.

Upon what criteria will the companies be judged?
Freshness of ideaPotential to disrupt an industryThe success they can potentially drive for their customers
What are the guidelines and other rules?
A short video telling us more about your company or product must be included with your application. This should not be an elaborate production. We are just looking for a no frills video of the entrepreneur or executive talking about the idea, so that we know it is concise and clear enough.All applications must be received no later than October 31, 2011, at 5pm PST.A person from your company must be available to pitch live at CloudBeat 2011Powerpoints must be no longer than 4 slides long and must be received two weeks prior to the event.In addition to PowerPoint, you can do a demo, video, screenshots or other creative ways of presenting your technology.If you are a startup and/or have received less than 10 million in funding, we will provide you with a mandatory “bootcamp” where experts will help you to hone your pitch (don’t worry, this will be amazingly useful).We’ll accept products that haven’t even been launched yet, and in fact we’d encourage this, and prioritize this.
Apply for the Innovation Showdown here, and don’t forget to register for CloudBeat 2011 today and save 25%. We’ll see you at the event!

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