TECH Cocktail Comes to DC

Last night I attended the first TECH Cocktail DC . If you are not familiar with TECH cocktail it started in Chicago and is now trying for global dominance, and they might just achieve it. I didn’t have a chance to meet any of the people behind the concept but can only thank them for putting on a great event. This area needs more “mixers” like the one last night.

There were more than 250 people in attendance, some of them can be seen on Flickr here and here.

I met a lot of interesting, smart people who all have the same common passion, technology. There were also some companies in attendance demoing their goods and services.

• Animal Attraction - an online dating site that aims to connect pet lovers
• BuzzXYZ powered by Blogdigger - helps track the buzz online
• Clearspring - services for building, deploying and tracking widgets
• Sportsvite - online community is bringing sports lovers together for on-the-field fun
• PatentMonkey - fully search-able US patent text database
• Wine Library TV - showcased their wine site & were recruiting more “Vayniacs”

Many companies were represented. Too many to name in fact. I will say that it was also great to put some faces behind those companies I have heard/read so much about. Viget labs is a small web consulting firm out of Falls Church. They are probably most known for their work with Britney Spears and Other Music/Enteraintment types. In a prior life I was a recruiter and constantly on the hunt for something they called “web standards people”??? Well how the times have changed, we know share the same passion and try each day to spread the word about semantic markup and web standards. People please don’t hurt the web!!!

There was another event last night that I had to miss unfortunately. Refresh DC took place last night and sounds like it was another home run. If you haven’t been to the monthly meetings, it is a great place to meet some of the smartest people in DC.

Well I am off to @media next week in San Francisco. If you just happen to be one of my 5 loyal readers and are also attending don’t be shy.