This month, we're changing it up a bit...

Rochester Open Coffee Club Members and Members of EO - Entrepreneurs Organization are invited to revel around an open bar and dine on hors d'oeuvres from 5:30pm-8:00pm on Thursday, June 19 in the proximity of the Rochester International Jazz Festival at Monty's Korner (363 East Ave.).

[There will NOT be a regular Open Coffee Club event on Friday]

Food and refreshments are free, compliments of our sponsor, Goldman Sachs. Special thanks to Richard Glaser, Merrill Lynch, for proposing & coordinating this event!

Bring your spouse or significant other downtown to enjoy our wonderful city at its finest. Park on the street near Monty's (the intersection of East and Alexander) or a nearby lot. Parking is plentiful. You will be close enough to walk to the shows, which all take place within a several block radius.

Go to the early shows (6ish) and swing by afterwards or stop by first and go to the later shows (8ish). Boz Scaggs is the headliner at 8pm at the Eastman Theatre, but there are plenty of other choices. There is also a free show, DJABE, on Gibbs St. For those without a week long club pass, tickets for shows are reasonably priced. Go to www.rochesterjazz.com for more info.

Hope to see you there!

The next meeting of the Rochester OpenCoffeeClub is nearing and I just wanted to let everyone know that Cyndy Aleo-Carreira will be introducing her company Profy (http://www.profy.com). I won't spoil her intro, but I can tell you they just got back from the Web 2.0 Expo where they generated some good buzz. Go check out what they have and come hear it directly from Cyndy.

We are of course looking for people to tell us more about their Rochester high tech ventures. I already have a few people in mind but let me know if you have a story to share or know of someone.

Keep spreading the word on the meeting and come join us on twitter as well - http://twitter.com/aaronnewman.

Last weeks meetup had another nice turn out. A variety of people showed up - and some new faces which was great. A few of note:

Martin Edic, internet marketing guru (http://www.supernaturalagency.com/), joined us.

Mark Bocko from the University of Rochester also joined us. Mark has a new compression technology AND a really cool high resolution CMOS images that uses less power. Here's a link to more details:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080401150755.htm

Our guest this meeting was TextWise. Connie Kenneally, CEO of Textwise, gave us some background on the $1 million SemanticHacker challenge. For more details check out their website:
http://www.semantichacker.com/challenge

As well, there are a few people that found out about ROCC through me twittering (http://twitter.com/aaronnewman) and we are adding people to the list (Cyndy Aleo-Carreira over at http://www.profy.com). Nugde me if you are on twitter.

Thanks to Cyndy as well for pointing us to http://opencoffee.ning.com/ which I submitted our club to be officially included.

We are still trying to get some social media people from Kodak to join us. They have a great blogging platform over there (http://1000words.kodak.com/ and http://1000nerds.kodak.com/) and we hope they come see what we are doing. We meet across the street from their building practically ;)

As you can see, the Rochester startup community is alive and kicking. Come join us at our next meeting May 16th, 2008, 8 a.m. at the Spin Cafe.

Ok, so we have actually had 3 or 4 meetings of the Rochester Coffee Club (call them our Alpha & Beta launches), but with our new website AND an awesome turn-out at our March 21 event, I think its safe to say that we have "Officially Launched!..."

A very big "THANKS" (and then some) to Jason Mendelson and Ross Carlson at Foundry Group & founders/patrons of the Boulder Coffee Club for (1) convincing us that this makes sense (actually, that was pretty easy!) and (2) for so generously assisting us with the launch of our website!

ROCC was created by a small group of area high tech entrepreneurs who were inspired by Jason Mendelson's visit to Rochester to keep building momentum in our region's entrepreneurial high tech sector. Based on the energy in the room at our March 21st event, I'd say its working!

ROCC attracts a diverse group of high tech company Founders/CEO's and their guests each month, including entrepreneurs from across Upstate NY and across industries...the mix has also included special guests, including local legend, Dick Kaplan, CEO of Pictometry and even some Boston friends, John Hession from Cooley Godward Kronish and Steve Zamierowski from Deloitte's Tech Venture Group.

Our mission is simple...provide a forum for like-minded entrepreneurs to informally meet, share stories, contacts and strategies, (maybe change it up from time to time to keep it exciting), and most importantly, just keep the momentum going!!!

Hope to see everyone at our next event April 18 - we've invited special guest, Connie Kenneally, CEO of TextWise, to mingle with us & provide some more insight on the $1 Million semantichacker competition...pretty cool!

Deb.