Archive for the 'Blog' Category

The WebInno18 Recaps

July 18th, 2008 Comments(0)

Wow… what a turnout we had for last week’s WebInno18.  Don Dodge estimated that there were 800 people in the room and called it a “great Boston Web 2.0 networking event for upcoming startups.”  Dave Laubner at 93South blog confirmed that it “was easily the largest turnout yet” and shared some photos on Flickr.  The OnStartups blog posted some interesting analysis of the events registrants just prior to the meeting.  And Amanda Gravel at Social Honeycomb said, “I just love the energy around emerging businesses and startups in this space and I had a blast seeing it all in action tonight,” expressing how “psyched” she was in a video.

Congratulations to Mike Putnam and the entire Zeer team for winning the WebInno Audience Choice Award.  It was certainly great to see that the integrated mobile and web service resonated with the crowd.

The next large group WebInno event will be held on September 15th, so do mark it on your calendars now.  I’ll open up the online registration again in a few weeks.  Thanks for everyone’s great feedback on improving the event – we may be tweaking the format a bit to accommodate the increasing attendance and broadening interests.

WebInno Small Group Dinner – “Monetizing via Ad Networks”

July 18th, 2008 Comments(0)

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 focused on a specific area who want to connect to discuss and share experiences about this topic.  In contrast to the larger regular large WebInno events, these are more intimate sessions with an opportunity for in-depth discussion. The first five 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,” and “eCommerce 2.0.”  The next one I am planning is to be focused on the topic “Monetizing via Ad Networks.”  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 August).

Announcing the WebInno18 Demo Companies

June 30th, 2008 Comments(0)

It’s just over two weeks away until our July 15th Web Innovators Group meeting and we’ve lined up another great set of demonstrators for the event. As usual, 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:

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 room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:

As a special treat, Webnotes will be providing a “sneak peak” of their soon-to-be-launched service which is currently in closed private beta, and will be exclusively opening the service to WebInno attendees the day of the event. Snipd will also be sharing a pre-launch inside look at their service.

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://webinno18.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.

(My apologies to those companies which expressed interest in demo’ing but were not selected – we had another record number of applicants for this session, and all entries are encouraged to reapply for future sessions.)

WebInno Small Group Dinner – “eCommerce 2.0″

April 09th, 2008 Comments(0)

As I’ve mentioned at the large WebInno events and on this blog, I’ve begun a series of WebInno Dinner Groups – gatherings of a dozen or so entrepreneurs and managers focused on a specific topic who want to connect to discuss and share experiences within their domain. In contrast to the larger regular large WebInno events, these are more intimate sessions with an opportunity for in-depth discussion. The first four dinners were devoted to the topics “Widgets and Advertising,” the “Intersection of Mobile and the Web,” and “Virtual Items and Virtual Worlds,” and “The Secrets of Social Network Platform Apps.”


As I announced at WebInno17, I am planning the next WebInno Dinner Group to be focused on the topic “eCommerce 2.0”  This intentionally broad term can mean a number of things to a number of different people, and it would be great to gather a set of them interested in discussing. If this 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 May).

WebInno17 Recap

April 09th, 2008 Comments(2)

It was great to see everyone come out for the most recent WebInno event last week.  The feedback I heard was positive, not just on the size and energy of the crowd, but in particular with this event on the quality of the main and side dish demonstrators.  So a special congratulations goes out to the Audience Choice Main Dish and Side Dish award winners Good2Gether and Yamli, respectively, as they faced especially tough competition for the audience’s favorite.


As usual, there were a number of attendee bloggers, both old and new, commenting on the event.  Pito Salas, who attended the very first session with demonstrators back in 2005, was “quite impressed [his bold] with the attendance and the quality of the people presenting…  The gathering was quite crowded and the buzz was very loud, lots of dynamic discussions going on all over the place, people trading war stories and comparing products.  It was stimulating and fun, and I plan to go next month again.”  Former Main Dish demonstrator Matt Douglas “hadn’t gone to the last few WebInno group meetings” but was “pleased to see some of the improvements that… had [been] implemented…  After the main presentations, I had a chance to say hello to some familiar faces, and meet some new people.  I was pleasantly surprised at how many new people were at the Web Innovators meeting last night.”  First time attendee Cory Wallenstein said, “I got a chance to attend the Web Innovators Group in Cambridge last night, and it was an absolute blast!  This was my first time attending, and the experience was very, very different from other events I’ve attended in the area… There must have been at least 500 folks in attendance… far larger than any other non-conference event I’ve been to in the area, but it didn’t FEEL like a large, impersonal event.  It was very open and social.”  And lastly, blogger Don Dodge recently gave a tip of the hat to the Web Innovators Group in his Boston startup events roundup.

WebInno17 Demo Companies

March 19th, 2008 Comments(9)

We’re two weeks away from our April 2nd Web Innovators Group meeting and we’ve lined up another set of strong demonstrators for the event. As usual, 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:

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 room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:

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://webinno17.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.

(My apologies to those companies which expressed interest in demo’ing but were not selected – we had a record number of applicants for this session and all entries are encouraged to reapply for future sessions.)

WebInno16 Recap

February 11th, 2008 Comments(0)

Thanks to everyone who came out to the sixteenth Web Innovators Group meeting two weeks ago. Wow! We had quite a crowd… I heard estimates of around 500 people in attendance, but it was certainly a packed room nonetheless.

All of the people who joined us were there for good reason – our presenters proudly showed off their latest iteration of their services. In case you missed it (or would like to check them out again), the videos of the main dish demos for Urban Interactive, SpotScout, MakeMeSustainable are all available over at the @Bar blog.

The most exciting part of the night was the introduction of the “Audience Choice” award, given to the crowd’s favorite demo of both the main dish and side presenters. Since WebInno is devoted to promoting Boston’s Web and Mobile innovation community, it was only natural that we voted on the choice demo via mobile phone texting. Congratulations to both Andrew Rollert of SpotScout and Ian Manheimer of Glassbooth for winning their respective categories. This newly-enacted tradition will certainly continue at our next event.

In addition to our usual crew of bloggers providing a recap of the January’s meeting (like Greg Peverill-Conti, Chris Carleton, and Dharmesh Shah), there are a great set of writeups from some newcomers (like Melissa Chang and Deborah Block-Schwenk). Plus, Mike Champion snapped a few photos and BostonKnows “uttered” their own summary of the event.

WebInno16 Demo Companies

January 17th, 2008 Comments(2)

We’re a little over a week away from the first Web Innovators Group meeting of 2008 on Tuesday January 29th starting at 6:30pm. We have another solid lineup of startups demo’ing at the event… the main presentations to the entire crowd will start at 7pm, thirty minutes after we open the Grand Ballroom at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge:

As a new feature, we’ll be introducing the opportunity for the crowd to vote for the “Audience Choice” — the favorite Main Dish demonstrating company of the event.

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 companies at tables spread throughout the periphery of the room during the unstructured networking portion of the evening:

As always, 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://webinno16.eventbrite.com/) if you plan to join us so we are able to print name tags and appropriately size the room.

WebInno Small Group Dinner – “The Secrets of Social Network Platform Apps”

November 14th, 2007 Comments(1)

In the past few months, I’ve begun a series of WebInno Dinner Groups – gatherings of a dozen or so entrepreneurs and managers focused on a specific topic who want to connect to discuss and share experiences within their domain. In contrast to the larger bimonthly large WebInno events, these are smaller and much more intimate sessions with an opportunity for in-depth discussion. The first three dinners were devoted to the topics “Widgets and Advertising,” the “Intersection of Mobile and the Web,” and “Virtual Items and Virtual Worlds.”

As I announced at WebInno 15, I am planning WebInno Dinner Group is going to be focused on the topic “The secrets of social network platform apps.” Between Facebook applications and the OpenSocial platform (which includes the likes of Google, MySpace, and Bebo), this area is rich with both excitement and uncertainty. I’d like to gather a group of people to discuss developing on these social network platforms. If this 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 (potentially in December, but perhaps in January because of the busyness of the holiday season). Additionally, if you have a FB application live and running which you might be able to share with attendees, please let me know and we can discuss including it in the session. If there’s significant interest from the community, I may expand the event beyond a small group dinner.

Graphic Design Help Wanted for WebInno Logo Treatments

November 14th, 2007 Comments(1)

I wanted to reach out to the Web Innovators Group community to see if anyone with graphic design skills might be interested in volunteering their time to help with some upcoming treatments for the Web Innovators Group logo.  I am exploring introducing some additional features to the website and event programs, and would appreciate the help of someone with expertise in the area.  If you are interested in potentially helping, please do reach out to me at david at webinnovatorsgroup dot com.

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