Seattlest Pix 09Nov24
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Mayor-To-Be Schedules Town Halls for Input and Companionship
Wednesday night Seattlest left the very interesting Pandora talk and headed over to ConWorks for the Redfin-sponsored Techcrunch party. The sixth such party, it was designed to bring together Seattle's individuals involved in evolving the web into its very buzzwordy Web 2.0 incarnation. While many of these "parties" are just boring schmoozefests, Seattlest held out hope that this one would be different. Luckily (for them and us) we weren't disappointed.
Upon walking in the door, one couldn't help but to be a bit surprised at the event. Not by the space (a very interesting mural along one wall drew our attention repeatedly through the night, and seemed fitting with the technical yet creative crowd), not by the number of people (there were plenty even three hours into the event), and not by the fact that there was beer (hooray for social lubricants!). Rather, the mountain of pizza along the wall was an amazing sight to behold. All that pizza, so very very free. And good pizza too, not what you'd imagine would be bought in such bulk quantities.
The focus of the event was on the people, not the beer and pizza. The room had a constant dull roar as people milled about talking to various people. Introductions were constant, old colleagues reunited, and conversations usually started with the query of "So what do you do?" Business cards were passed around like gum, with people in search of their next email contact or the next startup to come out of their incubation period. Seattlest's favorite conversations revolved around two music companies, Weed, which allows for the creation of peer to peer music sales and Futuretrax, which creates tools for businesses to create their own digital music storefronts.
With meeting and greeting as the purpose of the evening, there was the very real risk that the gathering would end up as Just Another Networking Event. Instead, even with all of the tech socializing going on, the event managed to keep a party atmosphere, with people loosening up as the evening went on (thank the beer for that). In all the party operated better than any other such occurrence we've attended. Techcrunch reviews the companies and products that are revolutionizing the Web, but it seems they've revolutionized the tech party along the way as well. Thank goodness for that.
(Regarding that mountain of pizza. Seattlest and many others left this free party with a full pizza in hand. Other party organizers take note: Free food is a far better takeaway than a hat.)
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I'm pretty sure the mural and other decor was just there for whatever Conworks had going on at the time. There was also a bank of LCD monitors that weren't hooked up to anything, which was kind of weird.
I took a picture of about 1/4 of the available pizza.
75 of the 100 pies were from Zagis. All the ones in the *huge* white boxes.
http://zagispizza.com/
If only I were cool enough to be in the know for events like this. Anyone know how I can find out about these kinds of things (besides lurking on techcrunch)? Would love to get to know people in the Web 2.0 industry.
Dang it,
Here at Seattlest HQ we're trying to improve our local tech coverage. Part of that is informing our readership about events like this ahead of time. So keep reading Seattlest (and perusing upcoming.org), and you should be covered. Trust us, if Seattlest is cool enough to find out about this, then it's a given that you are as well.