I’m definitely not a real-time blogger, but I can take pictures. It’s actually very cool as people are taking pictures and uploading them as the conference is running and they are showing them on the overhead from time to time. Here you can see my Podcamp Atlanta 2007 pictures on Flickr. And you can see other people’s Podcamp Atlanta pictures:

• podcampatlanta2007
• podcampatlanta
• podcamp

conferences, flickr, people, personalurl, pictures, podcamp, podcampatlanta, podcampatlanta2007, podcasts, web2.0

Last night was the third meeting of the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs, a Meetup group that I started this past December. Although the first two meetings in January and February were "just getting started" outings, this was the first event that made me think "Hey, we can really pull off something great here!" And that is why I finally decide to go ahead and blog about it [1].

I’ve been in Atlanta for most of my life and the positive, community-oriented, grassroots entrepreneurial tech culture thriving in San Francisco and Boston and has been all but none-existent in the modern era. Atlanta has been a Fortune 1000 town [2]; its high tech community has either chased big business dollars or been of the "get rich quick" dotbomb variety [3], or both. And those who prostrate to major corporations or indenture to venture capitalists are rarely of the "rising tide float all boats" ethos interested in the types of business communities I’ve yearned to be involved in.

Most readers of this blog know that web technologies have evolved to the point anyone with reasonable intelligence and enough passion can create a successful online business; no deep technical knowledge and only a tiny amount of startup capital required. That level of empowerment has unleashed latent entrepreneurial aspirations worldwide. The new-style online businesses people are creating may or may not be a jackpot like YouTube has been for its founders, but they can provide a great living for those involved.

And that excites me. But what really excites me more is, with events like SoCon07, Podcamp Atlanta, and others it’s evident the community-oriented entrepreneurial web ethos that I’ve so longed has finally arrived in Atlanta!

I won’t take any credit for Atlantans new interest in building agile online businesses as none would be deserved. But I will say I’m now doing what I can to help catalyze this transformation of Atlanta’s entrepreneurial web landscape in hopes to see as supportive an ecosystem emerge as those found in the aforementioned Boston and San Francisco.

Wish us luck!

Footnotes

1. For a rundown of our third meeting, see my next post at PaperbackSwap founder speaks to Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs.
2. Atlanta’s Fortune 1000 include Home Depot, UPS, Coca Cola, BellSouth (now of AT&T), Delta Airlines, Southern Company, SunTrust, Genuine Parts, and Cox Communications to name a few.
3. Atlanta’s notable exceptions to the dotbomb moniker have been Mindspring/Earthlink, JBoss, and Internet Security Systems.

atlwebentrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, events, flickr, meetup.com, photos, podcamp, Web, web2.0

Well, yes as I’ve already said, I’m not a super-timely blogger. I should have blogged this long ago, but ah well. Anyway, Amber Rhea of The Georgia Podcast Network organized a Podcamp here in Atlanta for this weekend March 16-18 2007 at Emory University. An as of yesterday when I asked, Amber said that she had 185 people registered! Wow. Another event like SoCon07; I can’t wait!

But this one is going to be special for me as I get to hold my first discussion on Saturday about User-Centered URL Design. What’s that got to do with Podcasting, you ask? I’m not sure either, but Amber assurred me that attendees would be interested. :-) But seriously, podcasters has many of the same issues to address that everyone publishing on the web should consider including usable URLs for their audio files as well as the website that hosts them.

I look forward to some likely discussions!

atlwebentrepreneurs, conferences, events, groups, meetup.com, people, podcamp, podcasts, urldesign

I’ve never really blogged before about Atlanta because (except for this) I’ve never felt there was much interesting happening here, at least not from the perspective of things that interest me to blog about. But that’s finally changing!

I’ve been in Atlanta for most of my life, and my professional career has spanned exactly 20 years next month. I’ve also been in the entrepreneurial high-tech side of things but for the most part have always felt on the outside looking in. Sure there has been a lot of high-tech companies focused on serving our fortune 500 crowd, and there are tons of real estate entrepreneurs. However, I’ve never felt like there have been others interested in developer and web-related startups like I have always been. That is until now!

Several weeks ago (okay, I’ve never been a timely blogger…) I attended an unconference called SoCon07 put on by Sherry Heyl, Leonard Witt, Jeff Haynie, Josh Hallett, James Harris, and Jonas Luster (if I missed or overcredited anyone, I apologize in advance.)

The event was actually incredible. Held in the nether regions of Atlanta (okay, that’s OTP a few miles) at Kennesaw State University. There were somewhere over 200 people in attendance, and the Friday night before there was a dinner held for any interested attendees. It was incredibly rewarding to get to meet so many other bright and passionate people interested in web-oriented startups and/or social media here in my good ole’ hometown of Atlanta, GA!

I’m going to shout out for a handful of other people I’ve met recently who were at SoCon07. Someone I had met socially last year, Grayson Daughters of The Spacey Gracy Review/blog and Producer and one of the Personalities for the TrueGritz satire site was busy doin her thang.

And then there was Amber Rhea and Rusty Tanton of the Georgia Podcast Network as well as the organizers of PodCamp Atlanta. And of course my good friend Eric Winter of Webicus. As well as many others I just met and whom I hope to soon get to know better.

amberrhea, conferences, emory, events, podcamp, socialmedia, socon07, urldesign, web2.0