Wow, talk about a blow out.
Last night’s Tech Crunch / August Capital Party down on prestigious Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park was amazingly over the top. The party had a lot of hype preceding it with everyone getting locked out of Web 2.0 Superblogger Mike Arrington’s RSVP wiki and with limited remaining spots for those coveted Tech Crunch sponsors or those who decided to pony up to buy RSVPs on eBay… wow… well it pretty much lived up to the hype. To see some of the highlights click through here to my photo set on the night. Click through on this photo to play a great Zooomrtation of Arrington at the event. (just click on the little audio play button to the right of the photo)
About 750 people showed up last night to grace the outside decks of August Capital’s swanky office space and it was pretty much a who’s who of Silicon Valley these days.
Kristopher Tate and I went together cameras loaded with loads of that cheap digital film to document the thing for Zooomr, drink beer (well I drank beer, Kristopher drank Sprite) and to just hang out with all the other cool kids.
Robert Scoble was there documenting the whole thing with his brand spanking new HD camera for PodTech (I always said Microsoft should have done Channel 9 in high def). The Digg boys showed up. The Meetro house, with SF Tech Reporter Jessica Guynn in tow, were there. Valleywag’s Nick Douglas showed up (and not in drag or naked) and Scott Beale even got a shot of him and Arrington actually shaking hands. Amazing.
Scott Beale by the way also has a fantastic photo set up as usual over at the Laughing Squid.
It was great catching up with so many people. Swapping raising kids stories with Amy Muller. Comparing 5Ds and lenses as usual with Scott Beale and Owen Byrne. Catching up with friends from my non tech life Lucas Mast, Sean Crawford and Ken Fromm. Trying to pry the secrets of the universe out of Gabe Rivera. Almost believing Tara Hunt who had just come from the Snakes on the Plane movie thing when she said it was good. Cheesy but good. Hearing Shel Israel’s hazards of modern airline travel stories, meeting the engaging and enchanting and heck, well let’s just say beautiful, women from Five Runs (whose business cards say Porter Novelli though) who were in town from Austin for LinuxWorld (who you can see here posing with Kristopher).
Whew.
Ok who else did I meet. I met the Photobucketers Julie Blaustein and Kurt Collins — who definitely do *not* want to be Flickr but who have a mind boggling 2.5 *billion* photos online.
Oh yeah, and then there actually was a streaker. Since Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection is a family oriented site (I think), you’ll need to click through here to actually see him. Be warned though.
I think Rachel Evans from Stash Spaces has me on video. I’m a little worried actually because it was later in the evening. I think she’s got a MySpace account that I may need to try and hunt down later.
It was good seeing Jason Pressman again and finally meeting his wife (who of course I’m too lame to remember her name but for some crazy reason I can remember the name of her horse, Secret).
There were lots of folks I met in fact who I apologize in advance for not remembering your name. If I’ve got a photo of you up without your name or company name, feel free to leave a comment in the photo of shoot me an email and I’ll correct it.
Ok, there’s more. Tom Conrad was there from Pandora (who were actual sponsors of the evening and who’s kick ass service I love). Apparently their professional musicians at Pandora actually do jams in Oakland at their offices occasionally. I’ve got to get down there with a couple of external hard drives and a CD ripper (just kidding of course). They do have something like 40,000 CDs down there which is amazing when you think about it. I’m listening actually to my custom Pandora Josh Ritter radio station right now.
Ok, then it was pretty cool meeting SF Chronicle Tech Reporter Jessica Guynn who had these great stories about how they prepare reporters for war doing mock kidnapping things. Davis Freeberg’s a fan of hers.
I met Bradley Horowitz who is a bigwig VP of Product Strategy over there at Yahoo! (a pretty good company even if they have 50% less O’s in their name than Zooomr). Who else, Geoffrey Arone who is one of the founders of Flock (my new favorite and default browser). Jeremy Toeman who works for Sling Media. Scott Brooks, Evangelist for Concept Share. Everybody’s favorite guy Jeremiah Owyang and his beautiful wife Shirley. Dan Farber. Joel Sacks. Guy Kawasaki (who at least Valleywag’s Nick Douglas said was a worst evangelist than me). Will Pate. Chris Messina. Josh Elman who said that postage stamps are the most popular thing Zazzle sells but that mugs also go big with midwesterners. James Gross over from my blog network FM Publishing. I chatted with Steve and Tina Gillmor. And it’s always good seeing our Zooomr VC angel, the Godfather of Silicon Valley, Ron Conway.
My only regret about the whole deal last night is that I never did find a breast for Digg Co-Founder Owen Byrne to sign. I’ve got a shot of Kevin (BusinessWeek’s $60 million man) signing his autograph on a breast from the Diggnation party at the Beach Chalet and my Digg breast photo collection won’t be complete until I get a shot of Owen signing one too. I’m not giving up though.
Update: Additional coverage of the party, alexmoskalyukblog. Guy Kawasaki. Laughing Squid. Jeremiah Owyang. Joel Sacks. Mario Sundar. Robert Scoble. Martin Wells. David Beach. Vinnie Lauria. Mike Arrington. Mario Sundar. Dead 2.0. Dave McClure. Valleywag’s got a great video from Sarah Meyers who tried to crash the party.
nice work thomas… several beautiful shots in there.
Love your photos, see ya Monday night!
Great recap.
Check out the TechCrunch 7 crashers at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGGYPJUV4CA
If you want a good laugh.
Impulse
Hey Hey, check out this video of the TechCrunch 7Party!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGGYPJUV4CA
TechCrunch get togethers are awesome.