As i explore and use more of this tool , I would be contributing more about its usage and  its effectiveness in a team collaboration or communication.

May the web 2.0 Gods smile upon you.

I recently found an article on web 3.0 (link here). It was a pretty good article. I found it interesting, but it also made me angry. We are just getting into Web 2.0. I’m finally starting to like it and see all that it has to offer. Now people are already talking about Web 3.0? Come on!
To me though, the article seems to be describing web 2.5. And on a completely random note, I am having trouble coming up with good, long posts. So I’m going to share some Web 2.0 sites that I found cool.

Tangler: A realtime discussion website. It is essentially a forum, updated in realtime.

Tumblr: A blogging website. More like a scrapbook. It is meant to be used for little updates as opposed to long editorials.

Web 2.0 Directory: A directory of a number of Web 2.0 sites. Organized in a weird format.

Zoho: An online office suite. A cross between Google Docs/Spreadsheets and Microsoft Office.

Woot: A website that sells only one product at a time. They are of limited quantity and updated every midnight.

Kayak: A website used to find the cheapest fares for airplane flights.

And that about sums it up. Later.

Let's have a look at some different categories of site (heads-up - I have a feeling this is going to turn into a long post as I am basically brain-dumping!). Oh, before we begin - I'm not talking about getting the traffic in the first place, just helping to keep hold of it once
you get critical momentum. The first part (just as hard) is a whole different discussion :-)

1. Originators: In this group I'd put news sites such as the BBC, CNN, ABC and so on, along with a few of what are normally first or second sources of new stories. That would include sites like Techcrunch, Engadget and Wired. Fairly obvious why people return to these sites: there is always fresh content, normally localised or available to a specific interest group. On most of these, you can add comments or your own stories too.

2. Aggregators: Not an original source of information, but a consolidated view from the web, normally ranked or voted on in terms of popularity. For example, Digg, Slashdot, Reddit and the late Netscape. Given the massive amounts of new data available on a daily basis on the web, these sites offer an easier way to stay current with minimal effort. I'd suggest that at times a larger amount of effort goes into the comments and discussions than it does reading the linked stories!

3. Constant Virals: Sites that are able to continually drive viral and word-of-mouth 'check this out' buzz. Youtube is probably the pre-eminent example along with a few of the 'me-too' video sharing sites. B3ta used to be there, as are a couple of the flash gaming sites. A constant source of new material, who can resist watching some idiot stick his face in a fire-ants nest! The discussion boards and comments also play a big part here

4. Friend Collectors: No longer the 'new new thing', but still growing like mad, online social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Thursday Club and the million other variations satisfy our need for self-promotion and gossip. Spend time investing in growing friends, filling out your profile, stalking ex-girlfriends, installing applications and updating your status and you're hooked. Who doesn't want to know that 'Paul is feeling farty'?

Message boards, super-poking, wall-post and super-walls all add to the stickiness and most of these sites are very good at teasing you with update emails to prompt your return.

5. Contact Collectors: Largely similar to number 4, but I put in here some of the more 'serious' social networks aimed at business professionals. LinkedIn, Ecademy, Ryze, Plaxo .. again there are a multitude to choose from, although LinkedIn is probably the most popular, with its 'Answers' Q&A discussion forums proving particularly popular.

6. Reviews & Recommendations: Tripadvisor, CNET, Yelp, epinions and reams of other sites dedicated to helping you research product or service purchases, word-of-mouth reviews and related discussions.

Often tied directly to ..
7. Service providers: Booking a flight? Need a hotel? Hiring a car? Theatre tickets? Online food shopping? Books, CDs, Cameras .. anything eCommerce? Once you've done your research online (see 6) or perhaps even at the same time on the same site (e.g. Amazon) come here to make your purchase. Keen pricing, quick delivery, customer service, positive reviews, large stock, longtail serviceability, word-of-mouth marketing, affiliate programs and white-labelling all help these sites along. Let's put the eBays, Craig's Lists and so on in here too.

8. One-hit wonders, weirdos and one-offs: Remember 'badgers .. badgers'? The filipino elvis looking for love? Star-wars Kid the original? The drink-o-meter? All those crappy but addictive Flash games that took up way too much of your time? With traffic that comes in waves as the next news site story and email chain runs, you may not get a lot of stickiness, but the knock-on effect or chance to grab that traffic for other purposes can be vital (esp for a startup)

9. Blogs: We all know that a tiny fraction of blogs actually generate much traffic, or have a particularly loyal readership. Take one of the most popular though - Scott Adams (Mr Dilbert). With such a large fanbase, he is guaranteed a large readership every day and can kick-off a huge discussion with nothing but a simple question. Powerful stuff!

10. Yackfests: Last, but by no means lowest in priority or stickiness comes forums, chat rooms, discussion boards and the like. My wife is currently addicted to some Indonesian fashion forum, and I would bet that the combined eyeball time for discussion boards net wide would be .. well, it would be quite large :-) If you have an interest, any form of interest, you will find a group of like-minded people somewhere to discuss it with. From Google groups, usenet (sshh!), Yahoo to dedicated, home-run hobbyist sites if you get some momentum you have some serious stickiness!

So, what's the conclusion? Well if you had to pick the common element with each, it has to be discussions and comments. That won't be a surprise to anyone, and forms one of the key tenets of what has been called 'web 2.0'. Truth is, the discussion based aspect of the 'net has been a constant since almost day dot and is one thing that has consistently worked in grabbing people to take part.

One downside though of traditional discussion forums has always been that if you have one, and it's successful, it tends to suck the traffic from every other part of your site (check out www.pprune.org for a good example - a site for professional pilots that gave up on trying to get anyone to do anything except use the forum - which is hugely popular).

There are a number of new players such as Tangler, trying to address this by trying to create not only an embedded discussion platform but one that enables you to bring together other aspects of your site too (profile, product info, interesting links, video and so on).

Imagine there's a thread going on and you pull up an embedded interactive product, pricing information, select some experts and related media. Think Digg labs meets Amazon, meets Second Life, meets threaded discussion, meets Twitter subscribers, meets YouTube. How cool would that be?

Hmm, well, I did say I was just brain dumping :-)

Tangler

Meebo

We first wrote about Tangler in February 2006, when it was deep in a development. They’ve been quietly working with beta partners for the last six months, and recently opened their doors to allow anyone to create a new forum. Last week, the 1,000th forum was created on Tangler.

Tangler forums are also decentralized. Any discussion/forum can easily be embedded in a third party website or websites. The discussion occurs simultaneously on all instances of the forum. See here for an example of an embedded forum.

Examples of startups using Tangler as their forum include Weewar, Particls and Omnidrive.

See our recent coverage of Meebo Rooms as well. It is interesting to see web chat and forums colliding towards the same end product.

Tangler

Meebo

We first wrote about Tangler in February 2006, when it was deep in a development. They’ve been quietly working with beta partners for the last six months, and recently opened their doors to allow anyone to create a new forum. Last week, the 1,000th forum was created on Tangler.

Tangler forums are also decentralized. Any discussion/forum can easily be embedded in a third party website or websites. The discussion occurs simultaneously on all instances of the forum. See here for an example of an embedded forum.

Examples of startups using Tangler as their forum include Weewar, Particls and Omnidrive.

See our recent coverage of Meebo Rooms as well. It is interesting to see web chat and forums colliding towards the same end product.

Tangler

Meebo

We first wrote about Tangler in February 2006, when it was deep in a development. They’ve been quietly working with beta partners for the last six months, and recently opened their doors to allow anyone to create a new forum. Last week, the 1,000th forum was created on Tangler.

Tangler forums are also decentralized. Any discussion/forum can easily be embedded in a third party website or websites. The discussion occurs simultaneously on all instances of the forum. See here for an example of an embedded forum.

Examples of startups using Tangler as their forum include Weewar, Particls and Omnidrive.

See our recent coverage of Meebo Rooms as well. It is interesting to see web chat and forums colliding towards the same end product.

Per una volta localizzazione è da subito anche in italiano, per cui copincollo dalla presentazione:

"Entra nella conversazione -Seguite le vostre conversazioni su differenti piattaforme (blog, forum, comunità in linea…). Segui - coComment segue tutte le tue conversazioni online che stai seguendo in un solo spazio e ti informa quando delle nuove conversazioni sono state aggiunte. Condividi - Pubblica le tue conversazioni sul tuo blog in un click o inviale per email ad un amico. Esplora - Guarda i top commentatori, quali articoli o posts generano più traffico, chi commenta nelle stesse tue conversazioni."

Insomma, una piattaforma web-based (con in + l'ormai quasi immancabile Firefox extension) per tenere traccia dei propri commenti. In modo molto comodo - e maneggevole.

WP ha qualcosa di (parzialmente) simile, ma limitato ai commenti fatti sui blog ospitati da Wordpress stessa. Altri plugin di blog e forum consentono di essere informati via mail sullo stato di una conversazione / thread / commenti a un post.

CoComment è su questa stessa linea. Due passi avanti.

A me, che sono un commentatore medio/mediocre (10 commenti a settimana, forse meno) CoComment piace e risulta utile. Immagino possa esserlo molto di + x hard-bloggers & cia.

Due considerazioni.

A) L'idea di farsi una foto al giorno per un tot di tempo è originale e artistica, specie nel contesto di oggi. Un po' di tempo fa avevo scritto un post su un fotografo newyorkese, Noah Kalina, che (oltre ad altre cose ;-) da cinque anni fa esattamente questo: una sua foto al giorno, poi messa on-line (e nei commenti qualcuno mi aveva segnalato anche l'esistenza di 09h09.

B) Tutti noi facciamo e condividiamo più facilmente le nostre foto, rispetto a pochi anni fa (quando non erano diffuse ed economiche come oggi le fotocamere digitali, e quando non esistevano mega-piattaforme on-line come flickr). Idem per musica, video, testi, disegni, ... Il che non significa certo che di colpo siamo tutti diventati artisti. Nè che i "veri" artisti vengano minacciati dalla nostra presenza sulla scena.

Vedremo tra un po' se su Flickday appariranno molti stream di autoscatti, e che cosa potranno dirci - da soli, o assieme. Da un punto di vista artistico e, perchè no, sociologico.

Io da parte mia, senza sapere di Flickday, da una decina di giorni stavo fotografando il tavolo del soggiorno, con su la colazione (ore 7.30 circa). Daily. Un esperimento mio. Figlio dello Zeitgeist... (mah)

• mi sto divertendo a ricostruire a livello virtuale la mia libreria qui di casa, su anobii.com. Eccola qui. Bella idea, e piattaforma che funziona molto bene. Facile ipotizzare che possa appassionare tutto il segmento blogger-letterati e dintorni;
• sono su yedda.com "persone. condivisione. saperi". esseri umani fanno domande, ed esseri umani rispondono. mah, interessant-ino;
• ho installato la firefox extension di blogrovr. Non la sto usando molto, ma l'idea che c'è dietro è interessante. Tu gli dici che blog vuoi seguire, e lui ti fetcha da quei blog i post che hanno a che fare con le pagine che stai navigando in quel momento nel browser (es: se sono sul sito di Mozilla e il mio amico Paolo ha scritto un post su Firefox ieri, blogrovr me lo segnala. Mi è piaciuto il fatto che io abbia esportato dal mio feedreader la lista dei blog e gliel'abbia data come input, praticamente automatizzando quasi la procedura, e risparmiando un sacco di tempo;
• sto invece cercando di seguire un po' bene cluztr (questo il mio profilo), un progetto sviluppato attorno all'idea di social browsing, che tiene conto dei siti che visiti, ti segnala chi altro ha preferenze simili alle tue, chi ha visitato di recente le stesse pagine che stai guardando, i percorsi di navigazione ("clickstreams") altrui, e permette anche (in una bella ff extension) di chattare con chi è sullo stesso sito, ... (Ha un bel po' di features, inutile tentare di elencarle tutte.)
• sempre sul versante social surfin, è in giro da un po' Stumble Upon - che in base ai siti che visiti, e al voto che gli dai, ti consiglia siti simili, tramite i giudizi della community. L'ho provato per un po', interessante, ben fatto, rischi di passare ore a navigare "per curiosità". E-bay ha comprato SU qualche giorno fa;
• tangler.com - per discutere di beta testing, e non solo. Una specie di forum (molto) avanzato. Con anche un programmino che ti fa da Desktop Notifier (che personalmente non mi piace molto), su discussioni in corso, contatti etc. Passano di lì inviti per beta interessanti e discussioni di buon livello;
• istalker.com - social feeds aggregator, ovvero aggregatore di feed ma con anche un lato sociale. Basato sul concetto di lifestream, registra la tua attività in rete su un certo numero di servizi (tipo flickr, digg, il tuo blog, flickr, del.icio.us, last.fm, ecc) e la mostra, sia a te che agli altri (agli amici, se preferisci, o a tutti - questo ad esempio è il mio profilo). Mi piace anche il fatto che supporti il login via openid;
• net vibes non è certo una novità, ma (a parte che ha aggiunto un modulo per twitter, di recente, che funziona benissimo) lo segnalo cmq un po' perchè ho ripreso a usarlo massicciamente, come home page personalizzata, e un po' perchè davvero è imho fatto molto bene - bello e veloce. (Due caratteristiche imprescindibili del web che mi piace).

MyBlogLog: This is what you call a regurgitated idea that's been wrapped around an interface so ugly that it makes MySpace look like modern art. Here's how it works: they beg you to link a JavaScript file in your code and then proceed to collect stats off of it, something Web Side Story did from the beginning of time and something which is replicated by AWStats to near perfection. If you've got a WordPress blog or anything other than Blogger, don't bother with this crap. Oh yeah, as soon as you sign up some guy named "Eric" automatically becomes your "friend" and introduces himself as one of the owners of this operation. Funnily enough, judging by his last login date, he himself hasn't logged in to this misadventure in over four days. But I encourage everyone to sign up and look at the "Edit Profile" page and tell me if you've ever seen a form so ugly and hideous.

Tangler: It doesn't even matter what this site does. Its blatant rape of Ajax is so apparent that you just want to disable JavaScript for kicks and see how it reacts. Here's a sign of bad design: you clicked on a main menu option and a "loading.." sign pops up while it fetches a static submenu. WTF? The site is generally agonizingly slow and I don't really know who to blame for it, maybe its their adoption of the Yahoo API instead of Google Analytics thats pushing it down the toilet in terms of speed. The idea of the site (not a bad one) is to have all your discussions in one place, the execution however lacks the simplicity required, no, demanded by such a venture.

Venyo: This site lets you build and ruin reputations and calls itself the "web 2.0 trust provider". You're supposed to build a "trust index" until people stop thinking you're a pedophile and finally allow you to comment on their blogs. People on this site have their trust settings such that you can see their first name, their last name, a close-up picture but NOT their username. This is how they justify their existence: "The lack of trust has always been an issue on the Internet and it will not get better with the emergence of new collaborative services particular to Web 2.0." Building trust on this site means jack squat, hire 100 people in India, pay them a dollar each and you can run for president.

Squidoo: What do you call a blog without calling it a blog? A lens. As you strive and suffer your way towards becoming a "Lensmaster" you'll realize that if you have to wait five seconds for a piece of content to load through Ajax and stare at the words "drumroll please" for the entire duration, it's probably wiser to just load a new page. Much less aggravating. The site is trying to persuade its audience that its something different, cool and better, but in the end you'll find out that is nothing but a slow, badly designed and introverted blogging software that wishes it was a wiki.

Platial: Another site which misuses Lightbox. By now I've lost count and am beginning to second guess a personal decision to allow Lightbox in an app that I'm currently working on. Make a map of your life! Doesn't that sound exciting? For most of the blokes that means to work and back but Platial.com is counting on the world traveler amongst us to make it a success. But there's only so much you can do when you're relying entirely on Google Maps to do all the work for you; this idea sounds great in theory but practically speaking, it doesn't work. The process of "adding places" to your map is not intuitive and the Ajaxy features such as searching for places isn't thought out. Note to Platial: Only popup modal boxes when the user somewhat expects them! Wayfaring.com is much better but it doesn't matter because Google just pwn3d both with MyMaps.

Yelp: Here's an idea that isn't half bad: Bitch about all the bad food you've ever eaten. How eager was I when I hit the Sign Up button only to have the door slammed in my face as my Canadian postal code was rejected. Maybe another time, another place.

Here's Part 2.

And in other news Cameron Reilly is in the office today, glasses and all... except we err, lost him. Has anybody seen Cam?

In the article they named Sydney as "Silicon Beach" and it struck me as a perfect description of what it's like here as a startup in the internet space. I like it. Let's make it stick.

BTW: Does anybody know who coined this?

Must have:

• Strong JavaScript
• Java, JSP, JSP tags
• Strong communications skills
• A web 2.0 attitude
• Some decent PS2 games

Nice to have:

• CSS, HTML, XHTML, AJAX, DHTML
• Web standards awareness
• Cross platform / browser awareness
• Experience in Spring Web MVC (or equivalent), DWR
• Prior usage of JavaScript libraries like Prototype, JQuery, Script.aculo.us

Quick, now's you're chance to dump that loser job at atlassian another company, and head over to a real startup.

Endgame is an end of year party thrown for all the staff (both Dot and Tangler) – it’s called Endgame because I thought it deserved a better name than “The Christmas Party”.

Last year’s event was a monstrous affair: a treasure hunt style Survivor meets Amazing Race up through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Choppers, 300m high flying fox, boats, hidden gnomes, rock walls, puzzles and tricks galore. If was a great day (and overnight stay), but left us with a tall task to beat this year.

Endgame 2006 started with yet another trick – last year we pretended to send them into the bush to play “Blue Mountains Survivor” for two days – this year I had moved on to be CEO of Tangler, and Rory had stepped in as CEO of Dot, there was some speculation from staff as to whether I would be organising the event at all. Playing on this we announced 6 months or so ago that Rory would take over organisation. Since I wasn’t involved it was to be a boring conference-style event. We knew this had gone a little far when people started talking about not attending because it sounded so boring. We had to back off a bit and hype it a little.

So everything starts pretty normal; all the staff (excluding me, because I’ve been ‘mysteriously delayed’) were coached up to Rafferty’s Resort in Lake Macquarie about 1.5 hours north of Sydney. After eating a lovely Thai lunch they were bustled into a conference room to hear Rory give a special “announcement”. Tangler and Dot were merging, Dot was buying another company and the whole new group was being listed on the stock exchange. Oh, and the combined companies would now be known as “Big Tree”.

A shocked audience didn’t get much of a chance to take it all in. As Rory was taking questions the lights in the room suddenly went out (we’d rigged the room to be almost pitch dark) and three guys wearing balaclavas and headlights burst from the store room (we’d been hiding for an hour). Running through screams and confusion, the masked men then bagged the Rory and bustled him from the room.

As the kidnappers left, a video started playing showing a Saw-like character known as The Cloak. To get Rory back the staff needed to “play a game”. They were given 3 minutes to solve a puzzle (it’s a coded message on their conference maps) and a 3 minute timer. Ultimately though the solution leads nowhere. 30 seconds before the time is up the whole thing grinds to a halt and the FBI and I bust in to rescue everybody and explain what we really need to do to rescue Rory, and beat Cloak at his own game. And things sort of go on from there... for the whole day and into the night.

In the end we had a huge day adventuring in and around Lake Macquarie and the Wallarah National Park. Belaying people up trees, searching the coastline for clues, mountain bikes, building boats, you name it. Only dampener was (yet, again) it rained, sometimes pretty hard, but the enthusiasm as usual was amazing.

After we successfully rescued Rory we had a giant pool party (I was the first thrown in) and dinner. Cloak made a return and set everyone a final challenge and Peter Gibson ultimately won the day, for a second year running.

A pool, great food, a foosball table and copious amounts of alcohol made for a fantastic night for everybody. Towards the end I also played a Christmas video (see below) I had compiled the day before (and edited at 3am the previous night). I think I could have played just about anything and gotten a laugh, but this seemed to go down very well.

This was a tough one to organise, especially since no one could know I was involved. Couldn’t have done it without the help of my co-conspirators Ed, Rhandy, Conrad (the FBI agent) and Rory. Thanks guys. Amazing effort.

I was asked again during the night why we put so much effort into these events. The answer is always the same: cause we think people work incredibly hard, so they deserve an incredible party. And having a boring “Christmas lunch” is out of the question for such remarkable people. Now all we have to do is top it next year.

Plenty of photos up on Flickr.

[UPDATE: Chris Saad liked it enough to digg it. Feel free to add your vote. Thanks Chris]

Of course none of this happens without some behind-the-scenes stars. The sponsors: Technology Venture Partners, Atlassian, Neo Technology Ventures and Tangler (pat pat). To my fellow organisers: Mick, Rhandy, Craig, Karen, Rai, Phong, Erik, Minh and Sasha. Also thanks to Symbiation for making up the Boom or Bust board, among other things.

Hippos turned out to be a great venue, though we promise to up the air conditioning earlier next time and maybe the demo tables will move inside -- certainly got crowded out there.

Half-baked with 70+ people was a wild chaotic thing compared to previous ones, but ultimately what the startups concocted was just as funny and having startup legends like Emily and Omar, Oliver Wiedlich, Alisdair Faulkner, Rhandy Lado, Alan Jones and ("Entrepreneur of the Year") Mike Cannon-Brooks. No surprise that Mike Cannon-Brooks' team and their idea "ShoeWave.com" -- uniting people around the world in finding lost socks -- won the day. Close runners-up: MidgetWidget.com, a mobile phone app that can grow with you and ParachuteVideo.com, a whole new way to drop movie content on you, literally.

On entry to the event people were given $2 million venture capital dollars which they had to distribute as they saw fit to four startups: Remember the Milk, bluepulse, StudentFace and Quotify. In a very close contest the ultimate winner was Remember the Milk who just nudged Quotify. They took home an MSDN subscription worth $5000 courtesy of Microsoft (thanks Frank).

Other games included the very popular "Boom or Bust". Startups write their name on a pin and then blindly try to pin the best exit, which ranged from $2b buyouts, down to "Your Server Farm Really A Farm" and "Russian Clone Site Wipes You Out" -- everybody loved this one.

Thanks also to Neo who sponsored the Kool-Aid shots throughout the night.

Further coverage:

• Sydney Skaken and Stirred
• GDay World
• STIRR Sydney a stirring success
• Stirr it up
• Getting STIRRed up in Sydney
• STIRR Sydney
• STIRR Sydney Wrap-up
• Heading to STIRR Sydney
• STIRR Sydney
• Rebelutionary

Photos:

• Mick (thanks to Karen)
• Marty (thanks to anybody who would hold my camera on the night)
• Yours? (let me know)

UPDATE: Cameron Reilly has released a video of the night.

blog.tangler.com

Lots of members of the team will be adding their thoughts (or at least have promised to): myself, Mick, Rhandy, Craig, Phong, Minh, maybe even Alex and Erik might pipe in occasionally.

We also launched a new version of the main web site.

This is definitely the most comprehensive list I've seen. It even includes Atlassian, which I'm sure Mike will be pleased to see. There was even room for another swing in the aussie VC bash fest.

The problem now is the management of this infrastructure is getting too large to handle without dedicated people, so we had to figure out how we’d handle the expansion. Do we continue to try to run it ourselves or expand the team with some systems administrators?

Saving money is always a good thing, so we considered scraping along with part-timers (Minh, Craig and I most likely) for the first few months, but we felt this would be risky. Why? Because managing any sizable system is a large, complicated job that can't be done half-hearted. The backups will fail; the HDs will fill up; that tier 1 provider will drop your class C off their AS due to a "clerical error"; you'll fail to install that kernel update and get hacked. There are a million things that absolutely will go wrong – and yes, all of the above have actually happened to me at various times in the past. We needed someone dedicated to the problem.

That leaves the second option: hire a dedicated systems administrator. But we face a bit of a scale issue there. You can’t hire just one; these little buggers breed! If you hire one, no matter how hard you try there will be 10 within 3 months. OK, not really, but seriously, try sharing a 24-hour pager between two people, let alone one. I didn’t want to hire a team of people. We also didn’t have time to find and hire the right people, setup systems from scratch and still meet our growth at the moment. I started to consider outsourcing options to bridge the gap between kick-starting and our own team. After a bit of scouting and talking to other startups I came across a better solution.

Enter BitPusher, a company that specializes in operating sophisticated infrastructure using a commercial model that makes it accessible and practical, and a lot cheaper than hiring your own team. They’re working with us to develop a spec on our new systems, and then they handle hardware procurement, deployment and operations while we go to the beach! All right, maybe not. But it sure is nice to have the problem taken care of by people dedicated to it. Thanks guys.

And after a little pushing I'm happy to see Daniel (BitPusher's CEO) has started a blog.

Tangler’s new Chief Marketing Guy is Mick Liubinskas (that's him in the Santa suit). He joins us from previous gigs as the CMO of Sharman Networks (makers of Kazaa), helping kids in Africa and more recently, Zapr.

Mick and I have known each other for a while and I’ve always had respect for his ability to turn innovation into need. Most importantly: he gets 2.0. He gets community. He gets Tangler.

Over the years, I’ve think I’ve directly hired more than a hundred people. Most of the time I knew within the first 3 minutes if they were the right person for the job -- after those 3 minutes I’m looking for reasons they’re not. I had that feeling about Mick and my impression has only improved as we’ve gotten to know each other better.

I’m really psyched Mick has decided to join us. He’s an experienced guy who could have had pretty much the pick of startups at the moment: including starting his own thing. His belief in Tangler and the team is great to see.

Dinner 2.0 is a Sydney event designed to bring together people involved in local 'next web' companies.

Another one was held tonight and with some slightly too expensive [but very nice] food, alcohol, VCs, startups, consultants, and a location like the Centennial Hotel, you get a great setting for 3-4 hours of chatter on all things next web. Another great night with some fantastic people.

Thanks to everyone who attended. I was repeatedly told people had a great time, so I'm obliged to believe them! Next one should be late October, bigger and better. Maybe I'll organize some startup demos (hmm… a Tangler preview perhaps…)

Attendees (which grew rather suddenly on me when everybody called at the last minute to 'just squeeze in a friend'):

• Peter Crowe (Quotify)
• Marc Woodward (Neo Technology Partners)
• Vivian Stewart (Hall Capital)
• Kerry Pynor (TMD)
• Rhandy Lado (Tangler)
• Yorke Hindes (Zookoda)
• Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian)
• Michael Liubinskas (Zapr)
• Mike Zimmerman (Technology Venture Partners)
• Nick McNaughton (Zookoda)
• Timothy Hughes (netus)
• Paul McCarney (Quotify)
• Jeff Cotter (Simurban)
• Craig Baker (Tangler)
• Alex von Kotze (Tangler)
• Ben Hamey (Simurban)

All the photos are here.