Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Forge Louisville kick-off event was great
I attended the inaugural Forge Louisville event last night at Artemisia. FL was put together by Matt Winn of local VC Chrysalis Ventures to get entrepreneurs, service providers and investors together. The featured speaker was serial entrepreneur Doug Cobb who founded the Cobb Group and currently runs Appriss.
Some of the other notable attendees from the group of 75 or so were David Jones, Sr., founder of Humana, Tom Cottingham, founder of TechRepublic.
I was able to hang out with a lot of the gang from the Louisville Tech Entpreneurs group including Todd Earwood (AKA Todd Erwood) and Rob May of Louisville Video Pages and Daily Idea, Michelle Jones of Consuming Louisville, Ben Thomas of Louisville Geek Dinner, Scott Drake from Summit Energy, Lenny Grover from Chrysalis Ventures, Aaron Marshall of DBS Interactive and activist/artist Ashley Cecil.
I ran into other people I knew including Ted Smith of MedTrackAlert, Dan Scofield, Mark Crane of Greater Louisville, Inc. and Heath Gross who I had previously only known as my son Mahlon's flag football coach (talk about worlds colliding). Turns out Heath has a really interesting research company called the Sedulo Group that helped sponsor the event.
I also made a lot of new connections as well. After the event, about 25-30 people stayed at Artemisia for a late dinner. At my table was Todd Earwood, Scott Drake, Aaron Zibart who is a senior attorney with Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, Eddie Babbage who is CEO of ResonantVibes and Keith Ringer who is CEO of Metro Mojo (and a big fan of our domain name Profilactic.com).
Topics at dinner ranged from Facebook apps (I was the lone hater as usual) to Open Social to Twitter to Second Life to the iPhone and iPod Touch to the ins and outs of venture financing. Aaron Zibart was a great resource for sharing some of his experience on that.
Others in attendance who I didn't get a chance to talk to included Tom McMahon who is a former colleague from my brief stint at Greater Louisvile, Inc., local designer Chris Pearson who is known for his popular WordPress theme Cutline and Vik Chadha of Greater Louisville, Inc.
It was an excellent overall and I look forward to the next one. Thanks again to Matt for pulling it all together.
I attended the inaugural Forge Louisville event last night at Artemisia. FL was put together by Matt Winn of local VC Chrysalis Ventures to get entrepreneurs, service providers and investors together. The featured speaker was serial entrepreneur Doug Cobb who founded the Cobb Group and currently runs Appriss.
Some of the other notable attendees from the group of 75 or so were David Jones, Sr., founder of Humana, Tom Cottingham, founder of TechRepublic.
I was able to hang out with a lot of the gang from the Louisville Tech Entpreneurs group including Todd Earwood (AKA Todd Erwood) and Rob May of Louisville Video Pages and Daily Idea, Michelle Jones of Consuming Louisville, Ben Thomas of Louisville Geek Dinner, Scott Drake from Summit Energy, Lenny Grover from Chrysalis Ventures, Aaron Marshall of DBS Interactive and activist/artist Ashley Cecil.
I ran into other people I knew including Ted Smith of MedTrackAlert, Dan Scofield, Mark Crane of Greater Louisville, Inc. and Heath Gross who I had previously only known as my son Mahlon's flag football coach (talk about worlds colliding). Turns out Heath has a really interesting research company called the Sedulo Group that helped sponsor the event.
I also made a lot of new connections as well. After the event, about 25-30 people stayed at Artemisia for a late dinner. At my table was Todd Earwood, Scott Drake, Aaron Zibart who is a senior attorney with Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, Eddie Babbage who is CEO of ResonantVibes and Keith Ringer who is CEO of Metro Mojo (and a big fan of our domain name Profilactic.com).
Topics at dinner ranged from Facebook apps (I was the lone hater as usual) to Open Social to Twitter to Second Life to the iPhone and iPod Touch to the ins and outs of venture financing. Aaron Zibart was a great resource for sharing some of his experience on that.
Others in attendance who I didn't get a chance to talk to included Tom McMahon who is a former colleague from my brief stint at Greater Louisvile, Inc., local designer Chris Pearson who is known for his popular WordPress theme Cutline and Vik Chadha of Greater Louisville, Inc.
It was an excellent overall and I look forward to the next one. Thanks again to Matt for pulling it all together.
¶ 7:26 AM 
Comments:
It was a great event last night. Thanks for chatting with me so much, it was good to get to know you a bit better.
I can't wait for the next event, Matt did a great job getting this group together.
I can't wait for the next event, Matt did a great job getting this group together.
posted by 
Michelle : 12:50 PM
Michelle : 12:50 PM Great meeting you Shawn. The event was a blast.
Don't be ashamed of your distaste of Facebook; I share your opinion! If I could only get back all of the time I've wasted on that site.
Don't be ashamed of your distaste of Facebook; I share your opinion! If I could only get back all of the time I've wasted on that site.
posted by Ashley Cecil : 12:59 PM
Ashley Cecil : 12:59 PM Shawn,
I had *no* idea you were at the FL get-together... Definitely bummed we didn't meet this time, but we'll have to make it up on the next one.
Best wishes to your fam and especially Maddox this holiday season!
Chris
PS: Oh, and if you ever want to have a Guitar Hero/Rock Band session, I'll show you some insane rock-age!
I had *no* idea you were at the FL get-together... Definitely bummed we didn't meet this time, but we'll have to make it up on the next one.
Best wishes to your fam and especially Maddox this holiday season!
Chris
PS: Oh, and if you ever want to have a Guitar Hero/Rock Band session, I'll show you some insane rock-age!
posted by 
Chris P. : 5:34 PM
Chris P. : 5:34 PMPost a Comment
About Shawn Morton
Married father of 4, startup entrepreneur, social media specialist, consumer electronics enthusiast, hair metal aficionado. View complete bio.
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Thanks for the positive feedback! Good things to come...
Best,
Matt