Last night’s Tech Cocktail in D.C. was great. Over 300 people showed up for the event and it proved that D.C. does indeed have a bubbling tech scene. There were numerous demos and a number of free handouts from Ligit and AOL. All in all I would say it was a successful events. Thanks to Frank Gruber and Eric Olson for putting it together.

I’ve compiled all of the photos that showed up on Flickr from the Tech Cocktail album and from Jason Garber who posted his photos on his Flickr profile. I’m sure there are many more photos that I missed but I included close to 120 of them in the following video. Enjoy! Also, be sure to check out the Tech Cocktail conference that Frank and Eric will be putting on next month in Chicago. I’ll be speaking at it with a number of other great speakers so be sure to attend!

Frank Gruber has been kind enough to give readers of Social Times with a $25 discount for the upcoming Tech Cocktail Conference. The event is in Chicago on May 29th. I’m going to be headed out there to speak at the event. Other speakers includes Jason Friend from 37signals, Dick Costolo from FeedBurner, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV and a number of other speakers.

This is the first Tech Cocktail Conference ever. The focus of the conference is taking a “non nonsense” approach to building a business that can flourish by leveraging technology and the web. If you are looking for a great conference to attend where you can actually talk directly with the keynote presenters as well as learn a ton about building your business, this is a great one to attend.

If you’d like to attend and get a discount, use the code: socialtimes when you register via the conference registration form. I hope to see you there!

There are a few upcoming D.C. events that I wanted to draw attention to. The first one is this week’s social media club which is being hosted at Viget Labs in Falls Church, VA. Ann Bernard of WhyGoSolo will be speaking about the creation of her startup and how WhyGoSolo can be used as a social media platform. Social Media Club is a meeting of people for the “purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and for promoting media literacy.” It’s a great event which I’ve attended before and I highly recommend it.

The second event is next Monday. JobMatchbox will be hosting a networking event and panel about starting your own business. The panel includes myself, Robert Nellbauer (JobMatchbox.com), Keith Casey (WhyGoSolo.com) and Victor Prince (MiddleSon.com). The main purpose is to expose American University students to the D.C. startup community and also provide them with the opportunity for internships and possible future jobs. If you are interested in attending the event go register via the event registration form. This is event’s expected attendance is approximately 100 people.

Finally, the weekend of the 18th will be PodcampDC. This event is sure to be popular with already hundreds of people registered. The event is being hosted at the Art Institute of Washington. Podcamp DC is an “unconference” focused on educating participants on how to use, implement and share any/all new media tools including, podcasts, videocasts, blogs, Second Life, Facebook, and YouTube.

It’s an awesome event and great opportunity to learn from other people in the local community. If you are interested in attending, go sign up via the PodcampDC registration form. I hope to see you there! Also, if I missed your event please post it in the comments below!

For those of you in the D.C. area looking to get in on the networking action, I have a great event for you tomorrow. There will be a combined event at Lotus Lounge at 6:30 P.M. It is being hosted by the New Media Meetup and NextDC and is being sponsored by Voxant.com, an increasingly active company in the D.C. web community. I hope to see you at the event tomorrow!

There are also a number of other events coming up in the approaching weeks. There will be SocialMatchbox DC 2 out in Tysons. That event is a recruiting/networking event for local tech startups and potential employees. While I didn’t make the first event I’ve heard great things about it. I will also be announcing the first SocialTimes pitch event in the coming weeks. Right now I’m aiming for April but I am also organizing a number of other events.

If you are hosting any other D.C. events please be sure to let us know! For those of you not in D.C. be sure to come visit!

I’ve wanted to write this post since I returned from South by Southwest last week but the entire weekend has turned into an endless series of naps followed by eating and more napping. Honestly, I can’t complain! I had the opportunity to attend South by Southwest (SXSW) for the first time ever last week. It was probably the best conference I’ve attended in my history of interactive/web/technology conferences over the past couple years.

It seemed that every single person that I had ever linked to or received a link from on any blog I had ever written was at the event. There were video blogging rockstars, twitterati, bloggerati and a collection of some of the most creative individuals from across the country. Rather then continuing to express my undying love for what has become my most favorite industry event, I will simply state the lessons I’ve learned from attending SXSW 2008.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a Rockstar
If you didn’t walk away from SXSW with a WineLibrary.com wristband, you probably weren’t at most of the event. Whether you were an A-List blogger or an intern at your local interactive agency, just about everybody I knew had come across Gary Vaynerchuk at some point during the event. At one point Gary was even pulled up on stage to be praised by Kathy Sierra during a keynote about how he has built a dedicated community.

In less than a year and a half, Gary has built one of the most dedicated fan bases on the web. I had the fortune of meeting him prior to him becoming a cewebrity when he sponsored the first D.C. TechCocktail. Gary is one of the most humble and grateful individuals I have met and this year’s SXSW appeared to honor him for his accomplishments.

Twitter is Still Going Strong
For anybody not at SXSW last week, following Twitter must have been hell. Practically every person I follow on Twitter was posting about the party they were at, what panel they were listening to and how they were finally getting up at 11 o’clock and looking for a brunch buddy. For my friends that weren’t on Twitter at the event, they had become members by the time they left and had suddenly become active users.

Twitter was born at last year’s SXSW and within one year it has become one of the standards for communication among the digerati (which anybody reading this blog is most likely a member of). Whether or not Twitter makes it into the mainstream, it has most definitely become one of the primary communication tools for interactive professionals. If you are reading this and you aren’t a member, go join (and then follow me)!

Be Loud and Proud
Dipping your toes in the interactive waters (pardon the horrible metaphor) is simply not enough. You have to launch a blog, join Twitter, get your profile up on Facebook and any other social site and become active. If you don’t make other people listen, nobody will pay attention. Embracing these new technologies may be a foreign concept for many but in order to reap the full benefit from the tools, you must become an active member.

While it is possible to succeed without making your cell phone or computer an extension of your body, embracing these technologies fully can jumpstart your career overnight. Just ask one of the hundreds of individuals who now find themselves in a secure job thanks to Twitter.

We Are Moving From Web 2.0
Practically everybody at the event was on Facebook or Twitter. Joining the conversation is nothing new. The festival has become a celebration of our new found tools of communication. Just as XHTML became the standard for developing sites, Microformats will rapidly become a standard that is built into platforms. If you don’t know about microformats, don’t worry!

Just know that one year from now, I believe that all of our digital lives will become even more interconnected and navigating the web will have become even more of a social activity, not an individual one.

What takeaways did you get from the event? Do you think I’m wrong about some of my conclusions?

One of the keynotes at South by Southwest was Jim Coudal, founder of Coudal Partners and advertising platform “The Deck.” Jim spoke about his theory on creativity and included one of his well known clips about the creative mindset. He believes that rather than fighting against the creative mind which doesn’t stay focused on one idea, it is better to embrace and manage. Overall I thought this was a great presentation. The first four minutes or so is a promotion of Coudal Partners but the rest is pretty good to watch. Take a look!

Quick reminder that the MashMeet DC Remix will be held tonight. There is also going to be an after party at Science Club which is right down the street from Ogilvy. The happy hour begins at 10:15 pm and ends whenever people decide to leave. The Mashable event will be streamed on our website and we will also have a follow-up video after the event. This is sure to be a great event and I hope to see you there! For those that have yet to register it is now too late. If you are a blogger or journalist feel free to reach out to me and I might be able to get you on the list even though registration has close. For everyone else, the happy hour will be a great opportunity to network with others.

As promised, I have details on the MashMeet DC Remix coming up on March 5th at Ogilvy PR. The event is going to consist of presentations and networking for a group of 170 individuals in the D.C. area. It costs $20 to attend unless you get one of our free tickets. So how do you get a free ticket? Well, the first 5 people to email contact [at] socialtimes [DOT] com will be able to get a free ticket. There is also one other requirement: you must be a blogger. The free tickets are of course in exchange for a little extra press ;).

If you aren’t a blogger, don’t worry about it! You can go register at http://mashmeetdcremix.eventbrite.com/. There are still plenty of tickets available so you should have no problems getting in. The fee will go toward covering the costs of food and beverages that will also be provided. Virgin America will also be raffling off two round trip tickets at the event so that gives you pretty good odds in a group of 170 people!

I hope to see you there! Also, if you didn’t notice above is our new logo. Thanks to Jesse Thomas, the creative director of Social Times for putting it together! We have some exciting design changes coming soon!

The Social Times has partnered with Mashable and Ogilvy to bring MashMeet DC Remix on March 5th. The event will also incorporate presentations, food and music in comparison to the previous MashMeet which was simply a happy hour. The event will be limited to 170 people. I will have a few free passes to give away on this site as the event gets closer. Adam Ostrow, Adam Hirsch and Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins of Mashable will also be at the event.

This event is set to coincide with the Politics Online Conference which I will not be attending as I will be out in San Diego at the Graphing Social Patterns West conference. There is also the opportunity to sponsor so if you are interested shoot an email over to Adam Hirsch and he can give you the details. I hope to see you at the event!

We have all heard about internet dating and finding true love via a social network. Well Karen over at Cordarouns.com is about it hit the streets of San Fransisco looking for her true love.

Karen has enlisted a myriad of social tools to help her on her quest ranging from Facebook and the others to the video/picture/text streaming service Zannel. Karen is going to hit the streets in an 8 hour frenzy to find her man.

Karen, who happens to be way cute, will start the day with a police sketch of her perfect man. She will then hit the streets and use followers input to help her make a V-Day date choice. I think the idea is fresh and fun and I am going to follow it.

Don’t get me wrong, I know this is a marketing ploy but I love it. These are the types of fun social media events and tools that ALL marketers should be looking into. This is the Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial of the web 2.0 age.

Look I am stuck at my desk maybe 3 to 4 hours a day, I have a rough job, but many people spend 8+ plus hours in their cube with nothing to do but work (how much of that can you do?). Karen’s experiment will let them watch something fun, funny and let marketers get some product placement while it happens.

I say good show to all parties involved. Karen and Cordarounds, way to think out of the box. Zannel, good job with highlighting your service in a fun way. Social networks, well you guys don’t need any more praise you created a platform for all of this to happen on.

To bad Karen isn’t doing this in DC, I know plenty of single guys who would love to meet her. Is anyone else out there going to be following Karen? Do any of you out there know of any more fun, online social events like this that you could tell me about? If so let me know.

Follow Karen at Zannel.