Not a Geek? Then Come to geekSessions! Pre-event Critique Included.
I’m not a true geek. I eat real food, live in a real apartment, shower daily, and have nothing to do with programming. But I still go to Geeksessions. It’s a monthly event organized by Christian Perry from SF Beta, Shon Burton, and Cindy Phung from The Forbin Group. This month’s theme is Web Infrastructure: Surviving The “Hockey Stick,” but one our panelists doesn’t exactly fit into this topic…
It’s 2PM now and the event doesn’t start till 6, so how about we begin the critiquing now?
The first speaker on the list is Jonathan Abrams. Let’s read what the geekSessions website says about him:
Jonathan is an award-winning serial entrepreneur who created the pioneering social networking service Friendster in 2002.
Friendster screwed up bigtime, yet he’s an award-winning serial entrepreneur? He founded Socializr, but has it really gone anywhere yet? I remember speaking to a programmer at Friendster who mentioned who the website was incredibly slow. My friends noticed that it was difficult to do anything on the website as it grew. If the event is called “Surviving the Hockeystick,” how has Friendster in any way done this? They didn’t survive the hockeystick! I can see good advice coming from a guy who failed, but the “award-winning” part seems a bit exaggerated.
Jonathan is the inventor of a United States Patent for a “System, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks.
He’s a patent holder for the social networking concept! Dang. I’d like to see him sue Facebook and Myspace to protect his intellectual property. Wouldn’t that be interesting.
The next two speakers, Ron Gorodetzky from Digg, and Sandy Jen from Meebo have nothing interesting about them for me to critique. They helped grow two really awesome websites, so more props to them. (notice the digg button below this post and the meebo chat widget that used to be on my blog)
OK – I might have been slightly harsh. I love Geeksessions. It’s my favorite event because of the amazing people who attend. I met three good friends at the last event, so I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Stay tuned for my after-event writeup.
Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She’s currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com and Jessicamah.com.
August 1st, 2007 at 11:36 am
Being someone with 2 patents to my name and a contribution on a third, I think the lawsuit factor of having a patent isn’t terribly relevant — he who can afford the best lawyers wins, every time. The patent is useful because the process requires a structured examination of how you developed the process/product at work. Having met Mr Abrams at Socializr, I don’t think he’s the type who would go willy nilly and sue everyone for patent infringement.