Deb's SM Survey:

Last night I attended the Web Innovators group event in Cambridge. This was my first WebInno event, and I was very impressed. Hundreds of people were gathered to see the featured companies present, to schmooze, and to network.

Three companies were the “main dish” presenters: MakeMeSustainable, SpotScout and Urban Interactive. MakeMeSustainable provides users with information about their carbon footprint and allows them to create a social network for support and to see the ripple effect of their community. They have a Facebook application and are targeting that user group. There is a definite need for community-based environmental applications that connect and encourage people as they change their lifestyle and MakeMeSustainable has a great chance to fill that need.

SpotScout creates an online/mobile market for parking spaces. Their demo resonated with the crowd, who voted SpotScout their favorite of the three presenters (using a text message short code based voting system). The details about nearby parking garages and the occasional private spot for use could easily become popular.  I’m not so sure about the market for “information” about when a driver is leaving an on-street spot. (I’d also have some safety concerns about spots in private driveways…)

Urban Interactive creates interactive “adventures” for tourists and curious folks to follow. These are cell-phone based. The demo didn’t impress me, but in a few years with more robust mobile technology widely available a more complex game could be created with multimedia and GPS attributes. Beware, geotaggers, the masses are coming.

There were also six companies who gave 30-second mini-presentations. These ranged from mobile platform technologies to the non-profit Glassbooth which presents information about candidates to voters. The variety and creativity of the presenters was really amazing to me.

The Web Innovators Group holds regular events in the Boston area. The Boston Twitter user community regularly attends and gets together afterward as well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.