If you’re interested in what’s happening in the tech community or even here in Silicon Valley, then most likely you’re on Techmeme checking out the top headlines affecting the community. Just recently the news aggregator website underwent a redesign and now it looks much cleaner and organized, at least in my opinion. And its founder, Gabe Rivera, is slowly adding beneficial services to the site to help the tech industry be better informed. A few months ago, it was a job board that listed the startups and tech companies who are hiring and this list has grown to include Google, Tumblr, Yammer, Amazon, Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Square, and Foursquare. But now, the next update to the site has been launched: an event calendar for the tech world.
Now I know what you must be thinking…there’s Plancast for that, right? Or wasn’t someone using Facebook or Upcoming for this? What about Meetup? Well those are all well and good, but we’re not talking about one of those one-off meetups or tweetups at an open bar. These events are more for the entire masses and so far include things like seminars, panels, conferences, hackathons, and things not specifically located here in the Silicon Valley. As TechCrunch’s Eric Eldon points out, this move by Techmeme is an attempt to “solidify the site’s position as the watercooler for anyone in tech” and he’s right — nearly anyone in tech will probably refer to a story that has been headlined on Techmeme. And to clarify on what events will be featured on this calendar, anyone can submit an event to Techmeme, but only those events that are “expected to produce the kind of news that appears on Techmeme” will show up (quote courtesy of TechCrunch).
So what you’re getting is a filtered and properly curated event list from Techmeme. This shows promise because while people are trying to get their stories and posts featured on Techmeme, the same will be for the events as well. There are definitely too many tech events happening around the world at any given time – believe me, I’ve tried to keep up with just the San Francisco events on my own calendar, but it became quite an enormous ordeal. So if you want your launch event or your tweetup to be listed, then perhaps Plancast and Facebook might be the best way since Techmeme will probably filter it out. The exceptions? Events involving major announcements or product launches, or conferences including candid interviews with a major industry figure or even earnings announcements, and other kinds of virtual events will be listed on Techmeme.
There’s even a paid option that they’re rolling out with their event calendar if you’re so inclined to go this route. If you pay, they’ll highlight your event and offer more prominence and even add a call to action next to it! And if you pay, you get more leniency on what events you want to have on the calendar.
Regardless of the route, it will be interesting to see what events are featured here and how this progresses. Congratulations to the Techmeme team!
