July 15, 2007

BlogPhiladelphia Recap

After attending my first industry conference, I can say with complete confidence that I got more value out of these two days than any other two days spent programming, blogging, brainstorming, etc. I had a great time meeting a bunch of really cool people, hanging out with friends, and learning from experienced entrepreneurs.

• Annie Heckenberger of the GPTMC. Without her and the rest of the GPTMC, this event would’ve never happened. My hats off to Annie for putting together such a great conference.
• Alex Hillman of Independents Hall and WeKnowHTML also had a lot to do with making BlogPhiladelphia a success. Thanks Alex!
• Chris O’Donnell over at Techdirt has a really cool job of recruiting bloggers to participate in their insight community. If you’re a blogger looking for a new way to monetize your skills, definitely check TechDirt out.
• Doug Bellenger of PhindMe where he and his partner, Chuck Sacco are “linking mobile technologies, social networking and local businesses by joining community and commerce through what they call Mobile Social Commerce.” Another impressive startup in attendance.
• Allen Stern of CenterNetworks. Allen has a very interesting story; he’s attempting to tackle the 800-pound gorilla that is Techcrunch. And in my opinion, he’s doing a damn good job at it.
• I had a great conversation with Dina Kaplan of blip.tv on raising venture capital. She had no experience raising money going in which provided a good amount of inspiration for me because hey, neither have I!
• Megan Rosenfeld with Ripple Effects Interactive, an interactive ad agency, who is doing a lot of cool stuff with more traditional companies, including the government.
• Scott McNulty of forkyou.tv and TUAW. My mac had a hiccup on the second day and Scott, with his infinite wisdom, helped me right through it. Thanks Scott! He also led informative and entertaining sessions on dealing with negative comments and group blogging.
• Colin Devroe and Rob Sandie of Viddler were great to hang out with. Really fun guys who were always willing to let me pick their brains on product development, project management and a whole slew of other things.
• Bart Mroz and I shared quite a few Amber Ales at Triumph Brewing Company while we talked about everything entrepreneurship, including VC options for Echonote.
• I also had a great time hanging out with these Independents Hall and Panma peeps: John Bilotta, Jason Tremblay, David Speers, Reed Gustow, John Suder, Randy Schmidt, Geoff DiMasi and Rosalyn Duffy.

If I missed anyone, please leave a comment and I’ll add you right in!