Topix Weblog

June 24, 2005

Silicon Valley, Topix.net & Vertical Leap

by tolles at 5:20 PM

Silicon Valley is a pretty cool place to work.

It's actually a pretty small world, after a few years here -- I ran into Dave McClure a few years ago, and when he went live with SimplyHired.com, I found out he was working with a team of folks who were all formerly with a startup acquired by Netscape the same month NewHoo was acquired.

I've run into Dave a couple of times recently, and somewhere between tech events, drinks at tech events and checking out the office space situation in the same building that houses SimplyHired (since they are about fifty yards down the street from Topix.net), Dave asked me to participate in a conference he was putting on, and I agreed -- pretty much sight unseen -- Glad I did, too.

Vertical Leap looks like a pretty good event if you're traking search, or involved in the search business at all.

I'll be representing Topix.net on a panel with some familiar folks -- Jim Pitkow from Moreover, Scott rafer from Feedster, and Tantek Celik from technorati -- The news/blog search panel is at 4:00 at the Network Meeting Center in Santa Clara (more information here)

Some of these things seem to fall flat -- while others, like this one, seem to generate their own weather -- I think there have been about four different people who have mentioned being in town for this event, all of whom have been on our radar.

Nice reminder that despite all the issues (people, traffic, VC's) with Silicon Valley -- it is still the place to be if you're in the tech space (people, traffic, VC's). You really do run into opportunities on every corner.