I went out to Twiistup last night in Santa Monica. Twiistup was organized by Mike Macadaan, and the goal for last night seemed to be merging conference with a bar/club/whatever energy.

The venue, Zanzibar, was pretty small for the amount of people who were there when I arrived around 8:45pm. The Twiistup site said 300 people were expected, and I have no frame of reference for how many showed up other than that I was way freaking hot [and trampled] until I found the air conditioning duct and lingered under it. Also, because I am me, I don’t particularly enjoy a bar where your credit card purchase minimum is $15. I’m just saying.

The first set of demos were almost impossible to hear and marred by some tech problems. I can’t even remember which companies’ demos this set was. It was pretty evident that people hadn’t tested their PowerPoint presentations with the screens ahead of time; those presentations were widescreen, and I’m pretty sure that the screen was not even 4:3, but more like a nice, square 4:4, totally cutting off vital text & images. That’s 1:1 in lowest terms, btw.

heathervescent (who actually hooked me up with a free pass to get in last night — Thanks again, Heather!) presented in (I think) the second set of demos. She managed to shush the room quiet enough I could hear about her client, ooVoo. Seriously, that bar was loud.

The two projects I learned about that interest me most are goodreads and Mint.

goodreads is a social networking site centered around book reviews. That’s a keeper. I signed up, please feel free to befriend me, but I haven’t played around with it at all yet.

Mint is being pitched as an alternative to Quicken — faster, more intuitive, and really designed to figure out where your money goes. Have we met? I’m, like, the poster child for needing this product. I may as well not have a therapist at all considering I treat ye olde Urban Outfitters like it’s solely responsible for my well-being.

I won a mint mojito off Noah Kagan, who was there to demo Mint, because I’m a big boozer (it’s a short long story), and I spoke to him about the product for a few minutes. They’re not really sure who their demo is yet, but I think almost all of my friends in the thrust of twenties’ dues-paying could find value in it. Y’know, if the thing works. I’ve signed up for the demo, so we shall see.

I took off after maybe a little less than two hours. As I said, the place was hot. Also, I was dead sleepy what with the previous night. I think Macadaan’s got something with Twiistup, so hopefully the kinks will be worked out for the next one. Small, overcrowded, hot venue is one thing. Not having a single smooth PowerPoint presentation and microphone malfunctions during a tech summit is sort of . . . another.