More Fun in Silicon Valley (Craig Newmark, Dance Dance Revolution, and Blueberry Beer)

Of course there are more startup-relevant event in Silicon Valley than you can shake a stick at. I’m trying to hit as many as I can, and tonight was a great one. It’s a very likable trend in the valley for companies to open up their headquarters for free speakers events. Last week I saw Kevin Hartz, founder and CEO of Eventbrite, speak at Zurb in San Jose. Tonight it was Craig Newmark (of Craigslist) speaking at the offices of Palantir in Palo Alto. The event was jammed and Palantir rolled out some top-notch food and beer for those who could get in. They’re clearly experienced at the whole entertaining thing. 

Newmark is a mega nerd and completely owns it. His self-described high-school self is the prototype of geekdom, and he certainly doesn’t shy away from the title now. He talked about the history of how Craigslist came to be, some of the technical underpinnings (the LAMP stack and whatnot), and various points at which he eschewed monitization in order to keep the service as accessible and user-friendly as possible. He talked about toying with the idea of charging for postings on Craigslist and giving the money to non-profits, then deciding he’d rather leave that money in the hands of his users. Let them decide how to spend it.

While Craig doesn’t do much management at Craiglist anymore, he’s still active in customer service, a mantra and philosophy he returned to often. Craig’s prescription for permanent engagement: listening to people, reacting, and repeating the cycle forever.

He then explained Craig Connect, which is the formalized entity that umbrellas the non-profit work he’s been doing for some time. His focus has been on veteran’s issues for a while, be feels he’s moving towards issues of fact-checking in the media and transparency. He referenced Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart as some of the best fact checkers on TV; consistently taking public servants and journalists to task for saying one thing and doing another, or misreporting the truth. (So if you’re a group involved with these issues, now’s the time to hit up Craig for some dough ;-)

And of course these events are at least as much about the socializing as the main event. I met a Slovenian PhD student doing her doctorate on the work/life balance of entrepreneurs, a UX designer, and sat next to a fella who does analytics at Evernote, a product I use more and more, including for writing this blog post.

Ready to call it a night, I was headed down the stairs and past the second floor when I saw the flashing lights of a Dance Dance Revolution duel in full swing. The second floor of Palantir is a very well equipped exercise room (weights, kettle bells, fit balls), and a DDR rig that looks like it was just jacked from an arcade. The two kids playing were eager to talk about their work. Andrew Mak is an intern at WePay, and jumped off the glowing squares to open his Air and show me a demo. His opponent was a high school student spending the summer in a teen startup incubator, building a social networking service to help teens meet up in RL.

So far I’ve been thoroughly impressed with how friendly people are out here, eager to share their pursuits and hear about yours. And don’t forget: permanent engagement means listening to people, reacting, and repeating forever.