Nimble’s CEO Jon Ferrara on the DEMO stage in Palm Desert this week. He shows Nimble’s new Social CRM application in the video below.

Matt Marshall talked to Qualcomm on the DEMO Spring stage this morning in a one-on-one chat. He talked about the QPrize competition they’ve been working to uncover innovative technologies in different regions of the world, including India, China, Europe and the U.S. Qualcomm awards $500,000 in seed financing across the finalists, the winner in each region gets $100K and the winner overall receives an additional $150K.

The QPrize has been so successful that Qualcomm has decided to expand the regions and they’ve now added Israel and korea and expanded the funding to $750K. The technologies range from clean technology to healthcare and mobile technologies. 

After listening to the six finalists from various pockets of the world (North America, Europe, China, India and elsewhere), listen to video below, enterproid was announced as the winner. An app that enables professionals to consolidate work and personal life onto a single device without compromises, tey’ll present on the DEMO stage tomorrow.

Launch.Forum is a new software currently in private beta that was on the LAUNCH11 floor in San Francisco this past week. Brought to you by Viral Age, their new platform will be a quick and easy way to build a forum on the fly, which will include other key components that companies, associations and non-profits alike can tap into, such as discussion threads, a blog and integration of social media discussions. You can sign up here to be alerted when the site goes live. In the video below, Ilia Muriente and Robert Kennedy tell us a bit more about their platform in a demo on the show floor.

LAUNCH 11 kicked off two competitions for technology start-ups this week in San Francisco. The event is for early stage companies who have never had any press, public demos and whose services are currently in closed alpha or beta.

Judges included Matt Coffin | Dave Goldberg | Drew Houston | Mike Jones | Dan’l Lewin | Josh Williams | Dave McClure | Kevin Pollak | Niel Robertson | David Sacks | Yossi Vardi | Aarron Walter | George Zachary | Ryan Block | Don Dodge | Bill Lee | Jay Levy | Shervin Pishevar | Bill Warner | Mo Koyfman | Aaron Patzer | Kevin Rose | Kara Swisher | Greg Tseng | Aaron Batalion | Ted Maidenberg | Dave Morin | Chris Sacca | Jeff Thomas | David Young | Andrea Zurek | Brian Alvey | Jose Caballer | Marshall Kirkpatrick | Om Malik | Mark Pesce | Naval Ravikant |Adeo Ressi | and Robert Scoble.

Below is a video clip of the grand finale of LAUNCH producer Jason Calacanis and a handful of judges announcing the winners in a variety of different categories, such as best UI, technology, overall, etc. Here’s the #L11 Twitter thread. Kudos to @Jason and his team.

At the LAUNCH Conference in San Francisco this past week, I interviewed Swerve’s John Magdziarz about their iPhone app.  Swerve connects people to great things to do. Serving up thousands of events in cities across the U.S., Swerve is for anyone who wants to get out and do something – a couple planning a date night, a group of friends looking for a club party, or a businessperson attending a conference or networking event.

Swerve offers listings for Music & Nightlife; Food & Drink; Speakers & Networking; Art & Museums; Get-togethers; Deals; and Facebook public events. Swerve also makes it easy to share event details and gather friends through social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter, all while on-the-go from your mobile device. John explains in the video below and shows us a demo on an iPad.

Bryan Alvarez’s TEDxBerkeley talk on Saturday was on celebrating the beauty of living systems. He started his talk by sharing a dream with us: “my story begins with a dream that I started to have when I was four and having fevers.

It kept repeating itself – it happened night after night and went on for years. A presence would appear before me, it was familiar and it was alive, there was a conversation taking place and was very alive…..

Then one night, I became lucid in the deam and woke up, and as the waves swelled up, I jumped into it and drowned. It was the first time I had an opportunity to experience a living system. I learned that I can let these living organisms go and have a conversation with them.”

Whoahh Nelly, what a “wow” way to start a talk. Since then, Bryan has spent a significant amount of his life getting involved in living systems. We learn that of all the cells in our body, only 10% are actually human and 90% of our cells are actually other species. He says, “it turns out that most of the cells in our body are having a conversation in our body.” It made him realize that we are part of a vast ecosystem and our cells inside our bodies are the symphony of that ecosystem.

He reminds us that our bodies are thousands of species all working together, talking together. When our cells are not working together, not talking, not connecting, then we suffer.

Disconnection is Suffering!

He asks, “if the cells from all of these species inside our body can work so well together, why can’t we model that to work well with the environment?” Good question.

His latest initiative is called the Human Atlas Project, which is about bringing all of these together. Essentially, it will be a fully 3D interactive atlas of the human body that scales from organs to atoms and shows the dynamic LIVING processes of the human body.

The mission of this project is to celebrate the beauty of living systems. Imagine exploring a version of Google Earth where you could see all of Earth’s animals roaming the planet, oceans and weather moving in real time, and travel deep into the Earth’s center.  

Says Bryan, “Imagine that you are watching a documentary about the planet. Imagine that you have this impulse to go see a handful of beautiful landscapes every day. Well, we are those landscapes; they are inside us. You are this living ecosystem, having a conversation. You — your bodies — are both the players and the symphony.” Beautifully said Bryan. Beautifully said.

Check out this video for another variation of a dream that depicts our living organisms as a magical journey of sorts.

YouTube’s Andrew Bangs talks about the history of YouTube, and the areas they focus on and emphasize when it comes to creating a compelling video. It all revolves around storytelling which he breaks out in categories in his talk during Social Media Week at SPUR on Mission Street this week in San Francisco.

Below is a snippet from a panel at Rocketspace in San Francisco during Social Media Week this week that discusses how to be an influencer in the growing world of social media tools, strategies and tactics and how to ‘influence’ influencers.

Rocketspace hosted a panel during Social Media Week San Francisco on Engaging Influencers. The panel discussed how to successfully engage influencers through social media. The session covered what a successful program looks like, how to plan, the role of authenticity, crowd-sourcing content, and advanced techniques for increasing reach and harnessing the power of influencers. On the panel included:

Chase McMichael, CEO InfiniGraph.com  – @chasemcmichael

Mark Sackett, Founder and CEO Reflectur – @MarkESackett

Gregorgy Shove, Founder and CEO Halogen – @GregShove

Jeff Pester Co-Founder of Think Influence – @SocialMedia411 and @UniqueVisitor

Below is a sample of the panel in video (covers about a quarter of the talk):

Below is a three part video of a panel on Collective Intelligence during Social Media Week in San Francisco. The event was held at the offices of (and hosted by) Peoplebrowsr in SOMA. On the panel was PeopleBrowsr’s Jodee Rich, Altimeter Group’s Susan Etlinger and Tim O’Reilly – Brian Solis moderated.

Here’s a shot of us (thx Julie) catching up before the panel started. Scroll down for the video. Also post over on Bub.blicio.us of the event.

Chris Heur of the Social Media Club, Katherine Webster, Renee Blodgett, Ben Wan and Brian Zisk