Kye Grace

On Thursday after my afternoon Boot Camp Session at my office I scurried off to Ideas on Tap at Yaletown Brewing Company.

Ideas on Tap is a light business networking event for hi-tech professionals in Vancouver plus internet advertisers, social media marketers, bloggers, video game developers and other fans of the tech community.

This free event is a competition where five participants deliver a 60 second pitch, idea, recruiting message, or elevator pitch from a milk crate. This could be talking about their company, a start-up idea, new technology, hiring, or raising capital.

The audience voted for their two favourite pitches and prizes were awarded. In sticking with the theme of the venue, voting was done by tapping beer glasses on tables or bars.

I got there just after 6 and quickly found Rodney Bartlet of Reachd, Steve Jagger of Ubertor, Shane Gibson of Knowledge Brokers International and Jeff Booth of Build Direct. Two observations were made by all, the first is 200+ people in the Pub side of YBC is way too many and if they put another log on the raging fire we were going lose multiple pounds through sweat. It was almost unbearably hot, loud and crowded. Full marks to the organizers for bringing back a great concept and generating the interest to pack the house. Of course the Cancuks game being on didn't mellow out the atmosphere one bit!

Myself and Steve Jagger

It was great to meet new people, often like minded people which is rare within my industry as a Realtor. Jeff Booth was a Realtor in his early 20's so we swapped some 'war stories' and gladly accepted his encouragement. I also got to meet Rob from kitsilano.ca. Rob was kind enough to include a link to my kitsproperty.ca site from there. Unfortnaely due to all the noise and lack of space I didn't get to chat with him to the degree I would have liked.

On to the main event, the presenters...

Andre Charland is the co-founder and CEO at Nitobi Inc.

Mike Agerbo is today’s digital living expert.  Heard nationally on Corus Radio’s GetConnected every week, and seen by thousands of television viewers.

Deborah Collins is a co-founder of Soya Marketing, Canada’s first Web PR agency.

Rebecca Bollwitt has been blogging about Vancouver since 2004 on Miss604.com, podcasting RadioZoom  since 2005 and is going into her third season as a co-host of The Crazy Canucks. She is also an author for Techvibes, is a contributor on the community-driven HockeyStars.com, as well as a guest author for E!Online - one of the top ten entertainment websites in the world.

Linda Bustos an Emerging Media Analyst, eCommerce consultant and chief blogger at Elastic Path Software.

Andre Charland from Nitobi won the speech competition chatting about phonegap. Rebecca Bollwitt (Miss604) came in a close 2nd talking about her company sixty4media.

Andre received a 16GB Ipod Touch and Rebecca some tickets to an upcoming Canucks Game + Madden 2009 for the XBOX 360. Mat Peake was the winner of the Madonna Concert tickets door prize. 

I spent the next two hours meeting people on my “to meet list” and bunch who were not.

These people  included Liza De Silva, Workable Steps Rehab Specialists; Miss604, Rebecca Holwitt; Duane Storey, independent web worker; Humingbird604, Raul; and likely others I am forgetting.

It was a great night and well worth the effort to attend. The energy in the place was great, especially when the Canucks scored in OT!

The negatives were the heat, way too crowded and no chance of eating due to crowds. Not eating doesn’t go well with a brew pub venue, due to this I didn’t enjoy as many tasty YBC beverages as would have liked. After all this was a ‘business’ event…

See you at the next one!