PopSignal event last night
Last night I attended the PopSignal event at Tequila Rain (near Fenway Park). The PopSignal event is a gathering of tech and web like-minded people in Boston. Here are a few observations from last night:
1) Venue: Tequila Rain is a great place to have an event. It is large enough to hold more than 500 people, the bar is very accessible, and the waitstaff and friendly and helpful. I’m looking forward to the time when MyPunchbowl holds our own event at Tequila Rain. Great spot.
2) Boston CEO’s: I was lucky enough to have some significant time with a few CEO’s that I really really respect. It’s not every day you get to have a conversation with Dharmesh Shah (Hubspot) AND Jon Radoff (gamerDNA) at the same time. Both of these guys have had multiple successful startups, and the tidbits of wisdom that they shared with me in those few minutes were invaluable. Guys like Dharmesh and Jon are what makes the Boston startup scene so rewarding for me.
3) The new “cool” metric: I overheard quite a few conversations where people were comparing number of Twitter followers. No offense intended, but it was kind of like watching a bunch of kids brag about how many baseball cards they have in their collection. Apparently, the new way that you know if you are cool is to have thousands of followers on Twitter. I just checked: I have 72. Enough said.
4) Recruiting is easy when you wear a sticker that says “I’m hiring”: Apparently, my idea to wear a sticker that said “I’m hiring” was unique. It was also pretty effective. I found a bunch of potential employees among the crowd and had some significant conversations with some nice people. If I met you last night and we talked about a position at Punchbowl Software: email me your resume today!
5) Popularity of MyPunchbowl: When I used to go to these types of events two years ago, I’d have to explain what MyPunchbowl.com was all about. Last night, about every other person I spoke with mentioned that they had just used MyPunchbowl recently — it was pretty amazing, and pretty humbling.
It was a great event last night. Congrats to the guys at PopSignal. They pulled off one of the best events I’ve been to in Boston in a long time.
May 16th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Counter twitter followers is silly. I thought that part of the conversation was weird, because numbers don’t mean anything unless you can engage them in a good way.
It was great seeing you last night.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Exactly what Chris noted, counting it silly, how many of them are authentic relationships? I have a “low” number too. “Authentic” gets tossed around quite a bit, but isn’t it true?
Many of my conversations were about how Twitter has connected people in 3D, as I like to call it, in a way I haven’t experienced before with other social media sites. Great to see you!
May 16th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Great to see you (and all the other tech-entrepreneur regulars). I almost didn’t attend because I have a pathological aversion to large groups like this with no “structured” conversation.
But, I survived.
Chris: I agree with you. Counting twitter followers is kind of silly.