Another Melbourne unconference: Tequp

Apparently Elsternwick is not the only hot meeting spot for Melbourne-based dot com startuppers. Via Cameron Reilly, the latest pissup unconference is called Tequp. No, it's not an obscure country town in Western Australia. You won't need to have your NAVTEQ up to get to it either, since it's centrally located at 582 Little Collins St in the Melbourne CBD this Friday at 6pm. The $15 entry fee tells me the guys behind this are serious. A better price than the Web 2.0 conference, anyway.

On the guys: Jeremy Hague is apparently working on third-party Skype apps; Keith Lang a.k.a. SongCarver is a self-described "composer/songwriter/innovator" from Queensland; and Cris Pearson a.k.a. atariboy is a "Musician & Graphic/UI Designer" whose blog is currently showing a 403. They remind me a lot of parties I used to go to in Sydney populated exclusively by ultra-suave hipsters like those journos from Internet.au magazine, Kate Crawford and Nic Healey. I could never be that cool. Hopefully the tequp guys are a bit more down-to-earth. Again, the brand of beer they drink (if any) will be key: anything European and I think I'm on shaky ground.

In any case, it's just another signifier that Melbourne is where the next Australian Internet boom is going to be at. Suffer in yer jocks, Sydneyites!

UPDATE: I just figured out that Cris and Keith are two of the five principals of plasq, whose primary product is Comic Life, a photocomic creation tool that looks funkier than James Brown. Plus three audio products that look ready-made to be first over the barricades in the podcasting revolution. Wow, some really good-looking stuff there.