I'm always amazed at the new mix of people that come out to the Open Coffee Club and with the amount of talent that assembles in one room. I also find it interesting that there are so many transplants as well as commuters that make up the mix and are involved in some really interesting companies. It seems as if we have our own melting pot of talent representing both the east and west coast.

One example: Adam Bates, one of the founders of ROCC, who joined us at Spin Café in September. Adam moved to Rochester from Boston where he previously worked for venture-backed MusicMatch, acquired by Yahoo! in 2004. Adam now commutes to his job with another venture-backed on-line music startup based in CA, TopSpin, which is backed by Redpoint Ventures and the Foundry Group.

Benjamin Golub, a developer for CA-based FriendFeed also came out for the first time in September. Founded by former Google staffers, FriendFeed is a great online service that allows users to create a customized feed of the content their friends are sharing across the web, from posts on YouTube to updates on twitter, Facebook or Flikr. Its worth checking out if you haven't already.

Regardless of where people in our tech community have come from or where they may be commuting to, I'm a believer that only good things can come from talented people connecting, so thanks to all who come out to ROCC, and let the networking continue!