Right now I’m sitting listening to Tim O’Reilly talk about the effects of the economic downturn on web 2.0 startups such as our own. A strange situation seeing as the conference seems to have gatecrashed the Community Room - provided, I thought, so that we could get on with a bit of work while attending the expo. Just different work to that what I thought I’d be doing.
Tim O’Reilly is like a rock star in geek terms. I should go ask for his autograph.
We’re really doing the conference on the cheap. Via couchsurfing.com we are staying at the house of a young Berlin entrepreneur - one half of want2do.de. We have hall passes for the event - significantly cheaper than the full pass, but without the opportunity to attend the many workshops and talks - which is why it’s a bit of a surprise to be listening to Tim now. At least I think it’s Tim. Don’t think he employs a lookalike yet, though I can only see the back of his head.
To cut costs we are also making extreme efforts to get into any web 2.0 expo evening events with free drinks. We missed out on the legitimate tickets to the pitch party last night (as with the geek girl dinner on Monday - the event was sold out before I heard about it) so had to resort to the black market. So my first introduction to somebody who transpired to be a prominent Berliner VC was in the form of him ’sneaking’ me into a party. Sorry organiser guys - we’ve travelled a long way to be here & it’s super important to be meeting people in this great environment.
UPDATE: Just sat it the back of this car with Tim O’Reilly. I am such a groupy. And took the opportunity to pitch Learnit at pitchstop - organised by Arne Hulstein.
