The last week of October, Jessica and I went to Tech Cocktail. I think this is something like the 14th one they’ve held in Chicago? Back in 2006 our FeedBurner coworker Eric Olson co-founded the event with Frank Gruber and now it has its own conferences and parties in more than a dozen different cities. I just looked up on this rachelleb.. it looks like I missed the first Tech Cocktail, but I attended the 2nd, along with many others. Until last week, though, I hadn’t been to Tech Cocktail for years.

It was nice to check back in. Mostly the same scene. Free drinks. Ron May. In a wheelchair this time. Lots of people. Lots of tech startup demos. Here’s something that’s different: Sponsored by Sprint! Also, you now have to pay admission to get into the event.

About the demos we saw: A lot of them were some version of a daily discount site. One new company was doing ads in games. Their founder told us they were like AdSense but for games… which already exists, so I’m not sure I get that. Another had you sign up for a family style meal through a Facebook and then you’d show up and eat dinner with a bunch of strangers. One was a social wishlist kind of thing. Another had you type in something you wanted to and it would supposedly go out and find deals for you. I used the site as part of the demo and told it I wanted to take a sushi-making class. I know there’s a million places to do this around Chicago. Tech Cocktail was over a week ago. I still haven’t gotten my results from the site. Hm.

Jess and I talked briefly to Brad Feld, who we knew when he was involved in FeedBurner. And then for a bit to Frank, a Tech Cocktail cofounder we know. Frank said he thought that there were about 550 – 600 people there, so it’s good to know the event is still going strong!

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