Last night the Mesh 2007 Meetup was held at the Irish Embassy – and it was packed!

(But – before we get started, no card = no name. If we did not exchange cards, and we’ve never emailed or blogged, I’ve pretty much forgotten your name. Nothing personal – I bet you forgot mine, too.)

So here’s who I met, and a great big hello to all of you. I expect you all to become regular readers and vote for us each and every day at the Canadian Blog Awards (We’re under “business blogs”. Go, now.)

I would first like to acknowledge the brave soul from Hewlett Packard who came by himself and made sure the waitress brought me a drink. Very welcoming – thanks! He also mentioned that the HP higher-ups who have blogs don’t seem to “get” it – the blogs are never updated, and consequently never read by employees. What a lost opportunity! He sees definite value in using blogs and/or wikis as repositories of institutional memory, especially on the large multi-year projects he now oversees. Interesting conversation.

Stuart MacDonald introduced himself, his wife and her friend to us – we exchanged pleasantries, after which I bumped into Glenn Clarke and his business partner (see? No card = no name) from BlogMatrix. We chatted about their enterprise deployment capabilities and I am going to spend some more time reviewing their site this week.

Then I met Mark Sharpe and Norm Young from a startup called The Talking Company (their website is so Might Magazine circa 1996). I can’t really tell you what they do They’re developing a toolkit for podcasters and they’re in the process of securing financing. They asked me if I would be interested in being on their Board of Directors. Of course, I immediately agreed.

As if propelled by divine force, I walked across the room to a corner pillar where stood this guy and an investor named Seamus Sheamus. We chatted for a bit, I wish now I’d asked more questions (he asked a lot) and the thought did cross my mind later in the evening to offer to tell the startups who the VC was for a fee (I was thinking $100).

Right after I met Seamus Sheamus, I met Steve Janke (aka Angry in the Great White North) the newly-minted Chief Blogger Blogmaster at X company Geosign (again, no card = no name Thanks for the email, Steve!) who I chatted with for quite a while. He was an IT guy who blogged on the side and one day he got a call from X company Geosign – they liked his blog and asked him to work for them. That was three months ago and Steve loves his new job (but he still doesn’t have business cards). You can read his post about the party here.

Then Steve and I met the Wiki and WordPress MultiUser Master, the highly educated Martin Cleaver. He works with Helix and you can bet I’ll be filing his card for future reference.

A bit later I chatted with Ben Lucier of Hip Communications and Paul Anderson of E-Gate (both hosting providers). Paul said he was the only person in the room who didn’t blog (this was probably true). Then we talked about how all true bloggers are totally obsessed with their stats and how weird it was that a lot of major firms didn’t mask their IPs when they really should.

Joseph Thornley and I also spoke briefly about the handling of the Environics Kerfuffle. It was very nice to have the chance to meet in person someone I’ve come to know via blogging, and I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon!

A little later I introduced myself to a familiar-looking Dave Hyndman who I see now I also have a lot in common with, what with his references to ZeFrank (What’s your Powermove?). Dave and his family are here from Charlottetown while his wife pursues her PhD (I forgot to ask in what!) in Education.

Finally, it was time to go, but just before I did, I spotted Mathew Ingram and we had an interesting, albeit short, conversation. I thanked him for inviting me, we talked about Mesh for a bit (and Edelman, and authenticity in social media…) and again, it was very nice to put a person to a blog/email!

Needless to say, I can hardly wait for Mesh 2007 – the acoustics at the Irish Embassy were kind of brutal, so in-depth conversation was difficult. Lots of bright minds in Canada, and I look forward to hearing more from them!

If I have missed you, or misspelled your name or something else horrible – please let me know in the comments section and I will swiftly correct my error! And, uh, *cough* – don’t you think it’s time to head over to the CBAs and vote now?