Archives for October 2008

Someone’s gotta keep cheering — may as well be us …

Check out SF New Tech in Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle!

 October 20, 2008

Full steam ahead: That was the takeaway from SF New Tech’s event earlier this month, when the stock market had just started to crash. Attendees, mostly from the Web 2.0 world, were spilling out the doors, I’m told. Featured exhibitors, like social networking startup chi.mp, publishing platform provider Apture and wiki toolmaker PBwiki, were greeted like rock stars. "When they got on the stage, the crowd went nuts," said SF New Tech’s organizer, Myles Weissleder.

How to explain, given the gloom descending on the tech sector – not to mention the shellacking administered by the likes of Internet pioneer Tim O’Reilly for some of the Web 2.0’s "stupider and stupider ideas." Weissleder, who’s been in the tech event business for three years, has heard it all before, and he doesn’t buy it. From where he sits, there’s been some damage but the sky isn’t falling.

"There’s no slowdown in people thinking they’ve got the next big thing, that they can become the next Google," he said. "And that’s great. They’re in the trenches, feeling like they’ve got nothing to lose – at least until the rug is pulled out from under them or the money dries up."

Given the tenor of the times, his next get-together in November "could be a flop," he concedes. "But I don’t think that’s going to happen."

— Andrew S. Ross

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