Tonight I headed to the NY Tech Meetup organized by the CEO of Meetup and co-founder of Fotolog, the company my friend Frank works for.

This forum provided for quick presentations by new NY high tech ventures and other interesting discussions, then enabling further networking between people.

A Perfect Thing

The first speaker was Steven Levy, mentioned on the site as Newsweek’s tech editor & all-around geek writer extraordinaire. He is the author of “The Perfect Thing”, a story of the Apple iPod. He shared a funny story of a dinner where he was seated with Bill Gates at a Microsoft XP launch in late 2001, in which he had just that week got his initial iPod following the launch. When he gave it to Bill Gates, he observed as he described this mind meld as a votex between Bill’s brain and the iPod while he checked it out, exploring all the menu options, buttons and options. 45 seconds later came the comment of something like, looks great, and it works with a Macintosh.

Urbis

Our second speaker was Steve Spurgat from www.urbis.com. The blub. Urbis is a creative community with three types of users: creative people, those who love and support creative people, and those who have opportunities for creative people. It’s very creative.. Some of the interesting features of this site included:

• Can pre-define the people that can review your submissions, by various criteria, meaning that your feedback can be restricted.
• You can specify your specific goals for your submission.
• You can select the present opportunities for your submission.
• There is an economy system to see reviews of your own work you must review others

Presently only writing is available, but plans for Music, Art and Film will be available in the next few months. With some 12,000+ members and 13% active, it’s a good start.

There was also discussion of copyright, Urbis being a registered copyright agent complying with government guidelines, and of revenue models including the option for fees from publishers, and the potential of ad copy. A competitor site Trigger Street was also mentioned, started by Kevin Spacey.

One Web 2.0 thing I liked about this site, and the next was that the website was the presentation (no powerpoint), and while talking the home page of the website was displayed and the content was dynamically changing, in this case, reviews being submitted online. A good selling point.

LinkStorms

Scott Kolber of LinkStorms was our next presenter. Described as the next generation of links for the web providing context specific fast links and specific navigation from a button, images, banner ad.

The revenue model is CPM plus a publishers setup, maintenance and support fee structure. Apparently up to 40% click thru rate, which is extraordinary compared to the current stats of < 1% for general banners.

When asked what was different with this model, the answer was "the results. It's a better user experience looking at ads".

You can see it in action at Premiere Magazine – The Departed.

CogMap

Brent Halliburton and his approach to a wikipedia of Organization charts with CogMap certainly got the best response the crowd. A good comedian, Brent made the mistake with a slow Internet connection to demonstrate interactively with an example from the audience and not his own prepared content. It ended up not rendering, then crashing but he managed to turn it around into a plus and the best applause of the night.

His idea provoked a wide range of comment and feedback and when asked why? “Because if your an entrepreneur you do things”. “In the big scheme of things I don’t have all the answers. I just put it out there.”

uPlayMe

David Fishman provided the last presentation of uPlayMe, a Windoze program that provides a slant on the community social networking via enternaintment, specifically when they are actually playing via Windows Media Player for example. It’s designed to help people discover other people with the same interests, or weird interests. Some other sites mentioned in the discussion included Last.fm, Pandora and MOG.

2007 Predictions

We ended with an audience participated 2007 predications. The included:

• No Predication – (The first person from the Board of Advisors I believe that was specifically asked)
• IP TV market and integration with the TV
• Will see a Billion $ organization from the NY community
• The buzz of radios that can do multiple gigibits of transfer between neighours (yes it sounded weird)
• Era of the connected home, Computer, TV, Stereo
• Some political thing at change.net
• Another political thing, an organic style camp debrief
• The Term 2.0 will cease being used in 2007
• Skype will be a source of major innovation
• NY will produce a billion dollar Internet company