Archive for the 'Blog' Category
June 30th, 2008 Comments(0)
It’s just over two weeks away until our July 15th Web Innovators Group meeting and we’ve lined up another great set of demonstrators for the event. As usual, the doors officially open at 6:30pm at the Grand Ballroom in the Cambridge Royal Sonesta, with the “main dish” presentations to the entire crowd starting at 7pm:
Following those presentations, each of our “side dish” demonstrators will have an opportunity to give a quick 30-second overview of their service to the audience followed by a showcase of their company at tables spread throughout the periphery of the room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:
As a special treat, Webnotes will be providing a “sneak peak” of their soon-to-be-launched service which is currently in closed private beta, and will be exclusively opening the service to WebInno attendees the day of the event. Snipd will also be sharing a pre-launch inside look at their service.
Everyone who is interested in web and mobile innovation is encouraged to attend the free event. Please RSVP (and find additional details) on the event page (http://webinno18.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.
(My apologies to those companies which expressed interest in demo’ing but were not selected – we had another record number of applicants for this session, and all entries are encouraged to reapply for future sessions.)
April 09th, 2008 Comments(0)
As I’ve mentioned at the large WebInno events and on this blog, I’ve begun a series of WebInno Dinner Groups – gatherings of a dozen or so entrepreneurs and managers focused on a specific topic who want to connect to discuss and share experiences within their domain. In contrast to the larger regular large WebInno events, these are more intimate sessions with an opportunity for in-depth discussion. The first four dinners were devoted to the topics “Widgets and Advertising,” the “Intersection of Mobile and the Web,” and “Virtual Items and Virtual Worlds,” and “The Secrets of Social Network Platform Apps.”
As I announced at WebInno17, I am planning the next WebInno Dinner Group to be focused on the topic “eCommerce 2.0” This intentionally broad term can mean a number of things to a number of different people, and it would be great to gather a set of them interested in discussing. If this sounds like a gathering which you would want to participate, please reach out to me (david at webinnovatorsgroup dot com) sharing a bit of your relevant background and interest. Depending on response and availability, I’ll then organize an evening for us to get together in upcoming weeks (likely in May).
April 09th, 2008 Comments(2)
It was great to see everyone come out for the most recent WebInno event last week. The feedback I heard was positive, not just on the size and energy of the crowd, but in particular with this event on the quality of the main and side dish demonstrators. So a special congratulations goes out to the Audience Choice Main Dish and Side Dish award winners Good2Gether and Yamli, respectively, as they faced especially tough competition for the audience’s favorite.
As usual, there were a number of attendee bloggers, both old and new, commenting on the event. Pito Salas, who attended the very first session with demonstrators back in 2005, was “quite impressed [his bold] with the attendance and the quality of the people presenting… The gathering was quite crowded and the buzz was very loud, lots of dynamic discussions going on all over the place, people trading war stories and comparing products. It was stimulating and fun, and I plan to go next month again.” Former Main Dish demonstrator Matt Douglas “hadn’t gone to the last few WebInno group meetings” but was “pleased to see some of the improvements that… had [been] implemented… After the main presentations, I had a chance to say hello to some familiar faces, and meet some new people. I was pleasantly surprised at how many new people were at the Web Innovators meeting last night.” First time attendee Cory Wallenstein said, “I got a chance to attend the Web Innovators Group in Cambridge last night, and it was an absolute blast! This was my first time attending, and the experience was very, very different from other events I’ve attended in the area… There must have been at least 500 folks in attendance… far larger than any other non-conference event I’ve been to in the area, but it didn’t FEEL like a large, impersonal event. It was very open and social.” And lastly, blogger Don Dodge recently gave a tip of the hat to the Web Innovators Group in his Boston startup events roundup.
March 19th, 2008 Comments(9)
We’re two weeks away from our April 2nd Web Innovators Group meeting and we’ve lined up another set of strong demonstrators for the event. As usual, the doors officially open at 6:30pm at the Grand Ballroom in the Cambridge Royal Sonesta, with the “main dish” presentations to the entire crowd starting at 7pm:
Following those presentations, each of our “side dish” demonstrators will have an opportunity to give a quick 30-second overview of their service to the audience followed by a showcase of their company at tables spread throughout the periphery of the room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:
Everyone who is interested in web and mobile innovation is encouraged to attend the free event. Please RSVP (and find additional details) on the event page (http://webinno17.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.
(My apologies to those companies which expressed interest in demo’ing but were not selected – we had a record number of applicants for this session and all entries are encouraged to reapply for future sessions.)
February 11th, 2008 Comments(0)
Thanks to everyone who came out to the sixteenth Web Innovators Group meeting two weeks ago. Wow! We had quite a crowd… I heard estimates of around 500 people in attendance, but it was certainly a packed room nonetheless.
All of the people who joined us were there for good reason – our presenters proudly showed off their latest iteration of their services. In case you missed it (or would like to check them out again), the videos of the main dish demos for Urban Interactive, SpotScout, MakeMeSustainable are all available over at the @Bar blog.
The most exciting part of the night was the introduction of the “Audience Choice” award, given to the crowd’s favorite demo of both the main dish and side presenters. Since WebInno is devoted to promoting Boston’s Web and Mobile innovation community, it was only natural that we voted on the choice demo via mobile phone texting. Congratulations to both Andrew Rollert of SpotScout and Ian Manheimer of Glassbooth for winning their respective categories. This newly-enacted tradition will certainly continue at our next event.
In addition to our usual crew of bloggers providing a recap of the January’s meeting (like Greg Peverill-Conti, Chris Carleton, and Dharmesh Shah), there are a great set of writeups from some newcomers (like Melissa Chang and Deborah Block-Schwenk). Plus, Mike Champion snapped a few photos and BostonKnows “uttered” their own summary of the event.
January 17th, 2008 Comments(2)
We’re a little over a week away from the first Web Innovators Group meeting of 2008 on Tuesday January 29th starting at 6:30pm. We have another solid lineup of startups demo’ing at the event… the main presentations to the entire crowd will start at 7pm, thirty minutes after we open the Grand Ballroom at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge:
As a new feature, we’ll be introducing the opportunity for the crowd to vote for the “Audience Choice” — the favorite Main Dish demonstrating company of the event.
Following those presentations, each of our side dish demonstrators will have an opportunity to give a quick 30-second overview of their service to the audience followed by a showcase of their companies at tables spread throughout the periphery of the room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:
As always, everyone who is interested in web and mobile innovation is encouraged to attend the free event. Please RSVP (and find additional details) on the event page (http://webinno16.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.
November 14th, 2007 Comments(1)
In the past few months, I’ve begun a series of WebInno Dinner Groups – gatherings of a dozen or so entrepreneurs and managers focused on a specific topic who want to connect to discuss and share experiences within their domain. In contrast to the larger bimonthly large WebInno events, these are smaller and much more intimate sessions with an opportunity for in-depth discussion. The first three dinners were devoted to the topics “Widgets and Advertising,” the “Intersection of Mobile and the Web,” and “Virtual Items and Virtual Worlds.”
As I announced at WebInno 15, I am planning WebInno Dinner Group is going to be focused on the topic “The secrets of social network platform apps.” Between Facebook applications and the OpenSocial platform (which includes the likes of Google, MySpace, and Bebo), this area is rich with both excitement and uncertainty. I’d like to gather a group of people to discuss developing on these social network platforms. If this sounds like a gathering which you would want to participate, please reach out to me (david at webinnovatorsgroup dot com) sharing a bit of your relevant background and interest.
Depending on response and availability, I’ll then organize an evening for us to get together in upcoming weeks (potentially in December, but perhaps in January because of the busyness of the holiday season). Additionally, if you have a FB application live and running which you might be able to share with attendees, please let me know and we can discuss including it in the session. If there’s significant interest from the community, I may expand the event beyond a small group dinner.
November 14th, 2007 Comments(1)
I wanted to reach out to the Web Innovators Group community to see if anyone with graphic design skills might be interested in volunteering their time to help with some upcoming treatments for the Web Innovators Group logo. I am exploring introducing some additional features to the website and event programs, and would appreciate the help of someone with expertise in the area. If you are interested in potentially helping, please do reach out to me at david at webinnovatorsgroup dot com.
November 14th, 2007 Comments(0)
Thanks to everyone who came out to our final Web Innovators Group meeting last week. I heard great feedback, especially about our three main dish presenters who really wow’ed the crowd that evening. In the blogosphere, Greg Peverill-Conti was “definitely impressed with what [main dish FlipKey] had to say” and “certainly some stuff in there that was.. cool” with iiProperty’s demo. Another main dish, Lemonade, won Barb Heffner’s heart. And side dish presenter and high school student, Steven Bao of Student Concourse, got a warm round of applause as the “favorite entrepreneur of the night” by many, including Scott Kirsner.
As I noted during the evening, this November event marked the two year anniversary of including demo’ing startups at the Web Innovators Group events. From small gatherings then in a Kendall Sq bar to last week’s filling of the Grand Ballroom in the Royal Sonesta, the group has certainly grown up over the past twenty-four months. A special thanks goes to all of the 85 presenting companies which have demo’ed (some of whose logos are included in the slide below), and a congratulations to the nine (that I know of) which have either received venture funding or been acquired in this timeframe.
I am looking forward to continuing in building this tradition of creating valuable networking events for attendees and showcasing promising companies in the coming year of 2008.
October 30th, 2007 Comments(1)
We’re just a week away from the last Web Innovators Group meeting of 2007 on November 6th starting at 6:30pm. We have another great lineup of startups demo’ing at the event, and so I wanted highlight them in a blog post. The main presentations to the entire crowd will start at 7pm, thirty minutes after we open the Grand Ballroom at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge:
Following those presentations, each of our side dish demonstrators will have an opportunity to give a quick 30-second overview of their service to the audience followed by a showcase of their companies at tables spread throughout the periphery of the room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:
As always, everyone who is interested in web and mobile innovation is encouraged to attend the free event. Please RSVP (and find additional details) on the event page (http://webinno15.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.
