This week a new company released their event announcement service to the D.C. technology scene. A little bit of buzz began circulating about this new service (DC Gary’s Guide) that Gary Sharma announced to a few people early on in the week. The site is GarysGuide.org (named after the founder) and it attempts to track all of the technology and new media events going on.
It started off with New York and then Boston but has since expanded to D.C. Among those that are active in the new media crowd here in D.C. there is another site that many of us turn to for event information: DC Tech Events. Ross Karchner has been running the site as a hobby for the past couple years and has kept it extremely simple. Every time he posts out an event, the information is distributed via Twitter and via email thanks to Feedburner.
That’s as far as it goes. Gary is taking it one step further by providing daily and weekly newsletters that highlight events as well as new job postings on the site. The only problem as of now is that Gary doesn’t have much of a reach in D.C. That may soon change as people become familiar with the site. It’s well designed and constantly maintained making it equally reliable to DC Tech Events with the addition of job postings.
When it comes to design and usability, Gary may have the upper hand but Ross Karchner currently has the reach. Across all of DC, I would argue that there is nobody that has completely dominated the event directory when it comes to leveraging all the distribution channels possible. Did Gary just bust open the door for competition? Who will win? Who do you support?
Update
It’s clear that I jumped the gun on this one and should have looked into this more. Apparently Gary is an aggressive spammer. While I think the design of the site is great, it’s clear that D.C. supports Ross Karchner and DC Tech Events. As a policy from now on Social Times will do the same thing given Ross’ thorough coverage of tech events taking place in D.C. Hopefully my week ending sensationalistic headline didn’t do too much to harm D.C. Tech Events!
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First off, nice seeing you and 600 of your closest DC area pals at last night's Twin Tech smackdown. Every so often it's good to get the whole gang out under a summer moon to drink, talk, meet, greet, schmooze, etc. Huge props to Peter Corbett for taking the initiative to make it happen.
I was also contacted by Greg last week about my event series, and concur that his site is nice and clean. It looks like he's made good use of his time, putting together the NYC and Boston sites and learning as he goes.
I will say, however, that my Provincial Pride got tweeked a little, as my first thought was "we have our own, thank you" in the form of DC Tech Events. So, yes, Gary did just bust the door down a bit for competition, and if it wasn't him it would have been someone else. It's the Internet, hon.
Not to to get too kumbaya, I have to admit that I'm still feeling some solidarity with my DC pals following last night's event, and am wondering if..."Aquateens Assemble" to come up with an awareness in which we're all stakeholders, rather than leave all the lifting to Mr. Ross. I don't think DC wants or needs One Single Site that encompasses every event, blog, and job posting, as all these services already exist - and with multiple (and viable) business models and personalities. Last night confirmed to me that there are plenty of people playing in this "space", and with some but not a lot of overlap. And where there is overlap...so what? The marketplace of ideas sorts itself out super pronto.
So - Nick, as much as anyone you and Peter know all the "sites" that are involved with the DC Interactive scene, so maybe it's time for an informal and informative...congress. We all chipped in a bit last night to keep the bar open for a few minutes longer, and we can also chip in for meatwads and frylocks to discuss. This wouldn't be circling the wagons against a Yankee intruder, necessarily...
Thoughts?
Hank
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I definitely think you make some great points. I think it is also always best to support the locals. I think when I saw Gary's List, I realized that there is a lot more that can be done with the existing event list.
Conversely, perhaps it would be possible to use a "DC Tech Events" widget or something that we can all use and reference so that Ross gets credit but we have the ability to expand upon his offerings.
Leveraging his hard work and combining our own to make something even greater would make a lot of sense. What do you think? A number of us have tried the "congress" type of thing before and it didn't turn out too well. Perhaps there is a way to have an open discussion and informal meeting on a regular basis though so we can at least get together to discuss.
Any thoughts on that?
Best,
Nick
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As an event organizer who sometimes has to change event details, I don't want to have to correct all of the downstream places my event is syndicated. I've contacted Ross with updates when I catch mismatches. Looking forward to seeing the next evolution of event syndication. It would be helpful to have an organizers/planners forum somewhere.
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LOL...a few people? I got the message 3 or 4 times personally. I then got it forwarded it to me by 20 different people asking me if I got it and what I thought about it.
He didn't announce it to just a few people. He seems to have spammed every techie/developer/socialmedia enthusiast in the dc area.
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Everyone else: Thanks!
Here is my initial reaction: http://blog.dctechevents.com/2008/07/20/repost-...
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Just to amend my previous comment-- I did get editions of Gary's daily newsletter on the 18th and today, and the weekly one today.
The daily is pretty nice, I was skeptical initially.
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Nick, Thanks for blogging about our site and for the appreciate comments about our design, features etc. Your blog is a great read and looking forward to the Social Ad Summit in New York in Sep.
Ross, DCTechEvents is awesome and folks have only had nice things to say about your personally. I would love to connect with you to explore how we can work together. I completely agree that this is not a zero-sum game.
Having 2 event sites is not bad - there are always some events that are listed on Ross's site and not on our site and vice-versa.
Also I'm positive that with 2 sites we will end up reaching out to more people than before, more people will learn about the events, go to events, meet up with like-minded folks, deals will be down, businesses will launch, and the DC tech scene will prosper and grow in general. That's my hope.
Feel free to ping me anytime with questions, comments and suggestions at gary [at] garysguide.org
Gary
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