While on the west coast for a number of meetings and projects, I was invited to the Techcrunch5 party celebrating Shel and Robert’s book launch as well as testing the limits of Michael Arington’s neighbors. I wasn’t aware you could pack 500 people in a house with only two bathrooms, cool.
This party had enough going on to keep the sand hill slave blogging for a decade. One party, 1000 blog entries, minimum.
With apologies to the kind lady and the disclaimer that I am not as good a writer as she is (from her: “…he went home with 2 Danish women. My parting words to him were, "make sure your Danish rolls are fresh before you eat them in the morning". (Gross and immature, I know).)”
Here are some my Valley Observations.
Crashing the party. When it is an “in” place to be here in the valley, the stories at the front door are way better then what you see at some fancy night club.
“I’m on the damn Wiki, young lady!”
“No, you don’t understand, my firm handles most of legal work for these companies, I’m always on the list.”
“I blog about this parties, Missy, I don’t do invites.”
“I’m here to replace a crashed drive in the Kaboodle demo, they just messaged me.”
The best pick up line I heard last night, pocket protector type to clearly A list lady:
“Wow, cleaning this carpet is going to be a bitch tomorrow, don’t you think.”
I am blessed with the fact that nobody knows (or cares) who I am. It affords me the same level of Sand Hill Slave (SHS) type anonymity without the fear of being outed. I used this blessing by being a quiet observer and then, when engaged, basically make stuff up just to test SHS valley theory.
Consider the recent dust up over John Dvorak’s working theory about Apple shipping Vista on Apple hardware. While John relaxes with his current intake of mind alternating substances, I tweak a few folks.
me: Mishka! Great to finally meet you. I’ve gotten the port code up and I must say it; Apple’s implementation of Vista is much more stable, especially with the new Bluetooth version 5 drivers, wow, 1200 feet. When is the NDA coming off all this stuff. Well done.
him: Uh, I don’t work for Apple, but whoa, really? You got a port from Apple of Microsoft code?
me: Oh. Gee, sorry, I mis-read your name tag and you looked just like your email. I really can’t talk about it. But it is cool.
Of course he is standing there with three friends trying to act all cool and hip. Now the four of them have a hot scoop they can share with all the A list bloggers running around the party. You heard it here first, don’t let ValleyWag tell you otherwise.
Then there is this whole notion of what you do vs. who you are. Nowhere, I think, but in the valley can you get away with this kinda stuff.
Her: “Do you have a card?”
Him: “Just Google me, babe.”
And speaking of Valleywag, while I do agree with Fred Wilson and others that it is a bit over the top, telling people you are “contributing editor” for Valleywag appears to be handy for getting dates.
Her: “And what do you do?”
Me: “I’m a contributing editor for Valleywag, have you heard of us?”
Her: OMG, I love what you are doing. It’s about time. (Saddles up close). Now, you see that one over there, bet you didn’t know she is sleeping with him in order to get information for the start up she wants to do which will probably get funded because her husband is a VC over at that guy’s firm which, of course, will fund anything. Grab me a wine spritzer and I’ll let you in on everything really going here.”
And the phrases! They are all here, being used, in one tent, it’s cliche central.
“Let’s continue the dialog” (said to a guy hounding a VC about an idea to bring Solyent Green like products out.)
“I lived with a double dip but the drag -n– tags on top of the weighted average math, well just not gonna happen at this man’s start up.”
Not to be out done, is the name dropping, yowsa.
“Yes, I was at Guy Kawasaki’s place talking about Paul Kedrosky and my working on his latest thing and had to take a call from Eric Schmidt about lining up a meeting with Bill Gates so we could all get our plan ready for that Congressional Testimony. It’s just crazy, I tell you, crazy.”
At the prize for the most questionable tactic at the party?
A couple of ‘random’ types were sucking up to Robert Scoble’s kid, giving him seriously nice free goodies. The overhead part was “Hopefully, we will get a meet.” Lame, boyz, really lame.
Memo to Mark Evans and Matthew Ingram: Let’s borrow somebody’s house and throw a party like this in Toronto. I’ll pitch in some FF miles and we’ll get Sand Hill Slave to make her first bay street appearance.
Memo to Hugh: Does this go on at the Geek Dinners in London?
Enjoy your weekend and if you are at MashUp Camp, please say hello. I will be the guy in the Valet Parking Jacket. No, really.
Sounds good to me, Rick. I'm sure Mark would be happy to offer up his place :-)
Posted by: Mathew Ingram | February 18, 2006 at 15:49
Nah. Brit geek parties are too laid back, self-effacing and cynical for the scenario you just painted, Rick. At least, that's true in techie circles...
Maybe if you got into the advertising and media crowd, the desperation factor would be racheted up a few nothes...
Posted by: hugh macleod | February 18, 2006 at 16:54
after those last three posts, I'm going to have to consider emigrating to Canada. I wonder if my 2nd cousins in BC have some space I can rent...
Posted by: Ole Olson | February 18, 2006 at 22:47
Let's do that party asap. I will throw in the office space. My accesscapital firm offices from downtown
Posted by: howard Lindzon | February 19, 2006 at 01:38
...my house has two bathrooms but probably best-suited for 50 people.....given the amount of web 2.0 activity in toronto, that should be enough capacity...:)
Posted by: Mark Evans | February 19, 2006 at 10:36
Sounded like you had fun...were you going round with a wee notepad rapidly taking down shorthand ;-). I see a great alternative career as a gossip columnist.
Posted by: Rachel | February 19, 2006 at 12:08
Should do something like this in vancouver as well, there are sooo many tech companies here.
Vancouver has a big Vancouver tech show coming up.
http://www.techvibes.com/massive/selectpass.asp
175 local exhibitors from all areas of tech.
Posted by: Markus Frind | February 19, 2006 at 12:51
Rick-
Thanks for the acknowledgement, but this post is priceless. "I blog about these parties, Missy,I don't do invites" I'm gonna have to steal that one. "Google me" was used on me once and I was so turned off I said "No, forget it. I don't really want any bestiality site hits coming up on my computer." Now you understand why I try to avoid these parties.
My girlfriend actually wanted me to go with her to that party. She was like "You can totally name drop 'Sand Hill Slave'to get in" Like I'm gonna out myself to get into some party..and I don't consider myself any sort of A list. Or B List. Or beyond.
Didn't know the valleywag commentator line gets you dates. I need to spread the word that I comment on their site. Oh wait..I'm anonymous. Ahhh well..
re: your party- when I'm outed, I'll make a trip up there and we'll party like it's 199...oh hold up..2006. Well, it's Bubble 2.0 (or possibly Bust 2.0) so the song still applies!
I think you need to dish more on the valley as well. Give Valleywag a run for the money. I'll referee. :-)
Sand Hill Slave
http://www.sandhillslave.com
Posted by: Sand Hill Slave | February 20, 2006 at 06:47
sounds like a bloggy good idea .. lets have a party in toronto !! :)-
Posted by: /pd | February 20, 2006 at 08:08
Mark, Rick, All,
Sounds like a killer party, wish I could have made it.
But check this out:
WITHOUT free beer.
WITHOUT being techcrunched.
WITHOUT 10x the tech dev population.
WITHOUT 100x the tech venture capital.
WITHOUT naked men running around. (okay, that one is out of place ;)
That are all representative of the bay area and the killer techcrunch (that I regret missing out on).
We had ~100 people show up to the DemoCamp 3.0, when we (me and David Crow) started/hosted 1.0 at the BubbleLabs (makers of, of course, www.bubbleshare.com ;) in December as a spin off of David's TorCamp we had 30 people. At 2.0 in Feb, we had ~60.
Sand Hill Slave: Unlike 1999, us poor Canadian software startups that host these "parties,” we don't offer crap -- except good company (in the form of demos from passionate developers and entrepreneurs). What is like 1999 though, is that there are a lot of people that are coming out of the woodwork and taking risk in doing innovative things and neat things -- some for the money, some for the vision/fun, some for both. (I like to think that I fall into the last camp/category :)
I just came back from an ad hoc meetup, having drinks and dinner with Stowe who was visiting, with Michael O'Connor Clarke playing host at a local downtown pub. With just 2 days notice, we had something like 20+ people show up. It was great. The energy in Toronto is almost comparable to the valley during my days there in 2000. Mike A./Slave/Scoble/whomever: if you're looking for pure developer-energy/passion, not just money (because that is one spot where Canada is still greatly lacking--sufficient, true, venture capital), outside of the Bay Area... Toronto is doing pretty well relative to its very very small tech pool.
The community events that are popping up, the camps/parties/whatever, are a nice sign of good moral and passion – a great leading indicator, IMHO, of risk taking and innovation. This in turn, and I would expect, to lead to great economic growth for the region.
Posted by: Albert Lai | February 24, 2006 at 01:01