April Event Round-up

Wow, you all are great!  The way you turned out to support local innovators and each other? Totally awesome.  And you know, I wouldn’t just say that either. (Warning — have peppered this post with links to various tweets, and blogs and articles!  Have fun connecting!)

A semi-quick recap/postmortem of the night — about 160 people didn’t have Red Sox tickets or a Seder and joined us in Waltham at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation (one comment).  And actually found their way to the right door. (Note to self:  fight harder for better signage to Museum.  Some of those pretty historic signs are just too small.  Next time: our own signs?  Beg Waltham for better signage to nearby muni parking? We’ll definitely get out some of the Museum’s “Museum this way” signs and run them down Moody Street.)  Have a lot of “next time we’ll do this different” notes.

The local media turned out — we had reporters and a photog from the Boston Globe, the Waltham Daily News Tribune picked up on the story, Mass High Tech was, of course, one of our product launches with their e-newsletters.  Computerworld visited too.  We had nice pre-event support from Scott Kirsner (and wonderful behind the scenes suggestions) and from the Bostonist.  But @MassInno is about the social media and we had tons of tweets (#MIN), blog posts, etc.

Mass Innovation Nights is all about the cool products — and boy, did our first set of innovators deliver!

IBM/Lotus — determined to be a regular visitor to the museum (the team told us they are committed to at least two more product launches with us over the next few months.)  Last night we got a demonstration from the Foundations team, small business appliance is an all-in-one, fully integrated hardware and software solution that allows you to run your business without worrying about everyday IT hassles.  I distinctly heard “configuring a server right in front of you.”  That’s the kind of thing that takes a huge load off the small business person who doesn’t have a lot of time to be messing around with a new machine.  I like Stuart Foster’s (The Lost Jacket) characterization of it as the “You can’t break this, even if you try” server.

Invention Machine — kicked off our series of demonstrations in the amphitheater showing how companies use their tools to create  ate and sustain new innovation. They even brought some of their customers’ innovations with them.  (Jeff/Parna — what WAS that thing you were carrying around?  I never got the chance to hear the whole story!)  Loved the cool video.

Lexalytics – The Entity Management Toolkit is a new part of their text and sentiment analysis solution.  Great tool for marketers and PR people (and others) trying to get their arms around how people feel about their brands online.  The new toolkit makes it easier and faster to extract information from mountains of data/documents. (And I got to meet Christine in-person for the first time!  Today she’s been blogging about  the fun she had going to a live event.)

LuckyCal – always a perennial crowd favorite (and we’re fortunate Mrs. LuckyCal has not yet gone into labor.  It’s been touch and go lately.)  I love the “toying with serendipity” approach of LuckyCal.  The tool dives into your contacts and your schedule and optimizes your trips for you.  LuckyCal suggestions match where you are going and who you know in the vicinity.  Lots of folks gave LuckyCal the Best of Show award — if there had been one.  (Should we?)

Mass High Tech came with new e-newsletters focused on specific industries and topics.  (I signed up for the start-ups newsletter.)  Hey, if someone else is going to cull through the info, all the better.  I love things like Google Alerts and TweetBeeps which help me keep track of information.  Anything that is pre-sorted and focused for me is good!  TurboPR’s take.

Noteflight — We first met Noteflight at an Open Coffee Meetup in Cambridge a few months ago. Mr. MassInno (a musician, plays  with the New England Philharmonic) is totally enamored with the browser-based tool he seems to think was especially designed for him.  Noteflight edits, displays and plays back music notation in a standard web browser, integrated with an online library of musical scores that anyone can publish, link to, or embed.

Practical Solar — The heliostat was pretty darned cool.  The photographers thought so too.  The array of mirrors made for some very neat pictures.  I think Adam Goss’ tweet is dead on target in terms of the product’s appeal.

TweetWorks — Confession time.  With all the support from the Twitter community, I specifically went looking for a Twitter Tool and who’s a bigger tool than Tweetworks? [ Oh, wait, I didn't mean it that way, Mike. ]  See my reason above for liking Mass High Tech e-newsletters for why I like Tweetworks.  Anything that helps sort and group info is GOOD.  Tweetworks helps me find other people interested in the same thing I am.

Wiblocks — Wiblocks is a physical computing development system that is compatible with the Arduino open-source software environment.  They come in kits — supply your own soldering iron.  @MassInno’s son will be a good candidate for this in a few years.)

Xelago — Liz and Brian showed us their brand new product (just launched) and now we have a way to find out the best restaurant in our neighborhood. Another Facebook app for me!  I love that I can use it to find kid-friendly events.  School vacation is coming soon!

We’ll continue to collect blog postings, tweets, mass media coverage and link from here.  Please continue to tell people about the innovative products you saw at the first Mass Innovation Night.  And, next month, don’t forget to join us for the after-party immediately following the main event.  We’ll go again to Biagio’s Plush Lounge which was a super-comfy spot to hang out afterward, just a quick walk across Moody Street.  The Plush part was an apt name.

P.S. We’ll announce the May products and open up the RSVPs page for May 13th soon.