Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp’s Web 2.0 blog

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Social Rockstar Workshop here in Washington, DC at Busboys & Poets.  The workshop was for people or organizations that wanted to utilize social media to become social rockstars.

I did “Widgets 101 (PPT Slides)“, which was a lot of fun.  I hadn’t given that talk in a while.

It was masterfully organized by the Paul Worsham and Kady Chiu.  They brought it in other great speakers and friends of mine like Nick O’Neill and Frank Gruber.  It was hillarious when Frank spoke.  He had had one too many cups of coffee and was CRAZY hyper.

I had a lot of fun at the event. Word on the street is that Paul and Kady will be doing more events soon so stay tuned.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has a brought back a popular exhibit entitled, “Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936.“  It chronicles the history around  the time when Adolf Hitler was able to get the Summer Olympics to be hosted in Berlin, Germany.

In addition to have an exhibit at the physical museum building (which I haven’t checked out yet), they have a Web site which carry’s a lot of the same content.

One of the REALLY powerful portions of the online content is audio interviews with athletes of that era and the decisions they made or were made for them around their participation in the games.

If like me, you found the content to be powerful, you can easily share the audio content with your friends because it is in a widget.  They use our Clearspring widget platform for distribution of the widget. (Full Disclosure: I work for Clearspring and used to work with a team member at the USHMM.)

Above is a screenshot of the widget.  I would have embedded it right in here but WordPress.com doesn’t allow the embedding of content from third-party sites, unless you’re a few special sites.  *sigh*

Regardless, this is a GREAT example of breaking your Web site a part into pieces and allowing people to spread amongst their communities.  I’m anxious to hear what kind of results the Holocaust Museum gets.

Last night geeks from across Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia (DC), and other parts of the country converged upon a club near Dupont Circle, MCCXXIII (1223), for TECH cocktail DC 2.

It was PACKED. I heard from someone that 350 tickets were given out to the event.

It was so cool to have so many of my friends in one place at one time. Kudos to Frank Gruber and Eric Olson for putting on a great event.  I hope they do it in DC again soon.

(Great photo taken by Jason Garber)

There are two big DC tech events this week that you should be at.

The first is Refresh DC.   It’s tonight at 7pm in Arlington, VA. There is going to be a panel of leaders of local startups giving their advice and thoughts about their experiences.  I’m confident it will be great!  Everyone goes out to the pub afterwards.

Tomorrow is TechCocktail at 6:30pm at MCCXXIII. This is less structured and is more of a booze and schmooze event.  Unfortunately, I believe this event is sold out.  Hopefully, you got tickets.  They were free.

Had a blast at PodCamp DC this weekend!  It was great to see old friends and meet some people that don’t typically come out to DC tech events. Kudos to the organizers Tammy and Joel.

Here are some of my photos from the weekend:

If you’re new to the DC tech scene or you’re just looking for an opportunity to hang out with some geeks, I’d highly recommend that you check out the upcoming event TECH cocktail DC 2.

Frank Gruber and company are throwing another one of their great parties on Thursday, April 24, 2008 from 6:30pm - 9pm at the club MCCXXIII.

The best part is it’s free, which means you don’t have a reason not to be there.

Are you going? I definitely plan on being there.

Congrats to Washington DC-area entrepreneur Greg Gershman on the acquisition of his company Blogdigger by Odeo.  The folks at Odeo are really cool and Greg is crazy smart. I’m confident that Greg will do GREAT things there.

Tonight I was on my way to church for an event they were having and wanted to stop by Port City Java in Eastern Market to grab a coffee before I went over.  I had to get the coffee to-go because the coffee shop closed at 7pm.

Coffee shops really shouldn’t close at 7pm.

In today’s society, seems like the only place you can go to hang out after work is a bar.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have no problems with beer or wine, in moderation but there are plenty of times I want a place to hang out after work that isn’t a bar.

It will be 9pm.  I’ll be doing work from home and I’ll kind of have an itch to get out.  But where do you go?

If Port City Java were to stay  open later, the coffee shop could become a center of the neighborhood.  Instead of folks staying home, they could come out at night to a safe community centric place.

What if you brought in local musicians? What if you had a little movie screen?  What if you had talks or poetry readings?  All of a sudden the coffee shop is the hip and cool place to be.  You’re selling more coffee and making more money.

Importantly, people would be getting out of their houses and hanging out with their neighbors in community.

When I live in Lansing, Michgan,  every so often I’d meet my friends for coffee at Beaners (now called Bigby’s) in East Lansing  because it was open late, well actually all night (i think).  It was a happening place.  It was always packed full of people.  I want something like this in DC.

What do you think? Would you go to a late night chill coffee shop?

At WidgetDevCamp, I floated the idea of doing a iPhone SDK Dev Camp. Seems like there was some interest for it then.

Now that the Apple iPhone SDK is out, I’ve already gotten a few folks asking about it. One of the reasons I thought this would be cool is because it’s so new we’d all be starting at the same place.

Drop me a comment if you’d wanna attend this event.

It seems like this year the DC tech community was at South by Southwest (SXSW) in force.

As I mentioned before, when I got into town on Saturday after just walking the conference halls for 5 minutes, I ran into sooooo many DC people.

Other folks were noticing the massive Washington DC presence.   I’d meet people and mention that I was from DC.  They’d say “DANG, I’ve run into a ton of DC people here.”

The lyric from the Bob Dylan song “Ballad of a Thin Man” is so appropriate.

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Something is happening here in Washington DC.