Tonight I went to the “metameetup” at the local makerspace, Sector67. It was good — free food, a few people I knew and a lot of interesting people I hadn’t met before.
The most unexpectedly interesting person I met was Jeff Pesek who created tech.mn, a blog about tech companies in Minnesota. He told me that he started it a few years ago when he looked around for a Techcrunch-like database of companies in his area and found none, so he started his own by simply calling up companies and offering to interview them.
I wish someone would do that for Madison! The local utility, MG&E, generously maintains a guidebook of tech companies but it’s very factual. The CapitalEntrepreneurs.com site lists some of the new, energetic companies in town, but that’s just a subset of interesting news.
Too bad there’s no top-level domain for .wi
You could do tech.wi.us. It’s not quite as clean, but might work. I’m not sure what’s special about getting a wi.us domain name, but I know the guy that runs fitchburg.wi.us and could ask. Of course the domain is the relatively easy part – you still need someone to produce all that content. 🙂