After the event, there was a lot of buzzing in the blogosphere about it.  Side Dish presenter Jeff O’Neill of Conversion Associates (aka Lytiks) wrote a nice summary on the company’s blog saying “[WebInno] provided a fantastic lineup of thinkers and entrepreneurial visionaries espousing the highs and lows of start-up life.”  The Hub Science blog wrote an even more extensive summary post about the event analyzing the three Main Dish presenters.  And John Wall highlighted his favorite two companies in a post.  Plus, BostInnovation wrote a strong recap as well including a “WebInno25 in Photos” slideshow.

Last Monday’s session also helped start off Mass Mobile Month, a celebration of New England mobile innovation, with force.  We featured three local mobile/location startups, including Swift Mobile which demo’ed its special Mobile Month iPhone app that features all of the events which are ongoing locally this month in conjunction with the effort.  You can download it directly from iTunes.

Mark your calendars now for the next Web Innovators Group event which will held on Monday June 14th.  If you’re startup is interested in demo’ing in some fashion, please feel free to give me a heads up now (david at web innovators group dot com), but I largely won’t begin to make program decisions until mid May.  I’ll likely open attendee registration sometime next month.  Looking forward to seeing everyone there.

And from the feedback I’ve heard from folks, the special panel session was well received by the entrepreneurs in the audience, offering some practical/tactical advice for those endeavoring on bootstrapping their media relations.  Our all-star participants of Mike Troiano, Scott Kirsner , Wade Roush , Peter Kafka, and Bob Brown certainly engaged the crowd… although not without some vibrant reactions and opinions, especially from the public relations practitioners in the room.  The next couple days the blogosphere was teeming with thoughts about the role of PR.  Lora Kratchounova, Bobbie Carleton, Jason Evanish, John Wall, Chuck Tanowitz, Nathan Burke, and Kellye Crane all weighed in their thoughts, with panel moderator Mike Troiano and panelist Wade Roush responding.  The entire conversation is definitely worth a read, especially if you were in attendance.

Mark you calendars that the next WebInno event is on December 7^th.  I’ll be creating a registration page in the next couple weeks.

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Don’t forget that the next WebInno event is going to be held on September 29^th.  We’ve already started registration on our event page.

“Can you be part of the NE [New England] innovation economy and *not* have been to #webinno? I think not. Kudos to @davidbeisel of Venrock for organizing.”

Scott also had a nice writeup on his blog:

“Web Innovators Group has turned into not just a great place to see demos from early-stage companies, but also a bit of a see-and-be-seen schmooze-fest among developers, entrepreneurs, attorneys, investors, and PR folks. The 22nd edition of WebInno tonight was especially good…”

Many others also commented on the event.  Bob Brown wrote a piece that showed up on Network World and The Industry Standard.  Greg PC resumed his usual demo-by-demo review.  Tom Lewis of the Bostonist conducted a number of Dish interviews worth watching.  Kevin Kosh over at CHEN PR evoked his memories of – of all things – Sesame Street to highlight a Side Dish, the Tor Project.  And of course there was plenty of chatter all over Twitter.

Congratulations again to Todd Garland of BuySellAds for winning the Audience Choice award for the evening.  He’s accomplished quite a bit on limited resources, and the crowd really picked up on his success.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the next WebInno on September 29^th

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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Angel & Venture Capital Finance: Where is the Money Moving?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: angel financing)

Finally, thank you to Matthew Mamet and Matt Kaplan of PermissionTV for their help in taping and producing a video of the entire event (posted over at their company’s blog).

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 15^th, 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.

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.

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.

As I noted during the evening, this November event marked the two year anniversary of including demo’ing startups at the Web Innovators Group events. From small gatherings then in a Kendall Sq bar to last week’s filling of the Grand Ballroom in the Royal Sonesta, the group has certainly grown up over the past twenty-four months. A special thanks goes to all of the 85 presenting companies which have demo’ed (some of whose logos are included in the slide below), and a congratulations to the nine (that I know of) which have either received venture funding or been acquired in this timeframe.

I am looking forward to continuing in building this tradition of creating valuable networking events for attendees and showcasing promising companies in the coming year of 2008.