Last week, I finally made it to a VergeIndy meeting, and not only do I regret not making it to one sooner, but this has made it to the top of my “must attend” events each month.
First, the group was much larger than anything I had read indicated. There were easily 200 folks there. For those coming straight from work, there was also Beer and Pizza. How can a professional meeting with beer &pizza lose?
Last week, there were three startups giving pitches. The pitches were limited to 5 minutes, and not only did Matt do a great job of holding them to the time, the pitchmakers did a great job staying within their alloted time slot. Each pitch was followed by short Q&A from the audience, with critical questions encouraged to help the start-ups with their thought processes and keep them moving forward. The questions asked were pointed, but not vicious. It was apparent that they were asked either to clarify a point, or cover something the 5 min pitch may not have covered.
The first pitch was from TheTyros
Like most community applications, @thetyros gives users ratings, although it was not clear what the factors were that go into the ratings. It was obvious that their founders included people who had been sports officials for years and were passionate about the topic as well as the product. They have a signup for Beta users on their webpage, so if you are a sports official, or are interested in becoming one, give their app a spin. 
BigBlueWagon is developing a video sharing/embedding application that came from the root needs of their video production clients. They told me an interesting story after the pitches about an experience with a corporate client at a Vegas show who contracted them for 24 hour video turn around, but they did not post or share the video for 2 weeks because that process was difficult. Their tool aims to make it easy for one shot video sharing/embedding for almost anyone. In addition to custom embed codes that allow you to put controlled video free from other site branding or comments on your web page, it also can upload to multiple video sites at once. 
