Revenge of the Nerds

 

Tech parties change the game: Geek goes chic and the Twitterati call the shots...

DC’s digerati know how to increase their bar-side bandwidth. After long days of slinging code, the local tech tribes are meeting up in real time, bringing the cyber-elite out to plug and play in the public domain. It’s not the geeky scene you think. The players include Tweeters and tech millionaires, and the venues are aglow with the lights of iPhones and the buzz of our technocratic future.

At the TECH Cocktail party, held at LeftBank in Adams Morgan, DC Web 2.0 insiders were sipping caipirinhas and soaking in the Wi-Fi, as local startup makers and shakers scored some face time. “Connecting the dots and then actually meeting someone in person—there’s nothing like it,” says TECH Cocktail co-founder and AOL evangelist Frank Gruber, whose contact list is a Rolodex of DC’s cyber-elite. “We’ve had people find their startup soul mate at events,” he says.

Of course, getting together over a cocktail may not be a revolutionary concept, but for the cyber-clique that spends 12 hours a day building social networking sites, a vodka among vloggers is the perfect tonic. And TECH Cocktail isn’t the only gathering on the calendar. BarCamp, Ignite and Refresh also have their cursor pointed to DC and host “unconferences” (the tech buzzword for meet-ups). Developers, designers and social media minds gather to talk Web accessibility, widget-building, Ruby on Rails and other trends, while constantly Twittering highlights of the brainstorming sessions. “It’s just a whole lot of knowledge sharing,” says John Croston III, the lead organizer of November’s BarCampDC.

The tech set is hot for action, says iStrategyLabs’ Peter Corbett, co-organizer of BarCampDC. “There’s a cacophony of activity—it’s nearly impossible for me to go to everything anymore,” he says. Corbett’s latest venture, TechArts, connected the geeks and the creatives at a U Street Halloween party, complete with DJs, VJs, LED lights and cocktails a go-go. He’s also organizing Big Ideas Big Action at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in December, which will serve as a brainstorming session for techies from all sectors.

Whereas the dot-com schmooze-fests fixated on billion-dollar IPOs, today’s DC events are more focused on the unveiling of new designs, tech developments and applications. In short, it’s about ideas. And that idea is viral—events hosted at hot spots like Local 16 and Busboys & Poets are posted to dctechevents.com daily. Other events form spontaneously through word of mouse. “The online and the offline connections are fueling each other. You can follow someone on Twitter and then meet them in two seconds,” Gruber says. Talk about instant messaging.