• by Kelly Samardak , January 7, 2009

NY Tech Meetup, IAC, New York
January 6, 2009

As I was getting prepared for the NY Tech Meetup (AKA seeing if any of my Twitter pals would be there), I IMd tech nerdy dude, Nater Kane, CTO of NOM Social Interactive, to see if he would be in attendance - I've seen him tweet from the far-away 11th Ave location before. To my surprise he typed back "NY Tech Meetup? No way. I'm boycotting actually." I was lightly floored, like berber. Why wouldn't a guy who lives and breathes technology hit the NY Tech Meetup? And, how would I now, on my virgin voyage to said Meetup, maintain an open mind given the juicy ear beetle Nater nestled in my noggin?

A NY Tech Meetup should be the perfect marriage of knowledge hounds, tech wannabes, entrepreneurial types looking for the cash money, those good old business development types, noodlers, and maybe even some advertypes doing a little ground level research - you know, in the trenches. So why haven't I gone?

For one, if we're being honest with each other in our dysfunctional relationship, the 400 or so attendees made me squeamish. B - when I did some eavesdropping Twitter research, I noted that the usual cast of suspects was involved -- and I know, based on some email, that you're tired of hearing about those people, and I wanted a fresh dose of something else. And five - the socializing networking "after party" portion was consistently reported as overly crowded. This, my friends, does not bode well for a camera-toting individual like myself.

But it's a new year and now that a vocal few are challenging the content and the location, I had to check it out.

I didn't know what to expect, but one thing I was certain of was that I would be lost at some point due to technical depth. I'm not saying I'm technically shallow, but I'm not a CS major. This never happened. Granted, the presenters are strapped to a tiny chunk of time, but brevity combined with clarity is one thing -- the middle of a story and nothing else is another. This is NOT to downplay the obvious intelligence of the presenters, simply the rush rush style of presenting. Here are just a few of the projects:

StockTwits - Howard Lindzon's cynical "why am I here?" jokes didn't help clarify why people should trust a bunch of avatars giving stock tips.

Shorty Awards - Lee Semel, Greg Galant, Adam Varga. Easy. An award nomination system for Twitter. When Greg asked the audience for a Twitter handle to nominate, a very loud "@msg!" honked from the audience. Total silence followed and Greg asked for another, choosing new NY Tech Meetup organizer Nate Westheimer's handle, @innonate "...in the category of....?" The peanut gallery grumbled "ego..."

TwiTerra - Steven Lehrburger. This fuzzy-headed fellow showcased 3D graphical illustration of the power and eventually the relative meaninglessness of a retweet. The big question now with Twitter is, how do you recognize influence and credibility?

Klout - Joe Fernandez. This one intrigued me because it gives a visual of who you influence and who influences you. "This isn't a popularity contest," assured Joe, "Everyone who creates content has a certain level of influence." And while that influence isn't yet squeezed out as either positive or negative, isn't that relative as well?

CoTweet - Jesse Engle. Dashboard with channels (like subjects) for people manning multiple Twitter accounts (one for you, one for company). Odd ability to assign a tweet to another agent in your tweet farm. Could totally see myself using this, however in a company that has multiple "properties".

Botanicalls - Kate Hartman. This was my personal favorite. Buy a plant, buy Botanicalls, take an hour and exercise your inner science fair geek to assemble your circuit board, follow your plant's tweets to know when to water the guy. A member of the audience asked a follow-up question implying his desire to have a more in-depth conversation with his plant, making me wonder if indeed we all need to get out more. Or, as Josh Sternberg laughed on the way to the L, "Just buy a plant -- and take care of it!"

All election drama aside ("during the voting... a number of different candidates' votes kept disappearing, they tried to blame it on someone dropping out and the indexing getting screwed up, but I actually sat and refreshed the browser for 30 min, and watched the numbers go up.... and down," offered Nater Kane on top of rumors that Westheimer's job status was dependent on winning as new organizer), it does sound like Westheimer and his future cronies, the Community Committee, want to shape the NY Tech Meetup into something more valuable - with "more give and take" -- the take part being the community taking responsibility for its future. A put up or shut up challenge. Hate the location? (yes, the trek out to the IAC is annoying, but not impossible) Great, help find a new one.

To get a high-level, high-gloss view of what some software engineers are tinkering with, NY Tech Meetup delivers, at least this time around. For deeper dives, maybe the tech community actually goes to work or back to the lab in smaller groups. Either way, there's a new captain on the poopdeck and the year is new, breaking wide open the future of this nerdy meetup.

As a total aside, water would have been nice. Sponsors! And, while this wasn't by definition a party, the rest of the month does have a few good pieces of glitter in it, so stay tuned.

Invite kelly@mediapost.com to your post holiday rally of the troops.

Bored? Sift through the entire collection of Just An Online Minute photos on Flickr.

Also, minor apologies for the obscure Eminem Slim Shady headline reference.