Mylermedia

Last night was the July Meetup of SF New Tech — the ever-growing event and community group that I run.

Inspired by Scott Heiferman’s NY New Tech Meetup, we started in April of 2006 with 8 people in a bar and now boast over 1600 Bay Area tech-lovin’ influencers.

We’ve been holding our recent events at the Metreon entertainment complex in downtown San Francisco (formally the “Sony” Metreon) where there’s a great theater with three large screens, semi-tiered seating for about 200 people, and ample room to schmooze.

Last night’s event was sold out with standing room only (per usual), and people were seemingly very happy to stand. On the ticket were 5 start ups ranging from the one man show to one run by an industry legend. Demos included Blabberize, RateItAll , JuggleMyStuff, Adperk, and Truemors demo’d by none other than Guy Kawasaki.

It’s amazing what happens at the SF New Tech Meetup.

Not only are people seeing the latest and greatest new tech out there, they’re able to comment and critique the demos and the presenters. It’s all about the dialogue, the back and forth. When people aren’t commenting on the demos, they’re schmoozing with each other. People are getting jobs (a friend of mine recently got his dream job at Apple after doing a demo at an SF New Tech Meetup!), people are getting funding, people are finding help, and small companies are getting noticed.

My favorite part of the evening is what we call the “60 Second Soapbox” — when I hand the microphone to whoever wants to make an announcement for a need, a want, a desire. It’s amazing what folks do when they’ve got a captive audience! One stand-out 60 Second spot was when Izimi surprised everyone with a rap!

People are also getting inspired to run their own events, like Christian Perry, who called me one day last year to ask how SF New Tech came together, and soon after launched SF Beta, which is arguably now SF’s #1 mixer for the Web 2.0 crowd.

Long standing event companies are now sniffing around, wondering how they too, can connect with the local tech crowd that is the SF New Tech Meetup.

Sponsors, too, are calling to see how they can be a part of the conversation. It’s all good.

So how does it all come together?

Managing 1600 people and a regular event series requires a lot of nurturing and a lot of love. It also requires a variety of web tools to pull all it all off.

• Foremost, Meetup.com acts as a Google magnet, essentially a fish net to help people find us. In other words, Meetup provides super-cheap “people acquisition”.

• We use Eventbrite to sell and manage event tickets, something, unfortunately, Meetup doesn’t do.

• We use Wufoo, a wicked cool site that let’s simple people like me to build and collect information from our members, like real names (vs Meetup nicknames), company names, positions, and most importantly, email addresses via easy-to-make and manage web forms if/when we need it, another thing Meetup doesn’t/can’t do.

• We use Flickr to post and share photos. We also post our photos to Meetup, but there we don’t know if people look at them, nor can people tag/share them if they wanted.

• When it’s all said and done, find ourselves on video sites like Veodia and YouTube if/when people capture the event on video.

• Hungry bloggers — WebWare, Bub.blicio.us, and Web Strategist, for example — also review what they’ve seen and learned with the world, in turn, making some small startups famous. I love it when that happens!

Where is there room for improvement?

I’m still waiting for the day that Meetup will help like-minded groups from different cities share and trade notes and assets. For example, I’m tuned into the Silcon Valley, Boulder/Denver, and the NY New Tech Meetups, and wish we had a secret spot we can go to trade notes other than via email. It would be great if Meetup offered something like this, but perhaps Basecamp can serve groups better in this capacity.

I’m also still waiting to see if/when Meetup will provide tools to help groups like this one more easily entice sponsors, who often like to see basic demographic information on group members. I’d also like to see Meetup provide a ways and means to display sponsor logos and messages on the Meetup site. Since it can’t be done, we’re working on our own web presence at http://www.sfnewtech.com for that kind of stuff, and I’m sure other sponsored groups are equally disenfranchised in this regard and are seeking the same thing.
To say the least, it’s been a fun challenge working around Meetup’s limitations, and it’s opened up whole wide worlds of possibilities via learning the in’s and out’s of all the really smart and nimble sites and services out there that help make SF New Tech what it is.

Now off to plan the next SF New Tech — scheduled for Wednesday August 1st, 2007! (Pssst. Want your company to be considered for a future demo @ SF New Tech? Fill out this form!)
I’m also launching the Tech Valley New Tech Meetup, with an inaugral meeting scheduled for August 23, 2007 in “Tech Valley” . . . stay tuned!

More photos here and here … and all over if you look for ‘em.

Disclaimer: I’m a former Meetup executive — and current shareholder of Meetup. So I hope this commentary and constructive criticism only makes Meetup staffers to want to work harder to make the service better, and more valuable to all who choose to use it.