MyStrands is announcing today the “Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-ups“.

We seek to identify the best early-stage project in the area of recommendation technologies, considering the technology, business opportunity and team behind the project (without limitations as to which field the technology is applied).

The Winner will be offered an investment of $100,000 from Strands, Inc. the parent company of MyStrands.

Candidates should submit a one-slide presentation in quad-chart format (example, more examples) by September 15th, 2008 to recommender-startups@strands.com, together with the team bios (in addition to this, an optional 2-minute video uploaded to YouTube describing the start-up enterprise would be highly appreciated).

Eligibility: The Call is open to individuals or sole proprietors and privately held businesses throughout the world.

Five Finalists will be invited to present their projects during the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys08) next October 23rd to 25th, 2008 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Finalists will be announced on October 6th. All Proposals will be judged using the following judging criteria: (a) implementation and integration of recommendation technologies, (b) originality and creativity, (c) likelihood of long-term success and scalability, (d) effectiveness in addressing a need in the marketplace, and (e) team bios.

Five grants. Each Finalist will obtain a $1,500 travel grant to attend RecSys08; Strands, Inc. will also cover the registration fees for the Conference, for one person per Finalist.

The final selection process will include on-site presentations of each project during RecSys08. Finalists will make three presentations of 5 minutes each (focused on technology, business and the team respectively) in front of the Jury and the attendees of the Conference.

The Jury will be composed of renowned experts in the academic, industry and venture capital communities.

The Winner will be announced on October 25th, 2008 during the Gala Dinner at RecSys08. The Winner will receive a commemorative plaque and an offer of a $100,000 investment in the form of a convertible loan.

Proposal submission period begins on March 12th and ends on September 15th, 2008.

Further information: Please visit http://recommender-startups.strands.com or contact the Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-ups organizers at recommender-startups@strands.com.

Important dates:
March 12th: Proposal submission period begins
September 15th: Proposal submission period ends
October 6th: Five Finalists are announced
October 23rd-25th: Presentations of Finalists at RecSys08
October 25th: Winner Announced

Contact and updates:
Email proposal to: recommender-startups@strands.com
http://recommender-startups.strands.com
http://blog.MyStrands.com
http://recsys.acm.org

A week ago I sent a note to Chris Saad letting him know that I’d like to participate in the Data Portability group as a part of MyStrands. I wanted to talk a little bit about why we wanted to do that.We’re really excited about the work that the Data Portability (DP) group is chartered to do. The goal of the group is to build a set of technical and policy blueprints based on existing technologies and concepts that will allow for the free-flow and control of data by users among sites on the web. Taking advantage of the building blocks like OpenID, OAuth and microformats allows the effort to move that much faster.Although we have many of the components we need to get this started, I do still believe we’re missing some key elements. We still don’t have a clear means of messaging, attention data is still being sorted out and there still isn’t a good way to describe a users general tastes. Over the coming months we’ll be working on ways to tackle this “taste” problem in hopes that it can also become one of the key building blocks of the web.Chris Saad has done a great job in getting everyone to the table for the discussion. That’s more than just about anybody else has been able to do and I think timing is a key component here. I’m really hoping that we can get folks to agree on a course of action and move things forward quickly. The only concern I would have is that we’re all sitting down to the table for dinner and I’m not sure we all know what “dinner” is. That said, we’re game and really interested in seeing this happen. Its inevitable and this is a great chance to make it happen.MyStrands is committed to the Data Portability group because we believe we can really help make things happen and be an integral part of its success.

Nice job Bryan!

While the US went rafting during their offsite meeting, the BCN team trekked, canoed and went wild in the Pyrenees. Recognize some US team members in these pictures? They can’t resist a good party (more photos here).