NY Tech Meetup notes 06/07/06

On Monday night I went to my second NY Tech meetup meeting. It was held at eyebeam and had a packed house of over 400 people. What a difference two months makes, the one I went to then was smaller, people got heckled and run off the stage, hard questions were asked. Perhaps it was the size of the crowd but none of that took place during several of the more dubious ventures being presented. Everyone was polite, questions were few. I didn't feel the nostalgia for the WWWAC meetings I had at the first one, instead I felt as if I were at a conference. At the beginning of the night someone who had helped Scott organize the event stood up and told us that Markos from Daily Kos was coming to town and that people at the meetup could attend a benefit with him for $30 off of the $150 ticket. She asked how many people read dailykos, I think I was one of about 10 people in the room to raise my hand. Who are these people? Of the presentations StreetEasy and Root Market were impressive the same cannot be said of stickynote program which is being developed in a state of  blissfully unaware of the giant calendar apps coming down the pike, the slick presenter of a bad- mobile hot or cold game,  and the odd movie micro-loan movie producing idea. None of them rose to the modest genius of the Chinese translating wiki from two months ago. Streetwise is a NYC real estate search/database, they do neat things like cross-reference school districts. I wonder about the viability of these things as they rely on advertising revenue and whether people will go to the sites versus multiple realtor sites. I have a friend who is about to start repping ads on a top realtor's site so it is going to be interesting. The other big venture of the night was Seth Goldstein & Co's, Root Markets - a big concept, and beautiful design that went right over the heads of a lot of people in the audience which is odd considering how many possible Republicans were there. I came away with a very nice Root  markets tote which compounded my sense of being at a conference.