MinneDemo Rocked, But Format Needs Help

The first one last night was a big success turnout-wise. The registration list was close to a hundred. Heck, even a couple girls signed on towards the end! It maxed out the room, basically shoulder-to shoulder. No room for chairs. The schmoozing was great, as was the food (thanks to the sponsors), and it was fun running into old friends -- like Dan Grigsby (one of the event organizers), Justin Chapweske and Kim Garretson of SwarmCast [watch for news soon on that one], serial entrepreneur Tom Kieffer [insert multiple company names here], Derek Peterson of very stealthy college-demographic site Younison.com, crack startup attorneys John Roberts and Harold Slawik....and meeting some new friends, like our local indefatigable Garrick Van Buren of the great MNteractive blog...Jeff Pester, founder of Urban Radar [interesting dude!]...Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder of Mindtouch.com [and "VP of encouragement"], and Tom O'Neill, who manages development at a very interesting, fast-growing web apps firm called SierraBravo in Bloomington [and he surfs, too! yeah, with a name like O'Neill, I guess I coulda figured.. :-) ]

But the format of the meeting, quite frankly, sucked. Not for socializing, but for demos -- seeing them or giving them. Way too noisy, and a bad sound system to boot. Nice room, trendy Uptown location [hey, no one got shot!], but not a room for this. That's right, MinneDemo was such a success, it's already outgrown the place after one meeting! Unless you were way up in front, it was very difficult to hear -- especially for us older, hearing-challenged guys -- let alone see. Too many heads and backs in the way. Even an eight-inch stage woulda helped... Lucky for Robert Metcalf of Flyspy that he was first, because the noise only increased in direct proportion to the brewskis being consumed...

But, hey, it was a good time! And a great way to get the local IT and Internet startup community together. We all benefit from stuff like this. Many thanks to the co-organizers, Dan Grigsby and Luke Franci, and everyone who contributed. I predict the next one will be even bigger...

p.s. I woulda taken some pix, but I washed my RAZR in my jeans over the weekend. Damn things, so small you forget you have 'em! A new battery and she worked fine, but the camera screen was still foggy (better today). My pix woulda looked like underwater shots, so I skipped it. :-)