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Sunday, May 14, 2006
Last month, a few of the faithful SES crowd were stumbling from the Ultra Supper Club towards The Charlotte Room. We found ourselves crossing the street with Stuart Macdonald. He was nice enough to stumble alongside us for awhile. He slyly mentioned something about "not really having to work," but that he was "back in Toronto" and "organizing events now." He then gave me a card that referred to Toronto's very own web 2.0 conference, mesh.
The following week, I checked it out, and registered. What a concentration of web-savvy folks, both speakers and attendees -- and no need to fly anywhere. And an after-party at The Drake -- a cool place I couldn't quite squeeze in when introducing newcomers to the city last month. :)
It's been awhile since we pointed, um, sarcastically to the bubble mentality of 2000, wondering if perhaps the blogosphere and the VC-osphere-ad-revenue-gravy-train et al. had become just a bit of an "infinite regression" scenario, or at the very least, temporarily self-referential and thus magnifying the importance of some players, until the cash wears off.
All these years later, the party is revving up again, and once more, dissenting voices come from some guy who lives in a van down by the river. OK, well, this critic -- Joe Clark -- lives in Leslieville, actually... which is not far from Riverdale.
So will mesh turn out to be superficially ouroboros or inspiringly Znaimerific?
This may seem post-hypercritical of me, but... who cares? For the paltry reg. fee, the chance to finally meet Om Malik, bump into the Wordpress founder at the Drake, and catch up with old friend Debbie Weil, among other things... it's much more than worth it. That's a lot of savvy networking for your dollar, per square foot, per minute.
Sorry, but I see on the site... the conference is now sold out. :)
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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