What is Swagapalooza? It’s just about the most fun, casual, unpretentious PR event you can possibly go to. Here’s how it works. You, the founder of an interesting startup, go to Swagapalooza to pitch your idea to 85 bloggers, who in turn, are encouraged to write reviews for their followers. The catch? You need to give away whatever you’re talking about.

And that’s where I come in. I love to photography. I love blogging. And most of all, I love free stuff. My friend Yuichi sent me a link to this article on Springwise, and I knew I had to go. I applied by writing a 512 character paragraph about “What makes you a top digital influencer?” and here I am, with an open mind and a nice, big, empty bag for my goodies.

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DNA Lounge

The event took place at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco, which is normally a nightclub. The turnout was great. It was the perfect sized audience – enough to be fun, but not too crowded at all (like most San Francisco events)

I checked in at the front desk and picked up my nametag. The event in invite-only, which made me feel pretttty special when I waltzed past the people at the door who were trying to get in. Hey, I can gloat a little – I’m usually the loser in the back, wishing I was doing what the cool kids are doing.

Here’s my nametag with my blog URL. Cool, huh?! Never thought my blog would take me places.

There was an hour before and after the event started for drinks and networking. I met quite a few bloggers there (food bloggers included), and came home with a pile of business cards. I even met Kira, who happens to be a food blogger AND a photographer (great one, too) AND works in my building.

And here’s my favorite thing in the world. Free food. Don’t ask me why, but I will go anywhere, and do anything, for free food. They had Mexican food at the event, which was average, but then again, it’s not like this was a food blogger event.

Here’s the stage before the speakers went on and…

…here’s the screen that provided comic relief through the entire event. It showed a live twitter feed of the event, and people were tweeting through every second of it, even while the speakers were talking. Were they respectful? Maybe not, but then again what else do you expect with a bunch of twitter-happy geeks in a room after an open bar?

There was a table to the right holding samples of all the products. The audience got one of each item…and more!

Intro speakers

Alex Krupp is the brainchild behind Swagapalooza. He also has a great sense of humor.

Here’s Alex with his partner, Allan, who also helped put the event together.

Our keynote speaker was Guy Kawasaki, who is a Bay Area venture capitalist, motivational speaker, and business legend. He gave us a quick, no-frills talk about the “10 Steps to Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur”. Guy provided great advice, and even gave us some good laughs.

After that, the speakers were given 5 minutes to pitch their product. Well, the 5 minutes turned more into 15 minutes. The first one up: Bacon Hot Sauce.

Bacon Hot Sauce

Of all the products that were showcased tonight, everyone seemed the most excited about Bacon Hot Sauce. I guess there’s very little reason to not be excited about bacon hot sauce.

Here’s Pete Fishman, “Chief Bacon Officer”, explaining how he got the idea. Him and his buddies were trying to decide what would taste better with eggs – bacon or hot sauce – and decided that they had to have both. And so, Bacon Hot Sauce was born.

Unfortunately, I’m the only person you will ever meet that won’t go near bacon. So I can’t say much about the hot sauce because I haven’t tried it, but I think Bacon Hot Sauce will be a hit if it isn’t already.

Jo tweeted, “Bacon hotsauce. Holy crap.”

To much disappointment, they weren’t able to give away any Bacon Hot Sauce because it’s still pending FDA approval, but they did hook us up with a ridiculous t-shirt (which I gave to Mike) and a promise to send us 6 bottles of Bacon Hot Sauce once it’s approved.

Grade: Truthfully, I didn’t try any, but judging from the audience tastings, an A.

Equmen

Next up was a undershirt from Equmen, which makes “high-performance body optimising men’s underwear to improve posture, reduce back pain, and slim the body”. I didn’t get the hot underwear model I was hoping for, but instead there was a mannequin showing off the “Helix-Mapping Technology” on their new Core Precision Undershirt. The marketing sounds a little baloney to me (“helix-mapping”?), but I guess I can see it working for their male audience. Oh, and I think the speaker was wearing a Core Precision Undershirt. He had to, because his clothes were too tight.

I got a size L undershirt for Mike, guessing that he was between a medium to a large, but rounding up to a L because I thought, well maybe this runs kind of small. Turns out, I needed an XXXXXXXL because that thing was tiny.

This men’s large shirt is the size of a baby onesie. Yes, it successfully sucked in any noticeable amount of fat, but it also cut off any blood circulation in the upper body. I would have taken a photo of Mike modeling the shirt except I was too busy trying to peel it off of him after he squeaked for help. And get this – even I couldn’t fit into the shirt. It was too bad neither of us could fit, because the shirt is worth $99.

But to be fair, the package says that the shirt is supposed to feel like a “second skin”, which Mike said was true, after trying it under another shirt. So, if that’s what the product is for, then it works.

Mike: “Well, I can wear it as a bandanna instead. Hrm…I think this is squeezing my thoughts”.

Grade: B+. Great idea, great product, but they really need to redo their sizing chart.

FotoBabble

Then we had FotoBabble which is a web service that helps you create talking photos. You can upload photos online (through browser, mobile, etc) and add a voice caption to it. Think of it as TwitPic or yFrog but with sound.

What I love about this FotoBabble is that it’s fun, would make a great viral marketing tool, and most of all – it’s dead simple. There’s something to be said about services that do one thing, and do it well across a variety of mediums (Twitter, Facebook, even their website is well done).

Kamal shows us what we can use FotoBabble for.

Grade: A for simplicity and fun

WhiteyBoard

WhiteyBoard is a sticky, removable white board. The founders are both still in school. I love that.

It comes in what looks like a giant cigarette.

Grade: C. Interesting idea, but a little weird. I don’t have a photo of it, but the sample I got was a rolled up tube of contact paper. Oh, and the product name is not so good.

Black Garlic

Mrmmm…garlic. But this is no ordinary garlic. Scott Kim introduces us to Black Garlic, which is fermented garlic. It’s popular in South Korea, but is starting to catch on in the gourmet food scene in the US.

I received one head of black garlic.

Here’s what a black garlic clove looks like. I tried a piece raw, and man, it’s good! (I know, I know, I’ll eat fermented black garlic, but I won’t eat bacon). First off, there’s no strong odor. It soft and chewy like jelly, and tastes more like balsamic vinegar and molasses than it does garlic. I can definitely see this being used in desserts, because it’s sweet, and the texture is amazing.

Grade: A for taste, C for marketing. The name sounds a little voodoo, and the word “fermented” can scare some people. But it does taste fantastic.

Joby

Joby introduced us to their line of Gorilla tripods. Their crazy-looking tripods are super flexible, low-profile, and can be wrapped around any tree/stopsign/arm. They make tripods for videocameras, SLRs (I need one!), and iPhones.

The speaker showed us some beautiful photos that were submitted in a recent photo contest. They also just released an iPhone app that allows you to strap your iPhone+Gorillamobile onto say, a bike, and set the app to take a photo every ___ seconds, which is fun for making quirky animations.

I got a Gorillamobile! So cool.

Mike twisting the tripods legs.

The Gorillamobile on a table.

Attaching the Gorillamobile to a shelf (I need to get a bigger one to to hold lights for food photos!)

Grade: A for awesome. Easy to use, easy to carry.

Helmet Lock

The founder of HelmetLock told us a story about how he would avoid riding his bike to events where it would be awkward to carry around a helmet. So he created HelmetLock, which is a simple cable that works with a u-lock for your bike.

One lock is $9.95, but you can get 15% off with the code “SWAG”.

I got one HelmetLock to try out. Woo-hoo! I think these may be hand-made, and if they are, that’s freaking amazing.

Grade: B. Great idea, but I think I may have something for this already.

BackFlip

BackFlip wasn’t at the event, but they threw in this nifty iPhone case into the swag bags. It’s a silicone iPhone case that has a part that flips out to be an iPhone stand, similar to the stand of a picture frame. It’s nice that the case and the stand is one product, rather than two. It’s good for watching movies and that sort of thing.

It works horizontally…

…and vertically. It’s steady and unfussy. I like that.

Grade: A. I don’t watch movies on my iPhone, but if I did, this would be the thing to get. As a case, it’s thick, but feels surprisingly good. I’m using it on my iPhone now.

More Swag

A lot of companies applied to present at Swagapalooza (30 I think?), but those that didn’t get in provided goodies for the swag bag anyway. Here’s Alex introducing us to some of the products that weren’t in the presentations.

Here’s my swag bag exploding with FREE STUFF!

Uhuui is a service that allows you to send your kid’s drawing to get them printed on clothing. They gave us crayons, paper, and a handwritten envelope to send a drawing in. The drawstring bag it all came in has a drawing printed on it, and the print quality is really, really nice.

An album from PlushGun. I haven’t listened to it yet.

FootGloss is “an all-natural foot prep that helps prevent chafing and hot spots that can lead to blisters”. It feels like chapstick. I like it.

Linchpin by Seth Godin. “A linchpin, as Seth describes it, is somebody in an organization who is indispensable, who cannot be replaced—her role is just far too unique and valuable. And then he goes on to say, well, seriously folks, you need to be one of these people, you really do. To not be one is economic and career suicide.”

Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky explains how “Its not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” Sounds good to me.

Overall, the event was a lot of fun, and I would definitely go again. They have an event coming up in LA, so if you’re in LA, I encourage you to go!

see all photos »
Swagapalooza website »
watch it on Justin.tv »