Except this photo was taken this year!
Entries Tagged as 'Web/Tech'
rachelleb.com 10th anniversary
July 28th, 2011 · 8 Comments
Last week this site quietly celebrated its 10th anniversary. My first post here was on July 19, 2001. I was living in San Diego at the time and I remember jumping on the iWalt blogging bandwagon. Walt and I shared and office, and I thought “what the heck?” and gave it a whirl. Here I am 10 years later.
I didn’t really do much to celebrate, but I did visit the Wayback Machine. This is a tool that lets you see snapshots of any website from various places in time. Like last year, as I browsed through the history of rachelleb.com, I reminisced about how in the lifetime of this blog I have changed jobs 5 times, moved to New York, moved to Chicago, co-founded Chicagoist, made friends, made more new friends, lost track of friends, met Dallas, got engaged, bought a condo, got married, and on and on. Pretty nutso!
I took a few random screengrabs of this site while I was at the Wayback Machine. Click for larger screenshots.
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Tags:anniversary·rachelleb·Web/Tech
Built in Chicago Launch Party
June 24th, 2011 · No Comments
Built in Chicago is a site that was created about 8 months ago and is a resource for digital professionals working and building great web and mobile businesses in Chicago. Last night I attended their launch party with Jess and Alden. Tribeca Flashpoint sponsored the event and it was held in their space at the Merchandise Mart. There was a $10 admission fee, but once you were in, it was all free drinks and snacks.
The beer sponsor was Finch’s Beer Co. Ok. But made in Chicago? How have I never heard of them? I asked the servers and they said that Finch’s has only been in production for about 8 weeks and that it is based out of the Albany Park neighborhood. Interesting. I had two Golden Wing blond ales and Jess and Alden both had the Cut Throat pale ale. We all liked the beer and when I tweeted about it, Chuck declared that the blonde will be the beer of this summer.
Ok. So, enough about the beer. The Built in Chicago event was basically a mixer. It reminded me of Tech Cocktail, but with more suits and more gray hair. A grown up Tech Cocktail? I mean, even Ron May showed up at the end (blerg!). I talked to people I knew from various stages of my “past lives” – Chicagoist, FeedBurner, Google – and also from past Tech Cocktail events. It was nice to see people I hadn’t seen for quite a while (Kevin – from Google & now heading up the Chicago Entrepreneurial Center , Sean – from Chicagoist, now at Have My Shift, Brad – from my Chicagoist days, now at Appolicious, and Blagica from all over? 
) Also nice meet some new people, too.
I like how Built in Chicago seems like more of an ongoing thing. Like, sure, they’ll have these face-to-face networking events occasionally, but you don’t just go away after that and see people at the next event. Built in Chicago is also a whole social networking site for like-minded interactive people in Chicago. I think it should be a bit easier to keep in the loop and keep in contact with people. Looking forward to seeing how this all evolves.
PS. At the end of the night Alden and I met up with Dallas at the Boiler Room and guess what kind of beer I noticed they had on tap? Finch’s! So I had another Golden Wing. Maybe this will be the beer of the summer.
Tags:alden·blagica·boiler room·brad·built in chicago·Chicago·chicagoist·chuck·dallas·feedburner·finchs beer co·google·jessica·kevin·merchandise mart·sean·tech cocktail·tribeca flashpoint·Web/Tech
YumUniverse Launch Party
August 17th, 2010 · 1 Comment
Last week Alden, Jess and I went to a launch party for the YumUniverse blog.
YumUniverse is about making clean food choices and about being healthy and eating well. The site soft launched in the spring and is now ready for the big time. I thought that YumUniverse was all vegan as well, but I just read that their “contributors include steak-loving chefs, raw food fanatics, vegan dabblers, insatiable athletes, in-demand moms and even imaginative kids.”
The YumUniverse party took place at the Chicago Urban Art Society in Pilsen. The event was really well attended with more than 200 people RSVPing that they’d be there.
Some unique things at this party: The Rub Hub was giving free massages.
And there was all these crazy earth-oriented art installations around the party space.
Like any good party, there was a lot of food. All of this food happened to be vegan and raw and delicious. There were a lot of desserts, which my sweet tooth loved.
There was also a lot of booze at the YumUniverse party. It was all small tasting portions, but after a few shots of straight-up vodka, it’s not like you need to have a full glass of anything. We tried fair trade certified quinoa vodka (with lemon and elderflower), organic and sustainable wine from Hahn Family Wines, and did a acai spirit tasting thanks to VeeV. There were a few other liquor tables, but we didn’t want to stand in line to try them out.
After a while, we decided to leave the party and get some dinner. The raw vegan finger foods were not building a good base for all the liquor we were being offerred! But, it was cool to check out and I’ll be keeping my eye on the YumUniverse site.
Tags:alden·Chicago·chicago urban art society·jess·pilsen·vegan·Web/Tech·yumuniverse
Happy 9th Anniversary, rachelleb.com
July 19th, 2010 · 9 Comments
Today marks the 9th anniversary of this here blog. My first post was on July 19, 2001. I was living in San Diego at the time.. and if I start to browse through, I reminisce about how in the lifetime of this blog I’ve changed jobs 5 times, moved to New York, moved to Chicago, cofounded a successful Chicago city blog, met Dallas, got him to move to Chicago, got engaged, bought a condo, and on and on… but I’ve got things to do and not hours to spend reflecting.. so I’ll just leave it at that. Happy Anniversary to me!
Tags:anniversary·rachelleb·Web/Tech