First ever Tech Crunch / Crunch Gear Meetup - National blog comes to Columbus

Last night , John Biggs, a writer with Crunch Gear/Tech Crunch, held a informal meetup at Surly Girl . Turns out he was visiting his family in Columbus and wanted to get to meet some of the local entrepreneurs/technologists. In good old web 2.0 fashion he posted a notice on his blog that he was a holding a meetup. I got word of it through Alvin Borromeo and posted it to our meetup site and voila - a standing room only meetup with what seemed to be 100 attendees.

Here's an excerpt of what he had to say:

"I was amazed at the energy and excitement here in my hometown, good old Columbus. I met the guy who sold me a car this weekend and the guy who invented the PowerSquid. There are a few start-ups and products I’m going to highlight this week and I’m pleased to say that these folks are amazingly excited and enthusiastic, even in a down economy. Here’s to you, Columbus. I’ve been so coast-centric this decade that I failed to see your true worth and the beauty of your bar culture. "

Click here to see his total post and pics on the aftermath of the meetup.

A big shout out to some folks I chatted with last night (click on the links to check them out)

• Brian Zuercher, Steve Krause,  and Brad Griffith at Clearwish  - a incredibly talented trio who are going places
  
• Brad Dunnington at Avalinx - Their iphone game 21Pro is a garnering kudos and attention from Apple- over 750,0000 downloads
  
• Alan Arman at 3XSystems - They're out of beta and winning customers with their remote backup appliance
• Shawn Stevens at ShareThis - ShareThis has moved to Cinci but Shawn has stayed in Powell
• Rini Pakra at Pakragames - Raising some money to help fuel the growth of her game based working learning solutions business
• Alvin Borromeo  - a unsung linchpin in connecting our tech community
• Todd Sharp at Slidesix - drove 2 hours from Medina to join us - he's developed a multimedia enabled presentation sharing platform
• Brian Lockrey at Assist Data Recovery and Twitter Groups - entrepreneur, university prof, and all around good guy
• Angela Siefer at Shiny Door - Social Media Maven
• Lewis Howes at Trident Design - Sports Networker | LinkedIn Expert | Professional Athlete | Inventor
• Joe O'Brien at EdgeCase - A leading software development team
• Jay Donovan at Ologie - A mobile device blogger at mobilitysite
  
• Jason Blanton at Sterling - Social media maverick and blogger
  
• Ryan Jones - Ohio U IT grad who's got an eye for startups /organizing events/entrepreneurship
  
• Michael Cordingley - another Ohio U grad - smart guy looking for an opportunity in Columbus
• Scott Blickhan at Dawson - starting to dip his toe into the world of social media - glad to have you on board 
  
• Mark Gilicinski at Now Software - VP at (yes you read correctly) Mac software development group here in Cbus 
  

Way to go Columbus,

Peace out,
Ben

P.S. To get the advance notice of these type of events register on the Columbus Tech Life meetup