Internet Tech Boston

For those who follow the local, Boston Interent Technology scene, there is no better place to network, learn about upcoming pre-funded ventures, and meet really smart people than the Web Innovator’s Group. If you haven’t been to one of the quarterly gatherings yet, you definitely should put it on your list. Unfortunately for me, the summer event fell smack dab in the middle of my vacation week. As much as I like Web Inno (and I really do), I was hard pressed to leave the sun, sand, and surf of Cape Cod and venture up to Cambridge. Luckily, my colleagues at PermissionTV were there recorded the entire night’s events. Enjoy!

It’s been a busy month for local internet technology events, and it shows no sign of slowing down. Monday night I was at the Boston Web Innovators Group meeting WebInno19. There was a huge turnout of local web and mobile entrepreneurs and technologists. Several local startups gave informal demonstrations of their company’s product at side tables located throughout the auditorium. You can check out a couple of snaps that I took on the trusty iPhone. Three of the companies gave formal product demonstrations to the assembled group at large:

• Givvy, a charitable management system. Call me a selfish Grinch, but I just don’t see this getting a lot of attention, nor making any serious money.
• Pixily, an online service for storing paper documents as digital files. Pixily won the Audience Choice award for the night. Voting was done by sending a text message from your mobile – pretty clever.
• Brring, a free ringback service that lets you personalize your ringback tone by uploading an audio file. Of the 3 demos given, I thought this was the most compelling. They showed how you can upload your audio file, see it get transcoded, and then edit the file’s timeline to pick the parts you want to use.
  

  Brring demonstrates its thing at WebInno19

  After the 3 “main dish” product demonstrations were completed, the event turned to an informal social mixer. There was a great crowd of young, talented, and eager people from both the business side and the technology side of the house. I was pleased to meet a bunch of people, including:

• Gautum Gupta of General Catalyst Partners. GC is a VC firm with a slightly different take. Rather then load up on MBA/Ivy League/Wall Street types, they focus on building their firm with people who are honest to goodness entrepeneurs and have a “been there, done that” type of resume. I really liked talking to Gautum. GC has both PermissionTV competitors Brightcove and Maven Networks in their portfolio. Clearly, they’ve made good choices.
• Anthony Hand specializes in User Experience Design and Usability of Mobile Applications. We didn’t get to talk for too long before the main dishes started up, but I was impressed with his focus of UX + Mobile. Clearly a sign of the times.
• Joe Baz, Principal at Above the Fold, a boutique web design and online marketing firm located in downtown Boston. As someone who used to run Embarc, a local interactive agency, we traded some war stories. Best of luck with your future plans, Joe!
• Ariel Diaz is Co-Founder and CEO at YouCastr. Ariel describes his product as the destination site for coverage of local and/or second-tier sports (i.e. fencing, water polo, etc). TechCrunch describes YouCastr as a sports version of Justin.TV. Ariel and I talked a bit about how the execution of his product roadmap. Like PermissionTV, YouCastr employs an agile (little A) development methodology. We shared some pains related to “cowboy coding,” and I let him know that Agile Project Management with Scrum has been working for me at PermissionTV. Thanks for the LinkedIn invite, Ariel!
• Neil Costa, of Stimulate Solutions was meeting with client and WebInno19 “side-dish” presenter Tune Rooms. Stimulate is a social media marketing company with a focus on developing an analytics-driven product to measure ROI of campaigns across all social media platforms. Very interesting idea, I’ll be following them closely. . . .

Overall, I was very impressed with the event. Everyone there seemed to be sharing a similar mindset of building a profitable web or mobile-based product company that utilizes the latest technologies. No jokers or hacks allowed. If you were in attendence, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the night in the comments.

Next up – MITX Video Series: The Ins and Outs of Making Money from Online Video, sponsored by none other than PermissionTV, coming up the night of Wednesday the 17th . . .