Startupalooza and #drunkgeeking

This weekend's Startupalooza event was a lot of fun. Thanks to all the organizers! While I very much enjoyed learning about some really cool new projects in PDX, as is the case with most structured events, the most rewarding part for me was all the side conversations buzzing in hallways and nearby bars. It's all about the people! It reminded me of one of my side projects, the Entrepreneur Salon, which has been percolating for a year or two. The essence of it is to gather techie folks for informal meetups at local bars, to get together and have fun, with no real agenda -- only time set aside to hear each other's ideas and get the entrepreneurial spirits (literally and figuratively) flowing. I haven't done much with this idea yet, though Scott Kveton just called me out, in his re-cap of Startupalooza:

And, as is the case at any event in Portland, there were the seedlings hatched for new events. One was an impromptu idea that Paul Biggs (aka @techpaulogy) had called #drunkgeeking. Say you’re married, with an SO, etc and they have gotten tired of your inebriated ramblings about technology. Wouldn’t it make sense to find a couple of other nerds you could get your drink on with and then talk about geeky topics? Instead of trying to organize it on a regular basis, why not just use Twitter + the hashtag #drunkgeeking to coordinate on-the-fly events. For example, you could couple this with Unthirsty and find a good happy hour, Tweet “#drunkgeeking in 15 minutes at the Side Door” and see what happens. I love it and am looking forward to it after Paul gets done with his three day pantless bender. :-)

Aside from that latter part about the bender (which may-or-may-not be related to CommandoSEO.com), I must agree. If anyone wants to give it a whirl, that is, getting together ad hoc beer & entrepreneurship/techie meetups, try to send up the bat signal on Twitter: #drunkgeeking. Here is the inagural tweet, and here is the Hashtags page to see how the idea fares.

(Sadly, I won't be able to be involved for a week or two thanks to the current frenzy at Jive -- I've been rallying with our Web Engineers and Design team in the office until 2am every night for the past week, and plan to do so again this week as well).