If you haven't been to a TECH cocktail.. it's simply an experience. Wow. It was a continuous stream of chaos and ideas... friendly faces, both new and old... some tasty drinks... and it was a complete and total blur. I didn't go more than 30 seconds without being introduced to someone, running into someone, or being grilled for information.

Some highlights of the festivities:

Over the weekend, a fellow DCian and friend - Jimmy Gardner - asked a simple question that I've been kicking around for a while. Since he put it so eloquently, I'll use his words:

There is obviously a lot of good things happening here in the DC area with regards to our local tech community and some of the startups that are being born out of it. But I can’t help but feel that many of us here have developed a bit of a complex, whether we know it or not.

This was just a couple days after Aaron Brazell aka Technosailor said something else that sparked my interest:

This is what I get for not tracking my schedule more closely...

On the 27th of February - yes, less than two weeks from now - I will be participating in a panel discussion from the Web Content Mavens group in downtown DC.

Here are the details:

Via the highly esteemed and very local Justin Thorp, I learned about Widget DevCamp DC over the 25th and 26th of this month (January 2008 for the archives):

WidgetDevCamp is a DevCamp/BarCamp-style event for anyone interested in modular social app develpment -- widgets, Facebook, OpenSocial, the works. It will be a chance for discussion, learning, and maybe even some collaborative hacking. The goal is to share information on the latest topics in social app and widget development, going past the hype and gettign into the guts.

This is a bit different some of the other recent events like Startup Weekend or BarCampDC. Startup Weekend is really focused on taking a concept and turning it into a company after a single weekend of marathon hacking and bizdev. BarCamp on the other hand is focused on sharing ideas and concepts of what is going on out there in the wider world outside of your little circle...