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!

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!

Of course we all know of the local chatter revolving around the fact that DC is or is not a good place to bring up a budding business. Many around, including me, like it here and think there are good things in the works. However, others, especially VC’s, think greener pastures are elsewhere. Well it is our chance to show them they may juts be wrong.

I was chatting with Keith Casey of Casey Software and WhyGoSolo a little while back and he was telling me about this business plan competition coming up in the area, and he said it would be a great opportunity for the local tech communtiy to stand up and be seen and heard.

The competition Keith was talking about is the Mid-Atlantic Business Plan Competition

That day is the no-holds-barred deathmatch of entrepreneur vs entrepreneur. There are presentations in the morning, a round of eliminations, and then the culmination of the entire contest… the finalists get to present in front of a public audience affectionately called the STARTUP SMACK DOWN.

The panel will include several VC’s, professors, and other local entrepenuers. Keith makes a great point when he states :

I think it’s time to put up or shut up. If we storm the place… if we completely pack the final presentations with the best and brightest from the DC Tech community, people will notice. The VC’s will do a double take. The professors will take note. The students competing will reconsider immediately leaving for friendlier places.

I am all in as they say in Texas Hold’Em. What about you ? We would love to get everyone we can in that auditorium as Keith says to make people take notice that we are here and ready to flourish. If we can start the create a minor shift in the perception of some of the panlists, they may take that back with them and start a little buzz. And that would be good for all of us.

So here are the details:

Date: Saturday, April 26 2008

Time: 1-5 PM

Where: ICC Auditorium, Georgetown University (Building 26 on this map)

So what do you say ? Stop by and join the Facebook Group I created: DC Technology Business Plan Competition Crashers if your interested.

This post was orginially posted on East Coast Blogging. Jimmy Gardner is founder of 2Plus11 Technology, a technology consulting firm, and a local entrepreneur. He writes the blog, East Coast Blogging and is a avid advocate of the local DC area technology community.

Looking to do some networking tonight in D.C.? Social Matchbox DC is the event you should attend. The event is an open mic hiring event for local startups. The event is three hours long with two hours of networking and an hour of startup introductions. The event tonight has a whole slew of startups including: TinselVision, ClearSpring, MobilePosse, Razoo, Webs.com, Intridea, FolioFN, ThreeSpot, Hungry Machine, Investors Without Borders, WhyGoSolo, Siteworx, Viget Labs, Zadby, Positive Energy, comScore, Publi.us, Loladex, FamilyOven, 100dimensions, Qloud, nClud, xyoom, BrowserMedia, Ozmosis, Searchles, and more!

This event is sure to be jam packed with web professionals from around the area. This is a reverse take on the Ignite events which have been popularized out west. Companies that are looking to hire are limited to 2-3 minutes for verbal presentations and 3-5 minutes for presentations with audio and visual elements. It’s a great opportunity to find potential job seekers and also a great opportunity to find out more about the numerous local companies that are active in the web industry.

The event is being held at TeqCorner, a community office center for technology companies based out in Tysons corner. I highly recommend the event and am hoping to actually show up later in the evening tonight. If you want to attend go register via the Social Matchbox DC registration form.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to sit down for lunch with Laurence Hooper and Dan Goodman, the creators of Loladex. I discussed what their new application is about. The new search service has been launched completely on Facebook. The purpose is to integrate social features into search and include reviews of local businesses. This service could build a dedicated user base just as Yelp has given the simple ability to post reviews of places you have visited.

If you look closely, Loladex has limited each of their reviews to 140 characters, the same number of characters limited to text messages. As I mentioned in conversation with the Loladex founders, it would be amazing if I could get off a plane anywhere and simply text what the best local restaurants are. The system would return the results based on what my friends have replied with.

I mentioned the same thing to D.C. based Hungry Machine previously when they launched their relatively popular Restaurants application. The best part of Loladex is that you can rate practically anything. Want to find a local doctor or dentist? Check out how your friends have rated them and get feedback. Currently I use Twitter for asking these types of questions but Loladex could bring this service to the masses.

The primary challenge for Loladex will be building an initial user base. If I can review any company that is in my community and get responses via text as well as through Facebook, I’ve found a useful service. If my friends aren’t using though it’s not very useful for me. If Loladex can build a dedicated user base I can see this application gaining a lot of traction. Considering that Loladex is based in D.C. I can only hope for their success!

D.C. based Mixx is releasing some new features today which empowers a few select “super mixers.” The goal of the new feature is to get breaking news onto the homepage fast rather than waiting for numerous votes to build up before the article ends up in the popular section. The way the service works, as Mike Arrington points out,

Once a story has been tagged by two Super Mixxers, the story goes to the home page under the Breaking News area. The story will continue to build up votes and move into the general Popular area of the page at that time. Others may drop off entirely.

This new feature is a strike against Digg which requires a significant number of diggs before hitting the homepage. Then again, a truly newsworthy story can build up a lot of buzz rather quickly on Digg, still reaching the homepage in a short amount of time. Mixx has been excellent at continuously rolling out new services but I’m a little bit hesitant about saying this new service is an excellent service.

My biggest concern is that favoritism may not be the best way to get a community built. Then again, rewarding members for being active is not such a bad idea. Additionally, just because their story is breaking news doesn’t ensure that the article will move to the popular section. Whether or not this is the best decision has yet to be decided by the Mixx community but Mixx has been quick to adapt so if the community doesn’t support it, I’m sure Mixx wouldn’t either.

After seeing Mixx at MashMeet DC a few weeks ago, I’ve realized the value in building sub-communities within the social news sites. Mixx is embracing that with their support of tags and this strategy will hopefully put them on top of other social news sites.

The future of D.C. technology meme has spread across all of the D.C. blogs and discussion is taking place in all the comments and on Twitter. One thing is for sure, there is a strong presence of social media professionals in D.C. I would argue that this segment will continue to grow naturally and doesn’t necessarily need management, unless of course you group it with the entrepreneurs which appears to have naturally occurred.

For those of you not in D.C. I’m sorry for continuing to talk about this so much but trust me when I say that it has future implications for your city as well. The supposed lack of funding and the inefficiently organized entrepreneurial community is something taking place around the country. If everybody was blogging and Twitter I think we’d all be good to go but unfortunately that’s not the way it is.

The Social Times will be launching a new platform over the coming weeks to enhance the community and help things grow. We have already seen a disconnected set of services online and events offline. What many have discussed is an “overreaching organization.” I don’t think this requires significant management by the participants, it simply requires one central location that can be referred to when anything is taking place.

Additionally, when entrepreneurs are in need of investors, or new startups are in need of lawyer or an number of other circumstances that take place in an entrepreneurial community, all the participants can reference one location. What I’d like to see happen is this D.C. technology meme end and we all simply become participants. Not just in D.C. but in entrepreneurial communities around the country. D.C. is just the first place where we prove that such a system can be developed.

Over the past few weeks I have been browsing around, calling people and attending events to find out what already exists in the community that we believe does not already exist. Additionally, I’ve been looking for services that actually don’t exist. What I found was a number of resources that most people simply didn’t know about. With this in mind I ended up revising the vision of the Social Times to “leveraging social technology to build local entrepreneurship communities.”

My theory is that most of the resources already exist we just need to make them more accessible to the community. That’s why I am working to build a platform that will help build this community. I’m hoping that others can help build it and benefit from it. My goal is not to promote our services but instead promote the members of the community. All for free. This will take place in a matter of weeks, not months.

I also believe that providing valuable media about leveraging social technology for entrepreneurship is important and as such we will continue to produce articles on a daily basis. You will see a number of new media channels on this site and new services to accomplish these goals. Media is no longer one-way, it is participatory and as such I believe the Social Times can succeed at accomplishing its goals.

I will give out details about the features of the platform in the near future but look for the services to be rolled out quickly. What features would you like to see? Is there something bigger that you think I’m missing here?

There are two upcoming events in D.C. that you should be attending. Unfortunately due to a miscommunication (or lack thereof), there has been a reshuffle of events for April. The first event is Refresh DC. If you don’t know what Refresh DC is, then you are definitely missing out. According to the event’s website, Refresh DC brings “together the best and brightest new media professionals in the DC metro area so that we may learn from one another.”

I’ve been to at least three of the Refresh DCs and they are definitely a great time. The last one filled a room with easily one hundred fifty people if not more. Due to the miscommunication, this month’s Refresh DC will be occurring as a happy hour. If you want to attend (which I highly suggest you do), go add your self to the upcoming event page. If you are looking for numbers though, look no further then Tech Cocktail DC.

The idea of Tech Cocktail is simple: help amplify the technology signal in under served markets and have fun doing it. I co-hosted the first Tech Cocktail in D.C. last May and we attracted over 200 people to the event. This is the second time Tech Cocktail is taking place in D.C. and it attracts a diverse crowd all looking to network. After speaking with Frank Gruber, this event may attract double the number of attendees. At each of the events there are demos of local technology startups.

Tech Cocktail D.C. 2 is being hosted April 24th at 1223. It is sure to be a good time so go register for the event and I’ll see you there. If there are any other events that I’m missing, please let me know and I’ll be sure to get them on this site. I’ll also be updating our calendar in the events section of our site.

Last night I attended the D.C. New Media Meetup. I got into a conversation with a number of people about this drive for building the D.C. technology community and more than building the community (which already exists), building an environment that is supportive of web startups. We already have a number of local web startups that are doing well but there appears to be a significant disconnect from these companies the community and the investors.

LaunchBox Digital, the local early stage investment fund, was a welcomed addition to the D.C. community. Unfortunately not everyone who applies gets selected and this has been discouraging for a few applicants. We are on the verge of something big. There is more buzz surrounding D.C. technology, there are an increasing number of investors and there is also more vocal participants than ever before.

There are still parts of the community that are learning though. As we all know, D.C. is not your traditional web startup community in that we don’t have a local university that is known for technology and we don’t have the risk taking environment. In order to build this environment I think we need a few additional things beyond the things I’ve previously mentioned.

Entrepreneur Education
If we are going to get a thriving group of entrepreneurs we need people to be educated about what it means to take risks, how to approach getting funding and how to know when to quit. I’ve heard a lot of complaints from a number of people about what’s lacking but I also think that there is plenty here and sometimes it is not the community. We read in Techcrunch about new startups getting funding everyday (well frequently at least) and it leads a lot of other people to think that they deserve funding for their crazy internet idea.

I’ve had crazy internet ideas and so far none have received funding but I have learned something from the people that do receive funding: it’s not about the idea, it’s about the team. Also, if you are going to get funding you better start networking like crazy because locally there are a lot of investors that think and act like Warren Buffet. Check out the following video and you’ll know what I mean:

Active Leaders and Educational Events
There are a lot of big named business people in the D.C. area. None of them are at any events. While I don’t expect them to attend the average happy hour, we need to have events where inspirational people can speak. When I saw Mitch Kapor speak at an event with Facebook developers out in California last year, I saw what was different about Silicon Valley. There are leaders that are at the events and are acting at mentors to the community.

I’d like to get a series of events where we have speakers talking to the local entrepreneurs. I’ve already begun planning on one but that hasn’t been announced yet. What events do you think would help build this community further? What else do you think would be helpful to continue building the community?

Two weeks ago at the D.C. Mashmeet, Greg Gershman told be the great news about his company being acquired by Odeo. Today, the news is finally being announced. Congratulations to Greg and best of luck at Odeo! Blogdigger, the 5 year old search engine has had an interesting history. A few years ago the company diversified by expanding into digital media search and the result has been nothing but positive.

The most exciting part about this acquisition is the expanding presence of Web 2.0 startups in the D.C. area. I have a few meetings scheduled over the coming weeks with unannounced startups in the area that will be launching soon. It’s an exciting time for D.C. and I have high expectations of the area’s ability to produce great new startups. Greg has posted more details about what we can expect from the acquisition:

A little about the new Odeo: it’s focused on much more than just audio podcasts; we’ve added video and are pulling content from a variety of sources, not just podcasts. I’m really excited about what we’re building and the team we’ve got(which includes the folks from FireAnt and the Odeo guys) is really smart and great to work with. If you’d like to check out the new Odeo, head over to the site and signup for the beta (and ping me and I’ll approve your invite).

I’m excited to see what the Odeo team has up its sleeves and they are a welcomed addition to the D.C. web landscape. Congratulations again to Greg!