Drinking the red cordial

Mate, I've got one of those red cordial hangovers, like when I was 7 years old running around at a birthday party hyped up on Cottee's Raspberry and fairy cake with hundreds and thousands dotted around my cakehole. Melbourne Long Tail Camp has been and gone. We managed to get about half a dozen in-person attendees (not three as Cameron kept claiming), plus a couple of Skypers. The winner of the beer wars was Cascade, which I see as a fantastic metric of our imminent success. Thylacine FTW!

That turned out to be the perfect number for my presentation, which went well (I think). For the half-dozen interested, here's the PowerPoint of the Tinfinger presentation, separated into four short slides: itch, pitch, rich and bitch. Ben in particular did a good job of positively attacking the thing from all sides, with help from the peanut gallery, but I think we survived the assault. I recommend the experience to any other Aussie entrepreneur, as it helps focus your own thoughts on what is important in your business plan. If the MLTC has no other positive effect in future iterations, it will certainly shine as a sounding board for any of you who have half-formed ideas you want help shaping into world-beating killer concepts. It's better to have your first presentation among friends who have your best interests at heart, as it is excellent practice if you ever have to do the same thing for people from whom you want real cash money.

Cameron Reilly managed to podcast interviews with every other red cordial fanatic there, but he got scared of me early and refused to give me the microphone after one early excursion into a crazed fantasy world of a legion of Winer Gremlins springing forth just after midnight from some beer-soaked Mogwai-substitute (ben barren is hairy enough). Can't say I blame the poor grey-haired old bugger. Paying homage to the Father of Web 2.0 was fun, I even managed to insert a few words of the Lord's Prayer in at one point.

O Web 2.0 Father who art in Gondor
Hallowed be thy blog

Michael Leone put on a beaut spread of various types of finely cooked meat, with the burgers being of particular quality - thanks Consiglieri! There was perhaps too much salad given the demographics of the attendant eaters (Feedcorp coder Kevin O'Neill was there at the start, and Michael's brother hung about as well). Overall, the ambience was perfectly befitting the evening, and Michael and Ben are to be congratulated. More to the point, there was more than enough room for 10 times as many to stand around and gasbag, a growth curve I fully expect to see realised in the near future.

Speaking of which, the question of the next event raises its head. Ben seems to think a low-key BBQ might become a fortnightly event at that location for red cordial drinkers, with the occasional upgrade to presentation nights every so often when someone feels the need to use the gathered talents to help them sharpen their attack on the outside world. That sounds good enough to me.

The most important thing is that we have started something here that is going to last, so that people interested in building Internet-based businesses using new technologies and techniques have something they can belong to that isn't American. People who want to join in can do so without having to sign forms or disclaimer or any of that shit. I'll certainly be watching what other attendees are going to do in the industry, and I'll be pimping their projects whenever possible. In the absence of a local Techcrunch, we can all do the same for each other for Australian audiences. (If you've got a local 2.0ish project you want some free publicity for, contact me!) We've taken the first step in building a front for a coherent local industry. It's going to be a hoot.