Students at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley will never stop raving about the opportunities you get to interact with techies and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. Last week, about 10 Haasies got together to attend the "Crunchies".
The Crunchies are to technology what the Oscars are to Hollywood. The awards celebrate the best tech accomplishments of 2009. GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch were the co-hosts and masters in ceremonies for the event that was held in the elegant Herbst Theater in San Francisco.
I cheered on as of my favourite tech apps, products and services were recognized for their awesomeness. Some of these included Dropbox, Facebook. Google Docs and Mint. Better luck to Jack Dorsey (for square), Tony Hsieh (Zappos), Yelp, Chatter and Groupon (which I LOVE!!), who probably lost our narrowly to winners in their respective categories. The complete list of winners is available athttp://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/08/crunchies-winner/
The award ceremony was followed by an amazing after-party. I made a list of the evening's highlights (in no particular order)
1. Meeting Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO of Zynga - Truly one of the most prolific entrepreneurs of our times, Mark Pincus also spoke about how Zynga (through Farmville and other social games) was raising money for charitable causes.
2. Applauding Ron Conway for winning "Angel Investor of the Year" (joke of the evening was that he was giving $50K to everyone in the audience to start their own company). Of course, if you wanted examples of how Silicon Valley really pays tributes to its heroes, you should read Y-Combinators blog requesting their supporters to vote for Ron Conway.
3. Google giving away 10 Nexus One phones to lucky winners in the audience. Of course, with my sort of luck, it wasn't a surprise that I didn't win. However, Vic Gundotra (VP Engineering at Google) did declare that Google Voice will come to iPhone "one way or the other". Apparently, as quoted by JP, the HTC president, Vic also said "Haas Tech Club? We need to hire more of you guys!" Couldn't agree more, Sir!
4. My classmate Jason Mills, gets a photograph with the founder of Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg.Read Mark's interview with Mike Arrington for his thoughts on social networking in the context of today.
5. A fun way to catch up with classmates in the middle of a long break!
HTC Members at the Crunchies After Party
Gambling for charity!
Hanging with The Mule from Smule, an iPhone App Company, with titles such as the Ocarina Flute and I Am T-Pain.
Volunteering - Checking in the VIPs and Attendee for the Event