Monday, March 31st, 2008 : Events

This past weekend, Los Angeles held a great business-minded social/conferenced/networking bit of neat at the Level 3 night club in West Hollywood, Community::Next. The event started nice and early with foods and (what seemed to create the setting for the rest of the day) a ton of networking with like-minded, direction-sharing individuals. As you may guess, ambitions and ideas were absolutely everywhere, which is a very motivating environment to place yourself into - lemme tell ya. For the first half of the day, I was simply listening to others, and asking them about what they did. In return, I got ear fulls of great stories, backgrounds and tons of neat ideas from innovative minds. Here are a few things that I remember from that morning (mind you I was really tired, so I’m sorry if I leave anyone out):

[Listed in order by chronological interaction - personally]

Ross Bagley - CEO/Founder of CoreTap Software
ross [dot] bagley [at] coretap-sw [dot] com
Company site - Coming Soon

Ross is basically giving you the power to project your nuance via the Interwebs and giving a sense of personal notoriety to one’s self based on a series of awesome. He describes it a hell of a lot better than I do, but lemme just say this… He’s developing the one thing IRL-old school folks still lean on as their “secret weapon” for devaluing online interaction, taking us that much closer to being able to never see anyone face to face ever again! Ok, I’m being a little dramatic, but it will be a great way to eliminate what I see is a problem in dealing with things such as online business.

Also, [Thank you Ross for getting the "Viral pack" of Comm:Next tickets. I wouldn't have gone otherwise, and awesome! giving me a hand with the car situation (see below) - and not wiping out after I loaded your motorcycle down with oil, sorry about that.]

Travis Savo - Oh boy… haha

Travis is actually how I found out about Comm:Next, via Twitter (@Kevlar). He’s developing a … I’ll call it a methodology, for technology to self improve. Yes, he does throw out the word “Skynet” while describing his innovations. We talked at length about how his project will do two things, upon successful execution. First, technology that evolves on it’s own will better itself at an exponential rate, and reduce or remove the creative process from humans when it comes to developing technology, interesting, aye? Second, the brilliant minds that create our technologies will then be able to use everything they could have ever wanted, like kids in a candy store, to do exactly what technology is meant to do… advance our existence.

Yes, this is creepy, and my gut tells me that in a few months, we’re going to want to throw an “End of the World” party juuuust in case. Travis is also one of the stand-up awesomes that helped me get my broken down car problem squared away, and lent every hand he could to help out. Not that I was shocked at all by that, you can tell these things about folks.

[Update: Here's Travis (and a bunch of others) on TechZulu]

Alexandra Mokhnatkina, Mike Prasad, Alex Levin - GirlGamer

Weird… I only picked up Alexandra’s card. She’s one of the founders of GirlGamer, and definitely runs the show (Just kidding, guys). I didn’t really get too much into GirlGamer myself, I left that up to the countless people interviewing them that I just happened to eves drop on. What I did do was give Alexandra a photography lesson, create a meme with Mike, and clink glasses with Alex at the MashMeet after party - good times. From being a spectator during their interviews, I can say this much - this team is down to Earth, has a great head on their shoulders, they’re addressing a tangible issue in the gaming community, and being great about proactive execution with their project.

Site: http://www.girlgamer.com

I’m excited to hear about people that address sociological issues with avenues and application, as well as proactive interaction, and ensuring the message is clearly defined about why they are going about doing what they’re doing. [Hat's off, guys/girl, this is a good project with a squishy center, and that's cool book material.]

Jackie Peters - CCO & Partner of Heavybag Media
jackie [at] heavybagmedia [dot] com
Company Site - http://heavybagmedia.com

There was an interest in Heavybag Media pretty much right away - as I met Jackie at BarCampLA 5, only this time this was an opportunity to talk real business with Jackie… I was sort of grilling her about her company’s abilities… you know, take all the fun and exciting branding ideas they have for bleeding edge bad ass companies, and set all that aside for my job’s needs (see about). Simply put, we’re not cutting edge awesome. We’re communities, and like to be seen as warm fuzzy pots of Mr. Rogers Sesame Street. I mean, we’re serene, soothing, master-planned micro-towns…

Her 30 minute pitch and the result of my on-the-spot interview resulted in motions in my company today to get them on the communication list (a very short one) for contracts involving community brand development and online marketing. Don’t tell her though, it’s supposed to be a surprise.

Andy Sternberg and Robert Scoble

Before Mashable’s Pete Cashmore got a hold of Robert Scoble, Andy Sternberg held a candid outdoor interview with the infamous blogger: http://netzoo.net/interview-robert-scoble-at-community-next/

And then… Robert turned his camera on and returned the favor:
Armed with a Nokia N95, Robert interviewed Andy about his AT&T 3G powered USBConnect 881, streaming it live to Qik.com, of course [link]. I sort of make a little cameo at the end of the interview.

I have to say, Scoble’s gotta be one of the most amped bloggers I’ve ever known… Amped about blogging and understanding what it means to be a blogger. Blogging because he enjoys blogging… That’s all from the interview with Pete Cashmore though:

Pete Cashmore - CEO/Founder of Mashable.com

First off, his interview with Scoble was awesome. There was a good display of perception of Scobles motives (from questions on Mashable asked by their readers to him) for blogging, and a great down to earth response and reaction to pretty much everything. During the talk, Pete asked some pretty well loaded questions, ad Robert stayed true to his beliefs about his love for doing what he does… which is his motivator. It was a very good talk, as a blogger who blogs for really no “reason” to see that from him, I appreciated the interview.

Second, MashMeet - Holy cow did Pete & his folks packed whatever bar we ended up at. Drink tickets were handed out, which meant free booze, tons of people were there, including some LA BarCamp peopel that didn’t make it to Community::Next, and all around, it was a time to be more deliberately social… which is great, considering that’s what Mashable, and obviously Pete Cashmore, are all about. if you ever get a chance to shake hands with Pete and snag some conversation, do it. He’s brilliant, driven, and is very focussed on presenting social networks and interactions as they should be - socially.

I’m realizing that I may have to continue writing about this one a little later, or just leave it at that… I’m sure I’ll see a good number of the people I hung out with again in the near future. I mean, realistically - Web 2.0 Expo is only 3 weeks out, and there will be fun and mayhem to be had, that is certain.