As mentioned on Tuesday night at the WebInno large group event, I am continuing my series of WebInno Dinner Groups – gatherings of a dozen or so entrepreneurs and managers who want to connect to discuss and share experiences about a specific topic.  In contrast to the larger regular large WebInno events, these are more-intimate less-structured sessions with an opportunity for in-depth discussion. The first six dinners were devoted to the topics “Widgets and Advertising,” the “Intersection of Mobile and the Web,” and “Virtual Items and Virtual Worlds,” “The Secrets of Social Network Platform Apps,” “eCommerce 2.0,” and “Monetizing via Ad Networks.”

The next one I am planning is to be focused on the topic “Beyond Twitter – Harnessing the Entire Realtime Web.”  If this discussion-area sounds like a gathering which you would want to participate, please reach out to me (david at webinnovatorsgroup dot com) sharing a bit of your relevant background and interest.  Depending on response and availability, I’ll then organize an evening for us to get together in upcoming weeks (likely in April).

TechStars is a mentorship-driven entrepreneurial bootcamp. We accept about 10 companies per location (Boulder and Boston) and stuff the 25 to 30 founders of those 10 companies into a very large blender with 60-80 industry-tempered mentors and hit the ‘liquefy’ button!  The result is that after the three month, 500+ hours-per-week program (stop reaching for your calculator, a week is 168 hours) these 10 companies leave TechStars as super-clued-in, super-connected, super-networked, entrepreneurial superheroes who are well on their way to building amazing game-changing businesses. Applications for the summer program are open only until March 21st. More information about Techstars, and the application, can be found on our web site http://www.techstars.org/.

The second organization is MITX (Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange), which is holding its 6th Annual MITX Technology Awards Ceremony in June and is putting out a call for entries for recognition of start-ups, emerging companies and enterprises.  This year’s categories include: Analytics and Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Devices, Enterprise Technologies, Gaming, Marketing/Customer Relationship Technologies, Mobile, Online Advertising, Rich Media, and Social Media.  The submission entry deadline is Friday, April 3^rd and you can find out more and enter at: http://www.mitxawards.org/technology/.

I’d like to thank everyone who came out to last week’s Web Innovators Group meeting.  It was a success from my perspective, as we certainly had the largest turnout yet – great networking and promising young demo companies helped energize the crowd.  Congratulations to Judy Gern at Adroit Interactive for winning the “Audience Choice” award of the crowd’s favorite Main Dish presentation of the evening.

David Kilkenny and the PermissionTV team recorded the ballroom presentations, and we’ll post those videos sometime soon.  In the meantime, you can read recap blog posts (and videos) from Kevin Kosh at Chen PR and Wade Roush at Xconomy.

The next large group WebInno event will be held sometime early-/mid-summer… the date is still TBD.  I’ll post details and a registration page once we have the date locked in.  As always, we’ll be offering a venue for early-stage startups to demo their services, so feel free to reach out to me (david at webinnovatorsgroup dot com) anytime before the next event with a heads up expressing your interest in participating.

UPDATE – Bostonist also wrote up a nice summary of the WebInno event.  And here’s the video from PermissionTV team:

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We’re just one week away until our March 10^th Web Innovators Group meeting and we’ve lined up another strong set of demonstrators.  The doors officially open at 6:30pm at the Grand Ballroom in the Cambridge Royal Sonesta, with the “Main Dish” presentations to the entire crowd starting at 7pm:

• Adroit Interactive – Judy Gern
• BravoCart – Jeffrey Cohen and John Giacotto
• LilGrams – Gregarious Narain, Ranvir Gujral, and Adarsh Pandit

Following those presentations, each of our “Side Dish” demonstrators will have an opportunity to give a quick 30-second overview of their service to the audience followed by a showcase of their company at tables spread throughout the periphery of the skyline suites room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:

• Coachestown – Mitch Mencis
• JitterGram – Ric Pratte, Ed Mitchell, Matt Pierson
• JotNot – Abe Gurjal, Alec Robinson, Nick Sillik
• mCaddie – William Sulinski & James Daniels
• PickupZone – Hooman Hodjat, Bill Jacobson, Vasilios Roussos
• Wiggio – Dana Lampert, Rob Doyle and Derek Doyle

Everyone who is interested in web and mobile innovation is encouraged to attend the free event.  Please RSVP (and find additional details) on the event page (http://webinno21.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.