MyPunchblog

Last night, I attended the 17th meeting of the Web Innovators Group. For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you’ll recall that I was one of the main presenters at the WebInno group back in January 2007.

I hadn’t gone to the last few WebInno group meetings, and I was pleased to see some of the improvements that David Beisel had implemented. For example, employers (like me) were able to wear a red dot on their name tag to signify that they are actively hiring. While I think this system worked ok, I think it could be better: my recommendation is to reverse who wears a sticker. I think it would be a lot more effective if those seeking a job wore a red sticker. I would also designate a section of the room (for example, the entry hallway) as the place for job seekers to hang out so that employers can easily find them among the crowd.

There were three main presentations last night:

1) Good2gether: A service that helps connect local charities to consumers. I thought the demonstrator did a nice job of quickly communicating the problem that they are trying to solve, and their unique solution (partnering with media companies like Boston.com). Punchbowl has some experience with Boston.com, and I know that they like the look and feel to be seamlessly integrated throughout their site. So I have some concerns about whether or not Good2gether is going to be able to replicate this quickly across the country. But there is precedent: Good2together’s model reminds me of Zvents, and they have been successful at this media model. One last note: I would have liked for them to address the competition question: Kiva.org has gotten a tremendous amount of good press. Will Kiva go after this media approach?

2) PicMe: A desktop application (with a web component) that enables picture viewing and sharing. As an Adobe alum, I’ve seen my share of these types of applications. Great technology, great demo — but I don’t think there is a significant business opportunity. I like the guys at PicMe (I met them a few months back) – I’d recommend that they try to license the technology to companies like HP, Canon, Adobe rather than try to make a consumer play.

3) Jack Cards: A service that sends you pre-stamped greeting cards in the mail. About 2 minutes into the presentation, I turned to my colleague sitting next to me and said “she looks really nervous.” About a second later, the woman on the stage apologized for being so nervous. It’s tough to watch someone who is so nervous on stage, so I’d really recommend to Jack Cards that they work on their presentation. I’m not exactly sure what to think of Jack Cards, but I will say this: I’m surprised that they were chosen as a featured “WebInno” company. There’s really nothing “web innovative” that they are doing. They are essentially an e-commerce company. As I sat through the demo I imagined someone from Target giving us a demo of their e-commerce store. Yawn. I’m sure Jack Cards will get some great press, but will the masses flock to the site? Hard to say for sure, but I doubt it.

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, and I left the event with a stack of business cards. When I got home, my wife amused herself by reading the company names on the business cards (oh those Web 2.0 names!). She pointed out that Genevate has nothing to do with genes and that had I met someone from Velocity and someone from Virosity. Nice.

Thanks to David Beisel and the sponsors of WebInno for providing a venue to bring the Boston Web community together.

This entry was posted on April 3, 2008 at 8:06 am and is filed under Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.