Last night was February’s NY Tech Meetup, the second month under new organizer Nate Westheimer. One of the major changes that Nate has made to the event so far is that the evening’s presenters have related products or services. This month’s theme was “Mobile Meets Social.” The presenters were:
And lastly there was an off-topic but welcomed presentation by Jeff Jarvis on his new book, What Would Google Do? I plan to order that today.
Nate stated halfway through the event that this would be the last time the meetup will be held at IAC. We’re moving to a bigger and more centrally located space at FIT in Chelsea. I’m eager to see what the new space will look like. If it’s a lecture hall, it might have stadium seating, which is helpful for shorties like me, but it may lack some of the sexiness of IAC. We shall see!
Photo by ugotrade
Here are my Twitter notes for the night:
- I’m Twittering from February’s @NYTM. “Mobile Meets Social” http://tinyurl.com/7np7b7
- First up is Peek http://getpeek.com @niche has one of these awesome email-only devices. So cute!
- Peek presenter is using an overhead projector to do a physical demo of the Peek. Old school tech FTW!
- “We started with the concept of doing less. We thought we could be competitive by not trying to out-iPhone or out-BB. Keep it cheap.”
- The Peek takes less than 60 seconds to set up. All you have to do is log in to your existing email service. Email just comes in. Easy
- Has to have a great contact list that’s synching back and forth. Unlimited texting (via email), unlimited email. $20/month
- “Hack the Peek” — they want to make the product better so they’re inviting the community to build onto it. More details coming soon
- @amolsarva is the guy giving the presentation BTW. The Peek uses GPRS so it just works everywhere. Very cool. <3 my BB though :)
- Up next is Xtify http://www.xtify.com/ Andrew Weinreich and Gil Baron on the stage
- Xtify – sorry, but that’s a weird and hard to pronounce name
- Xtify provides location-based services to any web app so that they don’t have to build special mobile integration. I think.
- User chooses to share location with Xtify and apps integrated with it can use that location for additional services. I think.
- Up next is viaPlace http://www.viaplace.com/ “A framework for location based services”
- “Open source framework for providing location-based services. Like Xtify but we’re a registry system for mobile locations.”
- @innonate In the future can we list presenters’ names (and Twitter usernames!) on the Meetup event page? Thanks!
- Sorry, viaPlace – demos of web forms are boring.
- Up next @chevon & @theschnaz of Coovents http://coovents.com @coovents. “It’s an easy way to get Happy Hour data” Sounds smart to me!
- @coovents sends 3 happy hours per hour. SMS app lets you choose how many events to see. Text 41411 to test it out. Send “coovents 3”
- More on how to use @coovents http://www.coovents.com/how-to-use They also just launched an iPhone app. Favorites. Plots on a clock!
- Search @coovents by neighborhood. Tweet your location. iPhone app has no native code. Other code-speak I didn’t understand.
- @natdefreitas helped build the @coovents iPhone app. http://www.coovents.com/iphone.php. Sign up for the beta here: http://is.gd/iiir
- @innonate now on the stage. Check out the new website: http://nytm.org Will get a paint job soon.
- Website will feature an archive of all past presenters. Very cool. Also a free NY tech jobs board. Post yours there!
- @innonate announcing the NYTM Board: http://nytm.org/board/ Lots of fantastic names here. Congrats!
- @innonate also announcing Community Committee http://nytm.org/community-committee/ Including me!
- @benstein of Mobile Commons on the stage. Demo: text BURNS to 69866 and the messages appear on the screen. http://mcommons.com
- Flixwagon @flixwagon on the stage. Live video broadcast from your cell phone to the web. Pretty sweet
- @flixwagon is a project of Myframe based in Boston and Tel Aviv. Word up to Israel!
- @flixwagon You can broadcast to any website, your blog, social network using the embed code. Integrated live chat.
- @flixwagon dude has the @boxee app on his iPhone. Sa-weet!
- @tonybgoode Ditto. That was a stroke of genius.
- OMGICU up next. http://omgicu.com/ Hugh Dornbush @hugh “Participatory celebrity gossip” See a celeb, text omgicu @ 60270 in 120 chars
- People are groaning at the OMGICU presentation. Celebrity stalking mechanism à la Gossip Girl.
- You can rate a celebrity, mark whether you care about the gossip, comment on the post. Which celebs are considered most important?
- Audience Q: Didn’t Gawker Stalker get in lots of trouble for doing this? “I expect backlash”- @hugh. Changes what it means to be celeb
- @nytm is leaving IAC! We’re moving to 775-person space @ FIT. Better location. Better price. Unfortunately March will be on 1st Monday
- Last presentation of the night is not a demo. @jeffjarvis is talking about his new book What Would Google Do? http://is.gd/iitU
- Google understands there isn’t a scarcity of economy anymore. Instead, manage abundance. New economy. New business reality.
- New attitude. “There’s an inverse relationship between control and trust” — David Weinberger. New ethic: life is beta, transparency.
- New imperatives. “Get out of the way” – Craig Newmark.
- “So many companies think that secrecy is their special sauce.” — @jeffjarvis. Opennness is the Google way and it involves community
- “This is the creation generation.” — @jeffjarvis. The internet and Google enable this.
- Hell yes! @nytm is a top 10 trending topic on Twitter! http://tinyurl.com/afrmsu
- Check out all the great tweets from tonight’s @nytm at http://tinyurl.com/8t7b8h
- Retweeting @mcaldecutt: #NYTM Remember when that damn printing press put all those monks out of work? Somehow, the written word survived.
If you want to read more about what people thought of last night’s event, check out the #nytm Twitter stream.
Hope to see you next month at FIT!
[Note: these tweets were effortlessly pulled from my Twitter stream using @Yoni‘s incredible Tweet-To-Blog, designed just for me but anyone can use!]
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Thanks for this recap! Was bummed I couldn't make it and now I think I know everything I missed.
Whitney, thanks for posting this on your blog. I couldn't rsvp because it was full, so I saw Lucia di Lammamoor at the Met instead… Now I think I got the best of both worlds.