Last night the dynamic duo from TechFlash, John Cook and Todd Bishop, hosted a couple hundred people at Spitfire to celebrate the anniversary of the TechFlash launch and get a little holiday cheer on.  I was there representing Seattle 2.0 as part of the trivia team contest.  I joined Seattle 2.0 founder Marcelo Calbucci, Brian Westbrook, and Shauna Causey and twelve other teams in coming up with answers to a couple dozen questions, some of which were easy (where did Microsoft move from in 1979?*) to the incredibly difficult (which original blogging service started out of a Mercer Hall dorm room?*)

Overall our team did fairly well – somewhere in the middle of the pack, I think – but the big winners were Ben Huh and the Cheezburger team, who tied for 1st but won the grand prize based on a tiebreaking question – how many “shakes” has the Urbanspoon iPhone app had as of November?*.  Congrats cheezburgers, and now stop idling your days away reading TechFlash and get back to work giving me pictures of cats perched on the toilet with the caption “I HAZ CATSTIPATION”. lol.

The Spitfire was an excellent choice for a venue – it was crowded, but not OMG-I-can-see-down-your-ear-canal crowded, and the Spitfire staff were busy and helpful.  There was a hosted bar for the first hour, and the buffet was, as my friend Marina Martin would say, nom.  Of course with my ongoing fitness quest I ate fruit, but…

I really liked meeting some new people last night, and the crowd was different than some of my regular stops, so I’ll be going back to future TechFlash events for certain.  Everyone was in a fun, friendly, networking frame of mind.  Until the trivia contest started – then the kid gloves came off and the competitive fires started burning white-hot.

You can go to the TechFlash site to view pictures from the event, and also check out the livestream from the back room.

Thanks to John and Todd for contributing their time and energy to yet another great Seattle tech event!  And thanks to the sponsors for their contributions – Reaxion, BDO Seidman, Denali Advanced Integration, and the UW-Bothell MBA program.

* answers: Albuquerque, LiveJournal, and 413.2 million, respectively

Are you a startup jock/junkie/wantrepreneur? Consider attending the following StartupDay conference, set for September 26th, with information direct from local entrepreneur Marcelo Calbucci via the Seattle Tech Startups list.

StartupDay is a conference for those who have the skills to build a startup, but don’t have the experience. People working at Microsoft, Amazon, Real Networks, Google, Yahoo, Expedia, Adobe, etc., who have an idea and would like to know more what does it take to make that idea into a product and into a business. Do you need to leave your company? How do you bootstrap? Is it a good idea? How do you market your product? And, most importantly, how do you make a profit. Come listen to some of the most respected and successful entrepreneurs from Seattle, who have built dozens of successful tech startups, including: Alex Algard (CarDomain/WhitePages), Alex Castro (Delve Networks), Andy Liu (BuddyTV/NetConversions), Colin Wong (ShareIn), Dave Schappell (TeachStreet), Jonathan Sposato (Picnik/Phatbits), Josh Petersen (Robot Co-op/43Things), Kelly Smith (Inkd/ImageKind/RocketVox), Ksenia Oustiougova (Lilipip), Matt Hulett (RealGames/mPire/AtomFilms), Mike Mathieu (Front Seat/All Star Directories), Rich Barton (Zillow/Expedia), Shelly Farnham (Waggle Labs/Pathable).

In addition to the talks at the conference, StartupDay is providing the Advisory Room, a place where attendees can meet one-on-one with professionals, entrepreneurs and investors to have a fifteen-minute private meeting. There is no need to keep cornering speakers, or standing in front of a table talking to lawyer while others eavesdrop on you.

The conference will have talks from 10am until 5:00pm on Saturday, September 26, followed by a cocktail reception. It will be at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, just 15 minutes from downtown Seattle, with easy parking and bus routes.

Early-bird registrations is just $95 until August/21.

I just registered for the Seattle 2.0 Awards, which is a showcase event recognizing the best in Seattle startups. Marcelo Calbucci of Seattle 2.0 and Sampa is organizing.

Here’s the home page for the Seattle 2.0 Awards
Register for the Seattle 2.0 Awards at Eventbrite
Here’s the Seattle 2.0 Awards press release at MSNBC.com

There’s also a nifty Seattle 2.0 Awards attendee badge that you can see on the left navbar of my blog.

I hope to see you there!

[Gestalt: A collection of physical, biological, psychological or symbolic entities that creates a unified concept, configuration or pattern which is greater than the sum of its parts. -- Wiktionary]

Why do you use Twitter?  What do you get from it?  Everyone has their own answers, I suppose, but I believe that Marcelo Calbucci is way wide of the mark with this post:

I believe the best way to use Twitter is not to follow people that are interesting, or influential, or controversial. You’ll get the most value (and fun) out of Twitter if you only follow people that you know [...] don’t follow me on Twitter unless you know me personally or we have friends in common, so we are likely to bump into each other in the near future.

Twitter (and the intertubes in general) offer you the unique opportunity to free yourself from the constraints of real-world locale (aka “meatspace”). Why not take advantage of it? Expand your horizons.

I’m not sure how I’d describe Marcelo’s attitude: perhaps “conservative” is appropriate. To consider our wonderful new technologies as only an adjunct to previous ways of communicating and socializing is akin to … I don’t know, I can’t think of a good metaphor, but it misses the point, and ignores the possibilities.

Some of my favorite tweeps are people that I only know through Twitter. What about you?