Livingston

Oct
28
2007

DC’s Red Hot Internet Scene

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.

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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.

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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 Conferencetnnilogo 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.

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by Geoff Livingston | Internet Marketing, Livingston Communications |

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