tech meetup Archive

Tonight at the NY Tech Meetup, seven startups presented their services to a packed house. Here’s a brief overview of each of the companies that presented:

ChallengePost - we wrote about ChallengePost earlier today as they are the service powering the NYC Big Apps competition. ChallengePost is a market place where you can find, solve and post challenges for others to complete. From the site, “Once a challenge is created, other people can JOIN the challenge and pledge money or simply appreciation. Those incentives, which are payable only if a challenge is solved, encourage others to solve a problem and earn their rewards.”

SetJam - the service will open in private beta next week and is trying to help you get away from having to buy cable tv each month.  You can search for shows you like, create guides, find out where to watch every episode of each show, etc. You actually watch the shows on the video hosting sites — SetJam adds a frame with the social aspects. Looks like it could be a good partner for Adaptive Blue.
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Tonight at 7pm Eastern the NY Tech Meetup will convene in NYC. You can watch the meetup live below. You can also checkout the over 100 videos we’ve recorded from companies who have presented at the NY Tech Meetup. The list includes demos from CoTweet, eDopter and Wirewize.

NY-based CoTweet provides an application that allows multiple people to access one Twitter account. The idea is that this works best with "brand" Twitter accounts not for individual users. They describe the service as "team workflow for Twitter".

 Before their demo, I spoke with one of the founders and asked why I wouldn’t just give my password out to anyone who needs my account. The application is actually pretty slick – it tracks which person made the reply, offers the ability to forward tweets to certain people on the team to respond to, etc.

The service is currently in private beta but they expect to open next week.

The founder of the Shorty Awards explained that the awards are similar to the emmy and oscar awards but for Twitter messages. Get this – Twitter is such a great medium to express the qualities and expertise that is within you, that we actually need an awards show to recognize those with the gifts. You can even nominate your dog’s twitter account for a Shorty Award – that’s right, people have created Twitter accounts for their pups.

The nomination period is over but final voting is going to start soon. They will fly all the winners to NYC for a special awards show in February. The Shorty Awards even got coverage in the New York Times!

Here’s their demo from last night:

(apologies for the lighting – I pushed but the lights were up as high as possible)

NY-based Botanicalls offers a service that lets your house plants talk to you. Basically your plants can tell you when they need water, sun, food, etc. The service explores the relationship between humans and their plants. They offer a DIY kit that you hook into your ethernet network. After the connections are made, that’s when the Twitter magic takes over!

The kit has to be soldered together but apparently it only takes an hour. I think they would sell more kits if they found a local electrician to do the soldering for a few dollars if the customer wants their kit completely assembled.

Here’s an example plant on Twitter. Here’s a demo of what Botanicalls does and how it works:

Tonight at the NY Tech Meetup, 10 candidates presented their platforms in the hope that you will vote for them on Thursday. Current organizer Scott Heiferman will have all of the details about voting and the official videos on Wednesday but I thought I’d post my videos now so you can start thinking about who you will vote for. I randomized the names so they do not appear in the order in which they presented. To learn more about the candidates, view their information on the Meetup website.

NYConvergence has a text recap with notes from the event. Jason Adler posted his thoughts from the presentations.

Couple notes: this page is huge with 10 video players so give it a minute to load. Richie Hecker presented via video and after his presentation, IAC didn’t turn the stage lights back on so a couple of the presentations are a bit dark.

Richie Hecker

Owen Brunette

Gregory Magarshak

Sanford Dickert

James Wallace

Oz Sultan

Joshua Sherman

Chip Welsh

Nate Westheimer

Joe DiPasquale

A quick reminder that if you plan to run for the New York Tech Meetup organizer position, you must do so by midnight on December 2. Current organizer Scott Heiferman explains how the process will work, "We’ll elect a new Organizer on 12/11 after Candidates give 5-min presentations at our 12/9 Meetup (RSVP 12/3 Noon). Then, with the new Organizer, Dawn (Barber) and I will establish a Board for the NYTM made mostly of other NY tech-related group Organizers. (+ If the new Organizer wants to make it a full-time paid gig, it’s up to her and the Board to figure out how to do so. Self-organized, baby!)"

To apply, post your details on the nomination post on the Meetup forum. My suggestion is to watch the following videos if you plan to apply:

• Scott’s overview of the changes from last month’s meetup
• Video from the discussion about the future of the meetup
• Scott has setup a forum for questions about the process