Of late I’ve been trying to get more involved in the local tech scene where I live.  On Saturday I went to check out Startupalooza and had no idea what to expect.  It was superb in every respect.  The facilities at CubeSpace were great and all the presentations and speakers were excellent.  I wish I could have stayed for the whole thing!

One thing I really liked about the way they ran the agenda was a massive count-down timer at the back of the room that gave each presenter the same fixed amount of time.  As the host put it “We don’t care how successful your startup is… when your time is up you’re done!” And unlike a lot of other tech events I’ve been to, people were in fact very respectful of the clock and gracefully bowed out when their time was up.

One of the funniest demos was the running commentary by Jason Glaspey of Unthirsty fame about how and why they created the site.  I believe they were the only presenters who created their product for fun and not as a business.

Even though the focus of the event was start ups, including a panel about what it is like to go out on your own, the real take away for me was hearing and learned about a lot new technologies and local happenings I wasn’t aware of before.  The cool thing too is that many if not most of them involved open source in some way.

If I have time, as a next event, maybe I will check out InnoTech and their open source track.

Rick Turoczy points out that not many people blogged about the event so hopefully I’ve done my part now. 🙂