Wednesday, I went to my first RI Nexus event, The Open Coffee (mistakenly referred to as the Providence Geeks breakfast). Let me tell you something about these people—they are some of the coolest folks I've met in this state.

I have to admit I hesitated to attend a Geek Dinner event in the past year, not because of the name, but since I had the kids, I have had little time for after-hours business events.

Then, my friend Pam O’Hara from Batch Blue Software invited me to an Open Coffee, held every other Wednesday at 729 Hope. She told me she usually goes with Anisa Raoof from kidoinfo.com, whom I just adore. If they can hang with the geeky group, so can I. And I admire Providence Geeks founder Jack Templin for pulling everyone together on a regular basis. So on my calendar it went.

The first person I see at the café counter is tall Paul Lavallee, who has returned from the North to his home-state to, shall I say, “dabble and play”. Paul and I joked that we see each other everywhere—in the last month we bumped into each other at John Speck’s Web 2.0 Workshop at New Commons and at the RiverzEdge charity event downtown. He also lives next door to my best friend’s parents and refurbishes Harleys—not very geeky, to say the least (although he claims to have been a software developer since 1979)! Behind him is Alan Tear, master of creativity and innovation, who was welcoming all geek newbies, like Paul and I.

Iced chai in hand, I turn the corner into the café area and spot a long table of men, aged from 20-ish to 50-ish, engaged in a conversation about a round of venture financing just completed. (This was a far cry from the solopreneur conversations I normally enjoy.) No pocket protectors, but I'm guessing this is them.  I see Jack, then also recognize Charlie Kroll from Andera Software and Dana Paul from Shazamm Interactive. I'm in the right place.

However, there are no available seats at the table. I walk up in my sparkly flip-flops, khakis and white tee-shirt and they all (maybe?) assumed I was meeting someone else because no one budged. So I asked, “Is there room for one more? Pam O’Hara told me I should come to balance out the testosterone level at these meetings.” Lucky for me, they laughed and added a table and more seats and turned out to be a very warm and genuine group of guys.

Sidebar: let me say this about businessmen—you can't generalize. I’ve worked with many kinds in many industries. I started my career in the finance world and worked with men who were like mother-mentors. I learned a lot from their guidance counselor-like style early in my career.

In the health insurance world, the male leaders were the command-and-control types. At industry trade shows, I’ve never met a more secretive, tight-lipped bunch. I mean no one wanted to talk about their company. Bizarre!

But what I learned about technology guys over the years is that if you get a bunch of them together, they feed off each other’s creative energy. Sprinkle in a few serial entrepreneurs and you’ve got a room that’s buzzing with excitement, ideas, connections, etc. Add caffeine to the mix and, well, I must say, it got a little crazy in there! This Providence Geek set is a high-energy crowd like none other I’ve seen before in Little Rhody.

I met Medhi Moutahir, a Johnson and Wales University Professor of Change and Innovation who’s working with students to research and develop some cool new ventures. I turned around and bumped into Annette Tonti, who I had seen speak at a CWE (Center for Women in Enterprise) event back when I was an entrepreneurial neophyte. She is like a goddess of the online marketing world. She had raised $27.5 million for Bluestreak’s rich media server application before most people even knew what rich media was. We chatted about her new startup, MoFuse, which I promised to give a try soon and will report back on.

I also bumped into John Zib and found out he’s doing digital art delivery to coffee shops (amongst other things) and the just-graduated Chris Hempel, who has done some neat stuff with Second Life - like re-create the island of Morrocco, for one thing.
 
In all, I made some interesting connections and I look forward to setting up meetings with these folks again in the near future—not just because they’re nice people but because there’s the strong potential for various forms of collaboration with my company and our clients.

Summary: The 2+ hours I spent with the Providence Geeks was definitely worthwhile. And the fact that you can sip chai in your flip-flops and do real business in Providence is trés chic, don’t you think?