Monday, May 18, 2009

Gators, Chimps and Other Party Animals


I recently attended the Mashable Mixer Atlanta, brought to us in partnership with Regator. This was Mashable's first Georgia event, and what an event it was. If you're not familiar with Mashable, it's the largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and social media news. Hands down, Mashable has the best, freshest content in these areas.

As far as the event goes, it was a who's who of Atlanta startups, entrepreneurs and social media-types. In addition to Regator, the event featured Gold Sponsors a small orange, Chirbit, krumlr, MailChimp, Paste Magazine. Atlanta startups Band Metrics, Feedscrub, Jungle Disk, TechDrawl and Twitpay also supported the event as Local Sponsors.

I remember when I first started working in the Atlanta startup scene, somewhere around 1998. Back then, there were events (okay, really they were just big parties) almost every night of the week. It was common to shuttle from event to event on any given night. The startup community was vibrant back then, and everyone was out there networking with each other, launching new ventures and finding ways to work together.

The Mashable Mixer Atlanta was the first event I've seen in a long time that brought me back to those days. There were tons of folks from the next generation of Atlanta startups, plenty of private equity folks, a few journalists and many guests from out of town. And I don't remember talking to a single salesperson the whole night, but maybe that's just me.

I'm pretty sure 90% of the people who use Twitter in Atlanta were at this event. Though the number of people who weren't able to get tickets probably shoots a hole in my theory. The event sold out twice; and there was a line around the building when I got there.

I have to give props to Mashable for bringing their energy to town, to Regator for leading the charge on this great event, and to all the sponsors that helped make this possible. I hope this is the beginning of more great events to come this summer. I got to connect with a lot of old friends, and left with a lot of new ones. It was nice to meet a lot of people behind the Twitter avatars I see in my stream each day.

The party continued well into the night, with many folks joining the festivities at the official after party at Brewhouse. It looks like I was spared from those late-night pictures, thankfully.

Some other resources for those of you that attended the event or weren't able to make it:
Oh, and the animal reference in the headline? MailChimp's Frederick von Chimpenheimer IV (a chimp), Regator's Reg (an alligator) and Jungle Disk's... um, I guess a pink gorilla, were in attendance at the event. Here's a pic of the primates with MailChimp's Chief Twitter Officer Amanda Lauter.

And a final word on Paste Magazine. Like many print media these days, Paste needs your help to keep things rolling. They're offering an awesome selection of music for those that donate to the cause through their website as part of their Campaign to Save Paste. It's a great magazine. If you like music, check it out.

2 comments:

Jeff Haynie said...

Sounds like you guys (and gals!) had a great time. Boy do I remember the days with all the eHatchery parties we had (at "the hatch") back in the days... Glad to see some of this coming back to Atlanta. It's truly exciting watching from afar...

If you happen to be out in the Bay Area for this year's Apple WWDC event, be sure to stop by our Titanium Beta Launch party on June 9th to help us celebrate and say hi: http://bit.ly/wv8LV

Jeremy Porter said...

Some more great photos from Scott Harris: http://gallery.me.com/harris_scott#100390&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=50