NetworkingSoCal - May 21, 2001
The first "official" meeting of NetworkSoCal was held in Brentwood at the trendy El Dorado mexican restaurant. On weekends this place is very hot, and the back room and bar is packed with well-dressed clubbing types. On this particular Monday, however, the back room featured networking types and by 7:30 the place was bustling. Unfortunately the bar owners didn't understand that loud music and very low lighting do not improve a networking venue, so after an hour of squinting to read name tags and shouting over pumping grooves I was eager to head back to the outside dining area.
JoAnna Minneci was there with me and agreed that it was time to escape, but before we left we chatted with two partners from a fairly new company called Userplane. Kevin Prentiss and Mike Jones are two of the company's leaders; they used to work in New York as well as LA when they were the core of PBJ Digital. Their newest venture is an Internet architecture and development company that delivers cohesive, user-centric Internet applications and they are headquartered in the Miracle Mile stretch on Wilshire.
A chronicle of the people and events in technology, internet and media since 1997, mixed in with snapshots of musings and observations.
