This week will spotlight DC’s increasingly red hot Internet scene. The greater Washington area is home to such well-known personalities as New Media Jim, Debbie Weil, Rohit Bhargava, Kaitlyn Wilkins, Chris Abraham, John Bell, Susan Reynolds, Alice Marshall and companies that impact the national web 2.0 scene like Viget Labs (built Squidoo) and Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team. B5 Media’s Aaron Brazell is just 20 miles up the road in Baltimore.
But you wouldn’t know it. We just don’t have a ValleyWag, and we never promote DC as a collective new Internet region quite like San Francisco and Boston. Yet if you check the live OPML feed on DCBlogs, you will see a swarm of thousands.
A couple of events are happening this week that really highlight just how hot DC is getting: The New, New Internet Conference and DC Start-up Weekend, which is creating HolaNeighbor!.
Start Me Up
Today DC Start-up Weekend wraps up, a three day endeavor to go from ground zero to full-fledged web 2.0 start-up out there and functioning. Well over 50 programmers, entrepreneurs and business developers gather at Viget Labs’ offices in Falls Church, VA to create HolaNeighbor!. The coolest part is all participants get an equal stake in the company.
This social network aims to extend a social network community to the brick and mortar community where we often live next to each other, but don’t know it. help plan events, share important information, and meet the person next door.
Start-up Weekend Founder Andrew Hyde was present (center) to lend a hand. Hyde created Start-up Weekend to enable quick decisions, “out of the box” thinking, unique facilitation technique and letting founders show what they can do. Upcoming start-up weekends include Chapel Hill, Atlanta, and San Francisco (photo credit and flickr set: micahb37).
Here’s a little video showing you what Start-up Weekend DC was like yesterday afternoon:
Featured bloggers are Jared Goralnick, Technotheory and Brian Williams, Viget Labs.The New, New Internet Conference
This event- priced at $500 — will be the biggest web 2.0 conference on the Eastern Seaboard this fall. More than 800 attendees are expected and the roster of speakers is impressive. If you haven’t registered yet, take advantage of the “BuzzBin” promo code to take $100 off.
The conference will focus on the larger business aspects of the new Internet economy. There are three tracks for industry, government, and more technical topics, a Web 2.0 application competition, and much more, this is the region’s major annual Web conference.
There will be a red hot marketing panel featuring Rohit Bhargava as moderating a panel that includes Frank Gruber, Gary Vaynerchuk and myself (more on this tomorrow).
Moving Forward
All in all, I am thrilled to see this conference here and the exciting energy of HolaNeighbor!. There’s more to do though.
About a month ago, Debbie Weil and I announced our intent to start an unconference to unite the greater Washington region’s social media scene. Since then we have been trying to find a location, and have some good news about BlogPotomac. A home may have been found, we are now trying to confirm dates.
Additionally, I am working with some folks including the team at Viget, Chris Heuer and others to reinvigorate DC’s Social Media Club. More details are forthcoming.
Very exciting stuff! I think that it makes sense that DC has some of the hottest up and coming social media and web 2.0 companies/entrepreneurs. The area has always been rich with IT companies (even with AOL now leaving), so it becomes a natural extension of that. I’m really looking forward to hearing a recap of the New New Internet conference as well.
Hey Geoff, I’m excited about the idea of a social media unconference. If you need any help let me know, I helped organize 2 barcamps and the upcoming widgetdevcamp. I’d be happy to share insights of what’s worked and what hasn’t.
About Social Media Club, Peter Corbett and Jesse Thomas were trying to get something going for Nov 8th.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=18508278808
Thanks for dropping by. Interesting on Social Media club, as the social media club national guys didn’t know (or tell me) about this event. Needs to be better coordination amongst parties. But I am glad to hear there is something going on.
On BlogPotomac, we are going to do a hybrid unconference format, which will be a little different than BarCamp. See blogorlando.com for the model. More details are coming.
Great coverage, Geoff. Thanks for the write-up. I’ve been here at Startup Weekend the whole time — it’s been a great experience so far. It’s really fun to see how active and engaged the local web community is right now.
Looks like we have something better brewing in at DC. It makes me wanna come and stop by for a good IM chat or somethin’ like that. :)
startup weekend was really fun!
http://www.jess3.com/blog/2007/10/startup-weekend-dc.html
check out my pictures from the event
Thanks for the plug and for stopping by, Geoff. There is so much excitement in this community and we’re lucky to have someone like you spreading the word and the love.