AlwaysOn Venture Summit East was fantastic
I’m not a huge fan of conferences — perhaps it’s because I’ve been to so many over my 15 years in the software industry. I had a good streak going for a while: I had been to every MacWorld conference (in both Boston and SF) for five years running, and I went to every National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) tradeshow for 8 years in a row.
Last week I attended the AlwaysOn Venture Summit East conference. The conference is a mix of entrepreneurs, VC’s, and a handful of press people. There were about 350-400 people at the event.
My plan was to go on Tuesday only, and skip the event on Wednesday. When I went on Tuesday, I was blown away– here were most all of the VC’s that I wanted to meet; all accessible and available to talk to within a few hours of an afternoon. I sat in on a couple of panels, but that was no comparison to the networking I was able to do in the main hall. I left the meeting on Tuesday with a stack of business cards and a few confirmed meetings for the future. Pretty darn efficient.
On Wednesday I had a few meetings scheduled throughout the day so I wasn’t planning to go back to the Venture Summit East conference. When I woke up in the morning, I felt something pulling me back. So I drove to Boston, and on the way I cancelled my other meetings. When I arrived at the conference, I sat down for lunch. Within a few minutes, I had met another few VC’s that were interested in Punchbowl. The afternoon was equally as fruitful — had a quick conversation with Scott Kirsner from the Boston Globe and met Bijan Sabet from Spark Capital and Chris Greendale from Kodiak Venture– just a few of the people in the stack of business cards I carried away from the event.
It’s not often I’ve gone to a conference where I feel like the time spent at the event was more efficient than the time I could have spent in the office. The AlwaysOn Venture Summit East was fantastic, and I look forward to the conference next year.
