Random Mesh reflections (one week after the fact)

Mesh, Canada’s Webopalooza, has long since packed up its virtual tent but there are no shortages of memories and items to follow up on.

Personal highlights were the various discussions on Day 2 of the conference, with an emphasis on a day that focused on Web marketing and business. The day kicked off with Canadian entrepreneurs that have struck it big in them thar Web hills.

First up was Lane Merrifield, the Club Penguin founder, who sold his company to Disney for about US$350-million in August of last year. Garrett Camp, the StumbleUpon founder/Calgarian/lucky bastard who sold his company to eBay for US$75-million last year, followed.

Neither had any secrets to reveal but the general guidance (e.g. stay the course, 1000 points of light) and tales of the companies as they rose to prominence, were nonetheless appreciated.

The various sessions in the afternoon of Day 2, such as the Cultivating Communities session where panelists such as Derek Szeto of Redflagdeals.com imparted Web wisdom and best practices to audience members, were particularly useful to those looking for tactical advice. Jen Evans, a Toronto-based entrepreneur and writer who oversaw the discussion, gets my vote for best moderator of the conference. She rightly recognized it’s not all about her!

As an aside, it was entertaining and frankly hard to ignore the obvious multi-tasking and Twittering that went on during the sessions - hard to imagine how many of the attendees paid attention to the panelists. Each to his own, as they say. Given Twitter’s technical problems this week, one has to wonder whether the Mesh conference members overloaded the site!

Separately, I’m not positive but Windows-based machines may have been banned from the MaRS premises where the conference was held for the third consecutive year. Macs running Firefox were the name of the game for most attendees; I don’t think I saw a Dell or HP machine anywhere.

Anyway, conference co-organizer and all-round nice guy Stuart Macdonald asked me what’s changed over the three-year life span of Mesh. Tough question as each year has been great. I suppose the short answer seems to be incremental improvements to the conference lineup. The 15 minutes of fame was perhaps the most entertaining slot for me personally - it was a blast to watch eager entrepreneurs pitch their wares to an audience of roughly 400 people. Many flopped in my estimation but there were a few gems too, namely the Well.ca online drug store founder whose name escapes me at the moment.

Equally entertaining (and useful for that matter) was the CityTV-like pitch booth where eager entrepreneurs could shout their pitches, presumably to venture capitalists.

The free Red Bull and after-Mesh parties were a nice touch and loads of fun, respectively. Looking forward to the fourth iteration of Mesh!