Last week was my first TechCrunch MeetUp in Boston. We took over a club called the Estate right near the Boston Common. About 800 people came, and I think I talked to half of them. Mike was regaling the other half. And our CEO Heather, who put this all together (Mike and I just showed up to gab), was making sure everything went off without a hitch. It was hard to move more than a few steps without hearing another startup pitch, shaking a venture capitalist’s hand, or bumping into another blogger like Nick Carr, Allen Stern or Don Dodge. One TechCrunch fan drove all the way from Virginia to attend the event. See pictures from TechCrunch Boston here and here.
The highlight for me was meeting some great entrepreneurs and learning about some new startups (some still in stealth) that I will be writing about soon. NowHound, a search engine for live Web video, launched at the MeetUp. And OurStage, MyPunchBowl, MZinga and TripAdvisor all celebrated new product launches. I caught up with a number of companies on video here, hosted courtesy of Brightcove. (And the OurStage camera crew helped us shoot it). Also check out Andy Plesser’s interview of MZinga here. Please send additional links of your own coverage to us, and we’ll add them to our Boston MeetUp page.
One thing I learned about TechCrunch MeetUps is that there are really good prizes. We gave away an iPhone from CrunchGear’s own iPhone Hacking Station. ZoomInfo gave away a Wii console. 
Moola matched up two TechCrunch Boston MeetUp audience members in a live head-to-head online game of “Hi/Lo” on Moola.com for $5,242.88 (or level 20 on Moola’s Tower) with Boston-area attendee Ross Levanto winning the game and taking the prize; see the coverage here. Perkett PR and MyPunchbowl served some specialty cocktails. I tried the TechPunch, but never quite made it to the wine bar hosted by Wine Library TV. It’s not easy being the host.
Video from the event:
Coverage of the event elsewhere: Don Dodge, Allen Stern, Chris Brogan, Melissa Chang, Dan Schwabel, MarksGuide, MyPunchBlog, Christopher Herot and Mike’s Flickr photos.
Thank You Sponsors
Thanks again to our nineteen event sponsors who made Friday’s Boston MeetUp possible.
Please take a few minutes to learn about the services of our hosts on our dedicated Boston MeetUp page and here. New video will be uploaded as we receive additional highlights, so please check back for the latest coverage.
Event Co-Host:
IDG Ventures Boston: early-stage venture capital firm with $280 million under management. The firm is focused on investing in consumer, information and life sciences technology companies. IDGVB portfolio companies that will be represented at TechCrunch MeetUp Boston include Acinion, BzzAgent, go2 Media, GuildCafe, Infobright, Mall Networks, MOBIVOX, SimpleTuition, Transpera and VidSys. Thanks again to general partners David Aronoff, Jeff Bussgang, Michael Greeley and Chip Hazard for co-hosting the event with TechCrunch.
Partner and Product Launch Sponsors:
Brightcove: the market-leading Internet TV platform, used by media businesses around the world to distribute and monetize direct-to-consumer, broadband video programming. See the Brightcove player in action on our Boston MeetUp 11 page.
Moola: has created a “Massively Multi-player Rewards Game” (MMRG) that is half loyalty program and half super-jackpot game show with 175,000+ member community.
Mzinga: provides workplace and customer community solutions that transform business processes to produce a more energized workforce, greater customer loyalty, and positive bottom line impact.
OurStage: is the only purely democratic online competition where the fans decide who’s the best in emerging music, film and video.
TripAdvisor: is used 25 million people each month to start their travel plans and who are pioneering the next generation of online travel guides.
ZoomInfo: a business information search engine used to quickly find information about 3.5 million companies and 40 million business people.
Communications Sponsor
PerkettPR, Inc.: provides results-based communications solutions for emerging Web 2.0 companies and established technology leaders.
Product Sponsors
Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment: is intelligently connecting gamers on a massive scale with its innovative Social Networks at Play™ (SNAP) games.
CoreBlox: is all about enabling people to easily locate and exchange information.
NowHound: is the Internet’s first live-media search, and is launching out of stealth mode tonight during the TechCrunch Boston Meetup.
Power Play Development Corporation is the parent company of Poker Creations, a gaming software development company and National League of Poker, the Internet’s leading poker-centric social media portal.
MyPunchbowl: is a new website for event and party planning with unique features such as: “Pick a Date”, “Save the Date”, “Party Checklist” and more.
SnapYap: is an exciting new suite of live video communications tools, the first of which is launching during the TechCrunch Boston MeetUp. Check out SnapYap’s video wall of the MeetUp.
Event Sponsors
Prism VentureWorks: is a Westwood, MA and Santa Monica, CA based venture capital firm built by experienced entrepreneurs in technology and life sciences with approximately $1.25 billion in capital under management across five funds.
You Be the VC: equal parts incubator and American Idol, is a competition to find the best new entrepreneurs in the U.S.
We’d like to also thank Memo Media for digital event signage; Gary Vaynerchuk at Wine Library TV for fabulours wine; and EventBrite for seamless ticket management for MeetUp attendees.
(Photo courtesy Erik Kastner)
Looks like a great time! wish I could have been there.
I believe it’s Boston Common, not Commons.
Good job putting this together. Who said there’s no money in blogging ?
Cheers
Sahar
http://www.conceptualist.com
Erick, thanks to all of you for making this happen, it was a great time and exciting to see such a great turnout. Any idea if/when there will be a TC Boston 2?
Thank you for bringing this event to Boston. I had such a great time meeting and connecting with everyone!
I’m with Mark; I’d love to hear if there’s a TechCrunch Boston 2 in the works.
TechCrunch DC in the works? The road trip to Boston was a bit more than I imagined, but worth it. Mike, Erick and Heather put on a first class gig, and congrats to Mzinga for a great launch.
Amanda and Mark - this will almost certainly be a yearly event in Boston. Everyone who attended was so great. I had an absolutely great time.
Michael, Erick, and Heather, You guys are awesome! Thanks for coming to Boston. It was a great event for the startp community here.
I met several people from New York, Virginia, and other states who made the trip up to Boston. That is dedication.
Can’t wait for the next TechCrunh Meetup.
Don Dodge
Really great time all around!!! Can’t wait for the next one! I met a lot of really cool people. Amazed by the amount of music companies founded in boston.
PS much thanks to Michael, Techcrunch, IDG, and the rest of the sponsors for the whole thing.
Thanks to Heather, Mike, Erick and Perkett PR for setting up a wonderful event. I took a train for 4.5 hours the next day to get back to Manhattan, but it was well worth the trip. If you throw more Boston parties out there next year I would love to be invited. Thanks again and I hope to meet you, Erick, at the next one- great meetup!
Wow, seven women. Ouch.
shouldn’t these “sponsored” links be nofollow?
Why should pay per post get penalized by google.. and not techcrunch?
this is why google is two-faced.
Where is my invite?
Congrats and all that, but it goes against the spirit of the Internet, as well as the business model of just about all of the startups involved, to have to physically congregate in one location to get something done.
It would be nice if the media, startups and VC’s could get projects off the ground without having to clock air miles or book into hotel rooms.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a party as much as the next guy, but the way TechCrunch has been doing things lately, people that are not willing to travel to the US are pretty much shut out from the action.
I miss my home city, I love that dirty water, I hate this stinking valley, bring me home, bring me home.
Oh, Kendall Square, where all the real technology was truly invented and not merely hyped.
Wow, Dan I only counted 4 women, I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough…
Heather, Mike, Erick, Perkett & IDG Ventures - Great event. I’m with Mzinga and we enjoyed the opportunity to get our word out to New England tech/social media world! My post about the launch is here: http://tinyurl.com/2ypsmn.
Looking forward to next year!