Thursday, March 09, 2000

Net night out


When the sun warms up the skyline in New York, all it's creatures venture out, and the practically balmy Thursday night on March 9th drew the darlings of the Net out. I started my night at Audio Base's Audio Bash at the spacious Milk Studios where I met this nicely funded company's David Haynes (pres. & CEO) and Rhys Ryan (CTO). An investment banker-band member, David was frustrated with the morass of plug-ins needed to play audio on the web. He devised a plan, and pitched Rhys on it; and Rhys pitched him on his technical capabilities. The result? Similar to to when The Talkies put Silent Movies in the archives -- instant sound on the web. Clients like 1800-flowers, British Airways, Ford, IBM, Nick.com and Starwood are using their audio solutions to create a richer user experience on the Web. 

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Silicon Alley was busy Thursday, March 9th as the spring party season blossomed. Among the night's offering's I started at Audio Base's Audio Bash in the Milk Studios where I joined a small group sucking on lollipop radio transistors that actually played songs through your mouth as you bit down on the pop! Such amusements didn’t deter me from a demo by Pres & CEO David Haynes and talking with CTO Rhys Ryan before dashing off to Dash.com's office expansion soiree. Red lights lit the loft and I snacked on a rice cracker with tuna as I chatted with Troy Tyler and Vernon Steward of SmartRay. Two strapping freres, David and Jason Tardio, of Lumina and Cox Interactive respectively, also came to celebrate and meet the "dashing" CEO, Daniel Kaufman.

After a kiss-kiss goodbye to chums I headed over to The Industry Standard's premier quarterly Rooftop gathering in NYC. I'm sure all you sunny EssEffers appreciate these regular events, and now your East Coast counterparts can partake in such festivities too. I chatted with the swoon-some Pres & CEO John Battalle, who told me of the plans for parties in LA and London. David Friedensohn of BigStar, Jessica Goldfarb of Roz Goldfarb Associates and Jim Hoffman (Mr. Foot) of Bigfoot Interactive came to schmooze and sample dim sum, pastelly-colored sake and muse over the skyline. Dean Margolis said "Hello" and passed along that after founding and CEO-ing Comet Systems, he's recently joined LivePerson as COO.

Plenty of live people shimmying in leopard skirts on the blue-lit banquettes at Siegel & Gale event's at Float. Writer Joelle Klein batted beautiful purple-sparkly eyelids as the smoke machine pumped instant ethereality onto the dance floor where Jason Wertzel (Icon-Nicholson) once again wowed me with his ultra-hipster dance moves. Meanwhile, back near the bar I met Kamron Hinatsu and Scott Ettin of Black Logic, David Montoya (SAVP) and Mike Rondelli and Jed Freifeld of Iron Street Labs talking with Bob Ponce, who just came from one of the largest WWWAC group meetings ever!