September NY Tech Meetup: Back to School!

“ Interesting presentation. Nicely run meetup. ”

“ Boring, boring, boring. Too many presenters, too long presentations, and no break. ”

“ Great content, great speakers, very inspirational ”

“ Good topics by presenters, but it was too rushed. Cut out a presenter or two next time to allow for more in-depth presentations and follow-up questions. ”

“ I love robots. ”

“ great to have dan bricklin present, i like his style. would have liked the promised interview, affording a forum for probing of what was hard about what he and his co-inventor/friend, bob frankston, went through to bring a great software concept to the world. there's much to learn from their path. ”

“ Bringing ideas in development at university was a great idea. ”

“ NY Tech MeetUps are like sex: The worst I ever had was WONDERFUL! It would help if presenters could come a little better prepared regarding their presentations. Too much dead space. ”

“ Liked the interview with Dan Bricklin - please do more of these ”

“ It was interesting to see some hard core research. Great ideas. Very impressive technology. ”

“ I was so impressed with the August NY Tech Meetup that tonight's was a big let down. Few of the speakers actually acknowledged the topic of the meet-up and how their work was related to their university and to the public. There was also A LOT of wasted time with announcements between each presentation and speeches by other people who weren't the main speakers and product/project hawking/selling... it felt like my time and attention wasn't being respected. Also, Nate was good about helping people with their computers (and he was previously really great about making sure people stuck to the topic and to the demos...), but how many presentations do there have to be before people realize that they should turn their laptops on and open up their programs before they start their presentation?!? ”

“ great ”

“ worth being there. ”

“ Academic presentations were EXCELLENT, but Dan B was a disappointment, sorry to say. ”

“ There were no breaks for food and some socializng between speakers or like every 45 minutes or every half hour, need to give a 15 minute break to all ---for eating some snack s or appetizers should be at the back and so some people an socialize, then after 15 minutes should start new speakers, then after 30 minutes ahould have another 15 minute break and then 30 minute next speaker then another 15 minute break ----like that, because at 9pm --i am so tired, i just need to leave to go home, so late ”

“ Great exposure to startups I would never have known. ”

“ 1. to many sales pitches and help wanted. instead of asking for help, convince me about how great your product/project is. 2. awful presentations: no because of the content but because people were craming to much info into to little time. the idea is not to talk fast but be concise. 3. no half time break ”

“ Low energy, not typical of this enthusiastic group. Presentations were based upon interesting concepts, but badly presented, rambling, disorganized. They need to focus on what's the core of their idea, what's great about it, and what challenges, technical and otherwise, they currently face. Speakers seemed more impressed with their own knowledge than in reaching out to the NY Tech community Dan Bricklin's talk was far better, kind of a great dessert! ”

“ I think the moderator could have framed the event more clearly at the beginning of the meetup. As for the presentations, while they sounded interesting in e-mail and certainly had very interesting and valuable work to present, the delivery and connection to the "back to school" theme was lacking. In the future, I would give orgs that are doing a demo major topics to cover: 1) "what is this product?" 2) "what differentiates it from similar products? 3)"what are the real world applications?" ... and so on. I think framing and coherence are really important, especially when you are asking people to contribute $$ and their limited time. You have a captive audience so its very important to really honor people's time and deliver high quality content that does align with the main theme of the event. It also gives speakers confidence that what they are delivering is useful/interesting to the audience. ”

“ Great job Nate- despite not feeling well! I really liked the demos; quite thought provoking. Dan Bricklin was really entertaining and informative- always good to map where things are going against where they've been- Thanks, Guy ”