OpenBeta 5

On Thursday night, a bunch of the guys on my CCEW team and I drove into Oklahoma City and attended OpenBeta 5, an event that attracts all the software start-up minds in the area. It was so interesting to me to see how many people in middle America are interested in programming and developing software. I mean, I'd expect big numbers to attend if we were in California (and this definitely didn't attract that many), but there were still a decent number of people here that came out for the evening (maybe 40 or 50 people?).

Besides being a great networking opportunity (though I didn't get there quite early enough for that), the event itself was actually really fun. The keynote speaker was a teleconference with one of the guys who started WePay, which is a brilliant site that makes collecting money (for anything) quick and easy. Then we had a couple rounds of "Lightening Powerpoint," during which people from all over presented slideshows on their new company or idea that they've been working on lately. The trick, though, is that each slide is set at 20 seconds and it moves on whether the speaker is ready or not. And of course, there were adult beverages, delicious sushi, yummy deserts, and samples of super expensive scotch to appreciate during the numerous breaks.

But the absolute BEST part of the evening was, hands down, when everyone played PowerPoint Karaoke.

Basically, some poor volunteer with a glutton for punishment (or killer improv comedy skills) goes up and is given a completely random slide deck (that they've never seen before) to present to the audience. Hilarity ensues as people stumble through, trying to be funny with "How to be a Twitter Ninja" or a random assortment of lolcat pictures.

You know you're in a room full of nerds when we all get a huge kick out of watching yet another PowerPoint presentation.