I've been to way too many events and conferences over the past year. Actually, it was a little over a year ago that I first flew out to see San Francisco! Since then, I've been a frequent at many meetups and dozens of tech/business related conferences. Here's my list of the top events I've been to and why they were so great:

1) South by Southwest 2008: Best Overall Conference

Words cannot describe how amazing the South by Southwest conference was. So many of you readers and friends of readers contacted me in order to convince me to go. I was skeptical, but after speaking to dozens of you, I was convinced to go. I only made it for the last three days, but I feel drained mentally and physically from the amazing experience. What made it so great?

First and foremost, the people were smart, courteous, and fun. They came to SxSW with an enthusiastic attitude. There were plenty of fun geeks and few "marketing" people. At the web 2.0 conference, there were way too many self serving biz dev people who were out to pitch and promote their companies. At SxSW, the geeks were there to have fun. Some people call SxSW the spring break for geeks. I'll have to agree.

Even when the day's conference is over, the day has just begun! There are sooo many parties to choose from. Each night, there were at least ten events to choose from. If the popular events had long lines, just start your own party! I'm definitely planning on returning next year. In a few months, maybe I'll gather a few friends and reserve the Presidential Suite in the Hilton. We'll throw our own parties :)

2) GeekSessions 1.1: Best Tech Meetup

This was definitely the best informal cocktail event I've been to for many reasons. Before going, I had envisioned it as being a high-caliber meet-up for super smart and super cool techies. My guess was completely spot on. Firstly, it was invite only. Like all good conferences, you primarily go for the people. If the people are good, the experience is good. Since then, Geeksessions has opened up registration for all and I've met fewer people since. Maybe it's just the fact that I know so many people who go there already!

Secondly, the conference organizers were able to manage the work-play balance that all events need. There's usually both an educational and a networking component to these events. The trick is not having too little or too much of either, and GeekSessions did that amazingly well. Strict 5-10 minute deadlines per speaker helps the situation.

3) Supernova 2007: Best Professional Cocktail Gathering:

The Supernova cocktail party, like every other event I endorse, had high caliber people socializing with each other. The conference was open to all. That is, to anyone who could afford the $2800 price tag. What's better than being in a room filled with free drinks, great appetizers, and seasoned entrepreneurs? The event attracted an older crowd, but most people knew what they were talking about.

Worst Event: PowerShift

I felt reserved about writing about the worst event I've been to, but I decided that it would be ok given that I remained objective with my reasoning.

PowerShift was basically a conference to combat global climate change. I'm all for fixing this problem, but the conference itself was despicable in relation to the dozens I've been to. I can probably predict why: The attendees were of low caliber. There were 6,000 attendees, none of them paid more than $25 for their conference badge, and most had very little background in global climate change and activism. I know this because I asked many attendees the following questions:

- how do you know global climate change is happening?

- what do we do to fix it?

- why should conservative money-obsessed republicans worry about this issue?

Most people came off as being ignorant and self-absorbed "activists." And yes, there is a negative stereotype for activists, and yes, most people at this conference fit into that stereotype. If anything, I left that conference learning why politicians feel reserved when dealing with teenage activists. I'm a liberal democrat, I believe that we need to fix global climate change, and I believe that rallying against the "rich republican capitalists" is the wrong route to take.

One may counter-argue my reasoning by saying, "isn't the point of a conference for people to learn?" Sure, but half of the learning happens in the networking with your knowledgeable peers! And if most of them aren't, you're at a loss.

But to the people who organized my top three rated events: Good job! I've since decided to cut back on my event-going to do REAL work, but I'll forever be loyal to the select few events that are able to attract brilliant minds. I'm quite confident that we can already add the TED conference to the 2009 list. :)

Plenty more to come!

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.

One of the organizers for the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam sent me an email that expressed interest in having me speak there. He asks what I'm interested in talking about. Honestly, I think the better question is what are adults interested in hearing about from a 17 year old's perspective?

I'm at a loss. I have so many different ideas, but I don't know what you guys want to know from me! Please email me with ideas and I'll be sure to give you credit if I end up presenting. :)

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. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star. (and traveling to random cities and checking into hotels while being underage)

So many books talk about how entrepreneurs did this or did that, but it's all about the team. I didn't do jack compared to my counterparts. I found a few super motivated kids my age who wanted to join in on the business venture, and we split the work out depending on where our skill sets were. I did business, sales, marketing, and intermediate level tech support. Alan was a hardcore techy. Tyler filled in for both me and Alan. This brings me to my next lesson from when I supposedly ran a business back when I was 13: Your team matters more than you do. Make them happy, and they'll save you when you need them most.

Mishap #1: (4 months in business, 300 customers) I was driving down the freeway with my family on a rainy day in July. We were driving up the Jersey Coast, going to our next vacation destination. All of my responsibilities were temporarily designated to one of my co-founders, Tyler, and I received a terrible phone call:

"Hey umm... our servers are down! All of our customers are bitching at us!"

Oh. Bloody. Hell. We had downtime for the next 48 hours and eventually found out that one of our customers, once again, was phishing. In other words, somebody with an account on our primary machine was pretending to be PayPal and sent out fake emails. All of this from OUR server. This cost the company a few hundred dollars in revenue and thousands more in potential business, but it was a good lesson that I learned young. a) invest in security, b) figure out ways to get your customers online if such a problem ever happened, c) compensate them for having suffered through your stupidity, and d) be transparent and honest as to what happened. We failed to do all of the above when we needed to. Fortunately, we learned from these mistakes. We ended up giving out heavily discounted services and emailing updates to customers when they suffered through our careless mistakes.

Mishap #2: (9 months in business, 700 customers) I was in a hotel room on December 31st a few years ago. It was 11:59 and 15 seconds (+/- 10 seconds) and suddenly I get a phone call. Of course, another problem while I'm trying to enjoy my vacation. Co-founder Tyler tells me that some f**khead hacked into all of our servers and wiped off our clients' accounts. Not. Funny. Except this time, we learned from our mistakes. My other co-founder, Alan, was also a nerdy Asian. He was brilliant. An absolute genius. He found out what happened and he patched the problems up within 15 minutes by reverting to our backup machines. Since this was new years, nobody was looking. We were so fast with getting things back online that not a single customer sent us a support ticket. This brings me to my next super important lesson: Always critique yourself and learn from your mistakes. If something terrible happens, (such as if some dickhead deletes all of your customers' accounts,) then learn. Figure out what happened, patch it up, and promise that it'll never ever happen again in the future. And if somehow it does, you're going to lose business.

More to come on my stories from when I was a stupid, arrogant, teenage entrepreneur!

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. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Update: Jajah.com contacted me within 30 minutes of publishing this post... they got me a temporary account ASAP, and had the credit card problem fixed in under 24 hours. That's what I call superb customer support. Now if only my Jajah Firefox sidebar didn't screw up constantly...

Original Post: Firstly, I love Jajah when it works. It's a great concept that I've spent so much time using ever since coming to college. For those out of sync from the tech startup world,

Jajah lets you call from any landline for 3 cents a minute just by typing in your phone number and the destination phone number while logged into a Jajah account.

In any event, I had about $1 and my credit card died on me. Secretary says I maxed it out, so I decide to use up the rest of my account balance. I finally get down to my final cent, and as I'm having a bonding experience with my mom over the phone, it disconnects us! So far, no fault to Jajah. So I log back in, change my credit card number, and it says that I can't pay with this new card because I'm already paid with another card. But doesn't that defeat the purpose of me "changing credit cards?" Why even give me the option if you won't let me do it! Observe:

Notice how I only have 1 attempt left... that's after trying two different credit cards, both confirmed working. (Tested by purchasing "How to Win Friends and Influence People" for my mother just a few minutes after my botched payment attempt) OK - Point is, there's nothing more frustrating than finding a product you love only to find that the company doesn't have the technology to allow you to pay! Pity...

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. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.