dangerouslyawesome

Back in the spring, I wrote about Dave Troy organizing Social Dev Camp East, and an address of a 37 signals blog post about building web companies outside of San Francisco.

Social Dev Camp East II

I unfortunately missed the first Social Dev Camp East, though I DID finally get to meet Dave when I was in Vienna for Amy and Thomas Fuchs’ wedding back in September. Dave’s a great east coast entrepreneur and social technology developer, and I’m excited that he’s got Social Dev Camp East II coming up in just a couple of weeks.

On November 1st, a few hundred of the east coast’s finest social technologists will gather at the University of Baltimore to for a day of exchange and creation, relationship and application building alike.

There’s WAY more info on the Facebook event, and even more on the wiki. The event is fast approaching capacity, so sign up soon. If you’re in Philly and planning on going, reach out and we’ll try to carpool.

New Work City Kickoff Party

One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to be in two places at once. In the mean time, I’m planning on driving really, really fast between Baltimore and Manhattan because later in the evening on November 1st, Tony Bacigalupo and the team behind New Work City will be having a launch party to celebrate their opening of their Manhattan community-powered coworking space. I’m so excited for this because it’s such a long time coming. Just a few weeks ago Tony remained uncertain as to whether or not it could happen. Now they’ve secured desks at an office at 200 Varick St, sharing space with consulting firm element^n.

The party goes down at 8pm until “2am”, but I know what it’s like to party with Tony and doubt we’ll call it at 2. The Facebook is the place to RSVP, and you can be certain that it’s not to be missed. If you heard about the insanity that went down at the IndyHall anniversary party, a good number of the same people will be making the trip from afar. I’m quite excited. You should be too.

Moments after reading the inspiring post by 37 Signals post about why NOT to be in San Francisco, I got this Facebook Message from Dave Troy (of the highly addicting Twittervision) regarding the upcoming SocialDevCamp East that excites me very, very much. So much, in fact, that I wanted to share:

Subject: The Revolution Begins in Baltimore

Hey folks,

As we gear up for SocialDevCamp East in Baltimore on May 10, one of the things that we’d like to highlight is the diversity of Web 2.0 talent available here on the east coast.

The conventional wisdom today says that to make it as a social startup, you should a) move to San Francisco (preferably East Bay or SOMA), b) meet a bunch of cool people (natch), c) get funded (cake!), d) get featured in TechCrunch, e) build your startup to 500,000 users, f) get snapped up in an early acquisition by Google for $90M, g) repeat.

For lots of reasons, the odds of this working are low and getting lower. Why? For one, this is the conventional wisdom; everybody’s doing it, why shouldn’t you? Loads of ditto-heads are creating a glut of ideas. They all can’t win.

Second, VC investments are often a trailing indicator of successful business sectors. VCs follow what has worked previously, which leads to persistent failures at the end of a business cycle. Why else do you think they need to rely on outrageous 100x returns? To make up for their last round of losses.

Why do you live where you do? Family, a partner, school, friends, or do you simply love where you live? There are countless talented people who have made the same choice as you, and they’ve made this choice not as a runner-up to a life of glory in the Bay area. They’ve made the choice as a matter of personal identity and conviction.

As I meet members of the tech business community along the east coast, I hear two things consistently. One, that the Bay area is getting weird these days, and that they are “all smoking the same air.” Second, that the “VC community doesn’t get it here,” and that it’s hard to get funding and launch a web-based startup on the east coast.

Sorry, but we can’t have it both ways. We must choose: do you want to live in the Bay Area and sustain the vagaries of that echo-chamber culture, or do you want to grow where you’re planted and build viable businesses here?

The fact is that we can’t expect to improve the tech startup climate on the east coast if we don’t come together and make it what we want it to be. And that means we need to stop looking over our shoulder at the west coast and start building businesses here and now, using telework, co-work, or traditional workspaces.

The 37signals blog covered this topic today, and reflected many of my opinions on the subject: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/987-are-you-sure-you-want-to-be-in-san-francisco

This is part of what we want to address at SocialDevCamp East. If we want to have a thriving startup culture here, we need to build it — one relationship at a time.

Best, Dave

Ironically…I found out about this event from the guy who seems to always be hooked into everything in San Francisco…and still manages to keep on enough of the pulse on the East Coast to be one step ahead of me. Thanks Chris. Someday, I’ll know about something before you do. Someday.