I knew once I’d gone over to see what was happening at BarCamp Miami a few weeks back, that something was happening in Miami’s tech scene that deserved paying attention to.
Yeah, i’d seen some meetup and local Facebook groups that looked tangential to what I’d been interested in, but it was when Mike Gibaldi from Business Wire — with whom I’ve been dealing since issuing press releases for startups with which I was involved back in Miami dot.com days — pointed me toward the guys at Scrapblog and I found out they had offices right down the street from mine and I didn’t even know, that I sensed something might be happening here that I was unaware of.
So, that BarCamp Miami visit provided the opportunity to meet Scrapblog’s Alex de Carvalho and Jason Baptiste of Publictivity. Alex mentioned he wanted to start a Mobile Monday Miami group, which really got my attention. And, then he sent me the Facebook invite to Refresh Miami’s second anniversary party. Hmmm, second anniversary … like two years this has been going on?!?
Started in a first meeting at a local Starbucks by Alex, Brian Breslin of infinimedia, Rebecca Saylor and three others (sorry, names escape me for now), Refresh Miami has been this subrosa community of geeks, developers and Internet entrepreneurs that is finally helping to reinvigorate the Miami tech scene from the grassroots up.
It is so refreshingly unlike the dot.com days here in Miami. No suits, no VCs just flown in from the Valley, no investment bankers looking to take somebody public, no lawyers handing out cards and wanting to get in on the deals. The talk is about technology and apps and projects and what people are up to, not about shares and options and exit strategies.
Last night’s Refresh Miami Second Anniversary Party was at the Brikolodge Miami Coworking Space, an upstairs loft space in the heart of the Wynwood warehouse district — not at all like the wild Miami Beach and Brickell venues of the dot.com blowout party days, much more akin to the no frills art spaces that make Wynwood the heart of the contemporary art scene here throughout the year. (You can see Alex’s flickr photo stream from the party, here.)
All in all, it seems much more authentic, much more transparent, much more real than Miami dot.com … which is prompting me to do a series on this blog along the lines of “Miami dot.com to Web 2.0: what have we learned?” More to come on that soon …
UPDATE: Alex Harris video on YouTube of the Refresh Miami 2nd Anniversary Party
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1 May, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Hey Michael,
Thanks for writing such a glowing post about what we’ve been up to. Glad you were able to make it out, and hope we will see you at many more events in the future.
I am definitely going to be tweeting this
1 May, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Thanks for the great post, Michael!
I created a Flickr set to group last night’s photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adc/sets/72157604832328851/
Thank you for your help with Mobile Monday, see you soon!
1 May, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Thanks Michael, you linked to the wrong rebecca saylor on Facebook – here’s my profile. It was great meeting you!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=528242779 or my scrapblog profile is:
http://www.scrapblog.com/rebecca
Rebecca
1 May, 2008 at 3:52 pm
One difference that was obvious to me last night were that many of the people were entrepreneurs but unlike the dot.com days it seems like more of them roll up their sleeves and do the work themselves or in pairs. And, I didn’t sense as much of the go-go capitalism that seemed so much a part of the dot.com era.
I left too early, but would have liked to have met more people. I’m hoping that the momentum I saw last night keeps up. I’ve been away from these circles way too long. Almost makes me want to be a reporter again. Almost.
Hey, you forgot that along with those VCs and suits, I think they also flew in sluts.
2 May, 2008 at 10:31 am
thanks, all. and apologies, rebecca … correcting that link now. look forward to seeing you all at the next event!
7 May, 2008 at 9:08 am
I agree- it IS nice to see a community sprouting up in an organic way to help lead the digital charge. We have been producing content on behalf of our clients as well as on our own behalf for the last two years. We continue to blog and produce podcasts that try and help the uninitiated make sense of all this new media stuff. I sometimes feel like we were all alone in evangelizing, so it’s nice to see there is a vibrant and sincere community.
7 May, 2008 at 9:25 am
thanks for the comment, matthew. And, congrats on your blogging anniversary at http://pinhighpod.typepad.com/clearcast/.
look forward to meeting up at the next Refresh Miami event.
8 May, 2008 at 5:07 am
[...] Michael Tangeman posted about RefreshMiami, comparing it to the First Tuesdays and such of the early dot.com days: “It is so refreshingly unlike the dot.com days here in Miami. No suits, no VCs just flown in from the Valley, no investment bankers looking to take somebody public, no lawyers handing out cards and wanting to get in on the deals. The talk is about technology and apps and projects and what people are up to, not about shares and options and exit strategies.” [...]