Reposted from “This is going to be BIG!”

YouTube. Yahoo! Google. Technology companies or media & advertising companies?

Very quickly being in tech on the web, unless you’re building hardware or web-based application software, it’s becoming pretty much the same thing.

That’s why I’m excited to be in New York…. because there are so many media and advertising folks here, it’s only going to make NYC’s potential to have a major impact on the web that much bigger.

But yet, despite a lot of noise, nextNY doesn’t seem to be adding many digital media or interactive advertising people to its ranks… still very tech heavy. I feel like a lot of people on the other side of the table feel like they’re just not in the same community as we are, which is a little strange to me.

This is completely generalizing, unscientific and anecdotal, but I feel like the tech community is actually that, a community. Tech people are just used to collaborating more. There’s more freelancing going on and so they’re used to working with people from many companies, often at the same time. Plus, anyone who has ever coded or designed anything has often depending on their network of knowledgable friends to help them out with a line or two or a rounded box here and there.

Could you imagine agency folks e-mailing a listserv saying, “Hey, what’s funnier? A talking monkey or a talking fish? I need to get the answer to this for a 10AM presentation to a client… can someone help me out?”

They might reach out to their friends about that… but other professionals? Just doesn’t seem like there’s that kind of dynamic.

And on the media side, when CondeNast folks get together with their counterparts at NewsCorp, do you think their first thought is, “Hey, how can we work together?” It’s just a very competitive industry that has a zero sum approach to collaboration.

I hope I’m wrong about this… and in the coming months, you’ll see some nextNY events that attempt to bring agency and media people into the fold… to talk about the future of those industries as they relate to the disruption caused by technology. If you’re in the agency or media biz, you should definitely check out nextNY. We’re not just tech people… we’re digital builders, consumers, enablers, financiers, etc… and unless we realize that we’re all in this together, not a lot is going to get done.

Charlie O’Donnell is the Director of Consumer Products at Oddcast, a New York City venture backed startup whose avatar platform is used for interactive advertising and personal expression. He was formerly an Analyst at Union Square Ventures.

Contact Charlie at charlie.odonnell@gmail.com or view more articles at
www.thisisgoingtobebig.com

On Saturday, nextNY (now 600 strong) went small, gathering at the offices of Sportsvite to provide some feedback to two growing NYC internet startups. About 20 nextNY members broke into two groups to bounce ideas and constructive commentary back to Sportsvite, a team sports utility and social network, who had the home field advantage, and 30elm, a recently lauched site in the home design space.

The sessions will hopefully be the first of many opportunities for startups to get feedback from peers who are both tech savvy and interested in their particular spaces. There were certainly plenty of techy football, softball and dodgeball players among the Sportsvite group that I participated in.

Anyone can host a “Focus and Feedback” session, so if you have a company or application whose tires you’d like to get kicked, all you need to do is to find a space. Sportsvite was kind enough to buy us lunch, but, for me personally, it’s always great to be able to sit down with the creators of a product to give direct feedback and know that at least one of my 15 bad ideas might accidently make its way into the product.

So, if you want to organize or host a session, just hit up our listserv and post a new page on the wiki.

As 2007 rolls in, I’m looking forward to what the next year will bring for the NYC tech community. As for nextNY, I hope we broaden our reach to more digital media folks, and to those who support the core tech, like marketing, PR, financial folks. We’re also starting to see more meetings with smaller groups… niches within the group that meet to roll up their sleeves and accomplish some great things. That would be a great trend to continue in ‘07. Another area I think we can make great strides in is connnecting to governmental and academic resouces… to the local infrastructure of NYC for space, expertise, etc… in an effort to help make NYC even more innovation friendly in 2007.

Happy New Year, nextNY! Let’s get back to work ASAP!

David was kind enough to answer a few questions by e-mail for us.  He is already a veteran of nextNY events, participating in our Community Conversation on “Startup 101” and PitchCamp.  Yet, still, he probably remains one of the most under the radar angel investors out there.  We’re glad that he has given our members several opportunities to get to know him better.

1) I’ve heard the 10 minute version of a brief 2 minute description of yourself and your background in person… but here I can hold you to a word count. Think you can tell us who you are in 100 words or less?

A serial entrepreneur turned serial angel investor, David S. Rose is passionately convinced that entrepreneurship is the core of a successful society. Having started half a dozen businesses and making it to the Inc. 500, he founded New York Angels and has been described by Crain’s as the “father of angel investing in New York”. His current portfolio includes over three dozen cool startups of which he’s Chairman of three, and as an entrepreneur himself he’s CEO of Angelsoft, which currently back-ends over 90 angel groups on three continents. He also runs the #1 Google-ranked web site on letterpress printing.

2) If there were two or three key problems that you would like to see every single startup out there that thought they had a solution for, what would those problems be?

Effective spam filtering, usable universal remote control for consumer electronics, web-based personal assistant service

3) If you had to invest every penny that you had in a company based on their answers to just three questions, what questions would you ask?

Would the last three people you fired work for you again?
What do you see as the role of an angel investor in your company?
Are you prepared to invest every penny that YOU have in your own company?

4) What are the best and worst things about trying to build a startup in New York?

Best: unbelievable talent pool, lots of synergistic companies, great energy and dynamism
Worst: high cost of talent, easy to get lost in the shuffle, not as many VCs as the West Coast

5) Who are the three wisest people in the NYC technology scene that you know?

Really, really tough call! There are many wise ones, but I’ll give you six, in no particular order:

Howard Morgan
Scott Kurnit
Esther Dyson
Stuart Ellman
Jon Whelan
Henry Kressel

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Charlie O’Donnell is the Director of Consumer Products at Oddcast, a New York City venture backed startup whose avatar platform is used for interactive advertising and personal expression. He was formerly an Analyst at Union Square Ventures.

Contact Charlie at charlie.odonnell@gmail.com or view more articles at
www.thisisgoingtobebig.com

I’d like to start doing some short interviews with local notables. Who would you like to see get four of five questions to answer here? CEO’s? Entreprenuers? Investors? Give us some specific names and ideas by commenting in this post.