That said, I like meetups b/c it exposes me to new people and new ideas, and it's nice to break away from the Oracle crowd I spend a lot of time chatting with online.

On a traffic note, 30 miles takes you 2 hours? I used to do that 2 hour thing over a 60 mile route. Chicagoland traffic sounds pretty terrible.

A third I get a lot is, surprise that Oracle has a presence in Portland. Not common in DC I suspect b/c of that big building right on the highway.

I can normally break down the first group to understand that you really are solving the biggest software problems in the world and the acquisition strategy isn't all evil. The second group provides a great chance at recruiting opportunities. If they're attending tech events they're likely to be the type of person I like on my team.

The local startup scene has been a great way for me to get plugged into the DC tech scene. I migrated to the DC area from Detroit and being a consultant on the road for 2 years I never got a chance to meet the locals. These events got me plugged in quick and people who actually understand and listen to my babbling.

Anyways, Startup Rockstars was great. Five of the local startups presented, all at different stages of the process. Three of the five really interested me.

GamerVixens.com is a social network focused on women gamers. Did you know 40% of gamers (online and console) are women? And only 17% of all gamers are under 18? It surprised me too. Great ideas, untapped market, its going to come down to their execution and their community leaders.

BrandClick.com provides an interesting way to monetize ad clicks. The idea is solid, but to be honest I don't see anything that Google couldn't add into AdSense within a few weeks.

Lastly is the great group at CreateDebate.com, being in DC they've used the upcoming elections as their initial platform for the launch. The group started as part of a entrepreneur class at a local college and they've really taken off. A very cool social network centered around ideas, discussion and democracy. They've opened up their APIs and also have a SaaS model for businesses to vote on things within an org. I'm really impressed by these guys and look forward to seeing them grow.

One of the things that struck me odd was that 3 of the 5 startups were building their platforms on the latest .NET architecture. It almost makes me want to spend some time looking into it, almost.

You'd never think it, but DC has over 200 startups listed with Crunchbase within 100 miles of my house.

For me, conference events like OOW, Collaborate and ODTUG Kaleidoscope are where most of my IRL meetings happen. Many of the people I'm hoping to meet (plus a whole lot more that I enjoy meeting, but didn't plan to meet) are at one or more of those events too. I guess I'm not that tied to my geography and I spend enough time outside my geographic home base that attending local events isn't quite as important to me as meeting people anywhere. I reached out and met Bex and Billy for the first time on sort of a “blind date” when I was on a project in MSP this past January. We enjoyed visiting and meeting, but didn't really even know one another prior to that meeting. I suppose it was just nice to meet someone in MSP that wasn't a snowman in January, too!