I was told that the paidContent mixer  was the hot ticket in town this past Tuesday night. So while Dave went downtown for the NY Tech Meetup, I was in midtown at T New York. The registration was only open a little while last week and it filled up quickly and fortunately I landed a spot. The final attendance count was somewhere around 600 – an impressive turnout.

Having set high expectations for the event, I was let down a bit. The venue was cramped to say the least. I was kind of curious as to how they were going to have editorial guests present in a club space. T has one main dance floor where the main stage was set up with several alcolves on the sides. I made my way within 50 feet of the stage and I still couldn’t hear anything at all.

I was looking forward to hearing from Gordon Crovitz, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, as they are planning WSJ 3.0. Thankfully, Donna Bogatin of Ziff Davis was close enough to the stage posted about it here and here. I love the blogosphere.

It seems that I wasn’t the only person that felt this way as one person pleaded to Rafat, Editor of paidContent, to keep out the riff-raff. paidContent.org issued an apology although calling some attendees rude. I would have to agree with this assessment as the venue made it hard to hear and the people in the back made it even harder.

A major positive was from 6pm to 8pm it was complete open bar, not just two drafts and white/red wine along with some hors d’ourves. The open bar definitely got people warmed up for the networking. I hooked up with a few folks from NextNY who helped spread the word a few weeks ago on their newly annointed blog Over the past few months, NextNY has taken over the town and is in heavy rotation at all of the must-attend events. Watch out West Coast.

A few suggestions for next time would be to invite less people, use a venue without so many rooms, and provide a better sound system. The tables with information were definitely in the wrong place right next to the main floor bar. While I understand this is where the traffic was, it caused a bit of a jam.

Final verdict: Overall, it was a great networking event as the people in attendance were from varying backgrounds. The content (pun intended) was sorely lacking.