Editor’s note: Team GeekWire participated in the Geeks on a Train voyage between Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. Tuesday night as part of the GROW conference, taking place this week in Vancouver. We chatted with folks along the way for short four minute interviews, talking about a variety of tech topics. In this installment, we caught up with Seattle entrepreneur and DJ Ali Daniali
What are you most excited about in technology right now? “Definitely the mobile space. Also cloud computing. Those are the two things that most interest me. The pace that we are going with mobile is definitely exciting and keeps me invigorated to keep developing.”
Why are you getting on the train today? “I want to be around the same type of people that I hang out with in Seattle but in a bigger group. It seems to be a nice conference. I’m also volunteering at the conference doing photography.”
So you have an iPhone? Android? “I have an iPhone 4s but am actually running iOS6.”
You have a lot of apps on there, what are some of your favorite apps? “I’m a big music guy, my favorite is 8tracks. The second thing would be my Bluetooth heart monitor that I use when I run and it’s made by Wahoo. What’s awesome about it is, whether I’m biking or running, it keeps track of all of it and I can upload to sites like Strava and it’ll give you all sorts of stats (calories burned, etc.).
I think of you as the “DJ Guy”. Are you still doing that? Do you have a startup in the realm? “Yeah, I do DJ at events. I’m actually working on a startup called BigShotDJ that I’ve kind of put on the back burner and now I’m working on a project called Bio.DJ. It’s a website dedicated to profiles of DJs, fast search, and providing all the information on them. Something similar to what MTV and Beatport are doing, but more independent.”
The music industry is being disrupted. How do you view what is happening in the music landscape? “What I see is, finally innovation is coming into that space. A lot of startups, like Ziibra (a Seattle startup), are disrupting. It’s finally come there and there’s going to be a lot of opportunities that will be negated by hitting licensing issues. I worked on a startup with live.turntable.fm and rode that wave for a bit.”
What ever happened to Turntable.fm? “A couple of things happened. They got the big deal with all the licensing organizations. Then they started to do things with fingerprinting of songs, so you couldn’t upload all you wanted if it didn’t match up. Also they just never opened it up with an API like competitors (like plug.dj) did. I’m trying to figure out what the next big thing is for me and I’m hoping that Bio.dj is that thing.”
Previously: Four minutes on the train with … Microryza’s Denny Luan…Four minutes on the train with … Portland startup guru Rick Turoczy of PIE
GeekWire’s Mikey Tom, who was also on board for Tuesday’s journey, transcribed this interview.
