I went to the NY Tech Meetup last night. I've been a member of the group for a while, but this is the first event I attended. For those who don't know, here's the description: "6 people get 5 minutes each to demo something cool to New York's tech community (geeks, investors, entrepreneurs, hackers, etc)." So here the presenters in order:
Oliver with Donors Choose was up first. The site is a bridge between teachers who need money to run projects in the classroom and donors. The teacher posts a project proposal with a needed amount on the site and donors can than contribute to the cause. At the end of the project the contributing donors get a packet of information that includes photos of the project, thank you notes from the kids and other information. This is all routed through Donors Choose and lets the donor see how their money is used.
Byron was up next with Proto. Proto is a desktop application written in C# that lets users create mashups for their desktop. Two pieces of software make up the application: the visual development environment and the viewer, which is required to view mashups created with Proto. One of the mashups Byron showed off was a combination of SalesForce data and the user's local Outlook email. Proto is running a contest for users to create mashups.
Timothy demo'd Evaal. I think it's some kind of search engine. I couldn't really divine the purpose of it during the demonstration so I made a note to check it out before this post. After spending a few minutes playing around on their site, I have to say that I'm still confused as to what this thing does. Anyone who understands the concept want to give an elevator pitch?
Payoneer was the last company demo of the night. It looks like a method for web sites (or anybody for that matter) to get branded prepaid mastercards. Yuval pitched it as a way for websites that pay out to users for one reason or another to do it through these cards. The site can issue these cards to their users and when it comes time to pay a commission or share revenue, it can be done instantaneously through by adding money to the prepaid card.
Lee gave a demo of hacking a Furby, which was a nice change of pace.
After the tech meetup I headed over to Bua to meet some of the NextNY group members. From the NextNY site: "...a fun way to connect both socially and
professionally with young people who have a stake in future of tech and
new media in New York City." I met a bunch of cool people and I look forward to the next NextNY meetup. It was great to talk technology and startups with a bunch of similarly motivated people. I think these events show how vibrant the NYC tech and startup community is.
technorati tags:nyc, tech, meetup, nextny
