Event: supperhappydevhouse

This weekend I attended the Super Happy Dev House event. This was the first time in my entire development career that I had seen anything like it. There was one company I worked for a very long time ago where we would all gather in one room, drink beer, and write code. (After business hours of course) This event brought back those happy memories of hanging out with friends and coding. That alone would have been enough to make the event interesting but one other thing that happened there were the presentations. I really enjoyed those. People got 10 minutes to show something really cool they or their company has been working on. It’s always fun to find out not only what others are doing but to also get a feel for what other people think is important.

Products that looked interesting to me were Zimbra and Meebo. Both of the products looked well thought out and they are filling a need. Zimbra is open source but without a services arm I don’t have a good feel for how they’re going to make money. They do have VC backing so maybe there is something there. Meebo on the other hand has an interesting opportunity. I don’t see how they can be huge, but they are filling the need for an instant message system that exists only on the Internet. There are a lot of people who can’t install software onto the machines they use and Meebo gives them the chance to have IM access. This is a service that I think people would be willing to pay for and they could probably sell this as a subscription.

I didn’t stay for all the presentations because they were done outside and it was cold. So I missed the AjaxWar demo and everything after it. Thanks to the folks who hosted this.