The twenty-fourth monthly Web Innovators Group gathering was Monday night. After two years in existence, it’s really become a hotspot for locals in the tech community. For those of you that didn’t make it, here’s a recap of who was there and what went down.
After an open networking sesh for people to swap business cards, we all convened in the grand ballroom at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge to check out the featured startup presentations. Three were showcased this night.
Survey On The Spot — www.surveyonthespot.com
Just under a year old, this startup by On The Spot Systems was the most popular presentation, taking home the audience choice award after an American Idol-style text vote. Their service provides businesses with a way to make custom surveys for customers to fill out via mobile app or online. Companies get valuable consumer data, and participants are incentivized with coupons and other prizes for completing each survey. They are already beta testing with AuBonPan, along with a couple others and co-founder Ken Kimmel told me, “Everyone has been extremely positive.” Had I an iPhone, I could definitely see myself thumbing in a quick survey to kill time on the T and grab some discounts, so they won my vote for their viability.
thredUP — www.thredup.com
thredUp was the second most popular by audience vote and is a service that works on a Netflix-style mailing model, except you’re stuffing envelopes with clothes. The idea is that people who have clothes they never wear can swap those items for other people’s unwanted clothes with thredUP playing the role of middleman. Their system allows you to punch in what you have available and what you are looking for, but I got the sense that once you send something off, it’s more or less a gamble what you get in return. While this sounds like a lot of fun to do maybe once or twice, I couldn’t figure out how this system was more effective than a trip to the Salvo or Goodwill. That being said, the presenter made a good point in saying this could be a good service for parents whose kids are constantly growing out of their clothes.
ZoomAtlas, Corp. — www.zoomatlas.com
Third in the live voting was ZoomAtlas, an online satellite map service that allows users to play with a graphic overlay of a satellite image of the U.S. to post notes, stories, etc. The concept was sound: an interactive map with social media elements, but the graphic overlay reminded me why I never played The Sims. Still, I think this idea has a lot of promise, and with a couple graphical upgrades, it could be an awesome tool.
In addition to the featured presentations, there was some good stuff at the tabletop demo section. Included was present.ly, a twitter-style communication platform that we use a lot here at BostInnovation. Check out the full list of who was there:
Tabletop Demos:
- Custom dress shirts.
- SMS based gift sending.
- Music purchase discounting for target consumers.
- Web link organization/ sharing.
- Twitter-style collaboration tool for businesses.
- Also like Twitter, for casual social event discovery.
All in all, it was another successful gathering of the Boston tech community. Comments? Let us know what you think, or share thoughts on the event below.
