Thursday, May 29, 2008

Tech Cocktail Chicago 8

Although I didn't make it to the conference today, I did check out the Tech Cocktail networking event held at John Barleycorn on North Clark Street this evening in Chicago. I met quite a few great people there, some new friends and some I've known for quite a while.

I made a few circuits of the room and it was clear that everyone was having a pretty good time. Among the sponsors, I did get to check out the product offered by Kirix (thanks Aaron for walking me through!), which offers a "data browser" tool that I could see some definite uses for.

In the past, I have sometimes looked upon events like this with a jaundiced eye. You put a drink in somebody's hand and drop him or her into a large, very loud room and it gets pretty hard to network. But network people did and quite aggressively. I was really surprised and impressed by how outgoing most folks were. This is an involved community of technologists who are trying to solve real business problems. As recruiters, this is precisely where we need to be. Log out of those job boards, friends, and meet me in the room where all the big brains go!

Based on tonight, I think that this is one event I'll definitely be attending on a regular basis. See you at Tech Cocktail Chicago 9.

1 comments:

Tim Bailen said...

Kirix does indeed look sweet, especially it's ability to grab data from so many different sources. Did you see the demo video? [http://videos.kirix.com/screencast/overview.html] Jump in at minute 2:30 where they import area code to state mappings from a web page, and build a relationship with phone numbers in a database table. Boom! Instantly you have a new column showing which states a call came from. Very cool. Thanks for the lead!