Web innovators in Boston

It's not just Silicon Valley

WebInno, founded by David Beisel of Venrock, is a Boston based Web Innovators Group where startups can demo their stuff to the tech community.

Last night, there were three startups that presented on stage (Main Dish) and eight other startups that showed their stuff at tables (Side Dish) around the perimeter of the room. There were hundreds of people, my guess is 800, in attendance.

Main Dish

• Totspot - a place for parents to publish a page about their kids and share with family and friends.
• Webnotes - a tool that helps you create and manage online annotations. Very similar to Onfolio.
• Zeer - a grocery product community that helps people "believe in what they buy." Connects people to product information, consumer communities, and buying advice.

Side Dish

• 211me - Personalized mobile mashups
• WordChamp - Free online language learning
• PaperG - Local online advertising
• Creaturepark / Ingeeni Studios - Games
• YouCastr - Interactive sports streaming
• LuckyCal - Mixes together information from your calendar with public events to find events that might interest you.
• Snipd - Stealth mode. No idea what they are doing. 
• Tikatok - Kids create their own stories - and publish those stories into books for friends and family.

The audience voted Zeer as the best presentation/idea. I liked WebNotes, but found myself comparing it to JJ Allaire's Onfolio, and asking what is different?

WebInno is a great Boston Web 2.0 networking event for upcoming startups and "all the usual suspects" in the tech community. I saw Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot), Ben Saren (CitySquares), Matt Douglas (Punchbowl Software), Shawn Broderick (TrustPlus), Karim Nurani (Trinet), Reed Sturtevant (Microsoft), Mike Tyrrell (Venrock), Mike Werner (Web Studio Project) and bloggers Chris Herot, and Pito Salas. I was surprised, and delighted, to see Kevin Marks from Google. Kevin is based in Mountain View and is the evangelist for Open Social. I am sure Scott Kirsner (Boston Globe) and David Cancel (Lookery) were there somewhere but I didn't see them in the masses of mayhem.

Thanks to David Beisel for organizing the WebInno event. In October I am organizing an event with David focused on web advertising networks - opportunities and challenges.

Upcoming Boston events

Software Industry Conference 2008 - July 17-19 [Register] This is the Shareware Software conference hosted in Boston this year. Microsoft is a sponsor.

TECH Cocktail Boston 2, Boston - July 24th, 6:30PM
Tequila Rain by Fenway Park [ REGISTER ] I went to the Tech Cocktail last year and it was a huge success in terms of turnout. So many people it was hard to move around or carry on a conversation, but a great party, lots of technology people that you don't see on the conference circuit.

YCombinator will debut its new batch of startups at their annual Investor Day on August 14th in Boston.