A wonderful Thursday at Berkman today. The meeting was long and packed: not only were the attendees more numerous than usual, but we had a special guest and some very cool presentations. Our guest was Hank Barry, former CEO of Napster and current partner at San Francisco VC firm Hummer Winblad. In contrast to what I've recently been reading about VCs, Hank was affable and had a personality. He also paid for dinner for our entire 17-strong group. Noticing that he was leaving early, I got up to introduce myself and thank him for the check. He said something along the lines of "what good is it being a VC if I can't buy dinner?"

A large chunk of the meeting was taken by Jay McCarthy, who demoed his blogging style. Let me tell you, it is not for the weak. Jay produces a digest of over 1000 blogs, reading 2000-3000 posts every day. I think this style is somewhat psychotic, but he is producing something cool and useful and some of his quirks are endearing.

Dave didn't talk a whole lot, which is unusual, but he did demo his work on Channel Dean. Dave and others got a bit excited when Andrew mentioned the Amazon-style recommendations he and I have been working on based on Share Your OPML. To be fair, Andrew is doing most of the work; all I did was give him a vague idea and some pseudocode. I'd love to help with the SQL and web interface but alas, collaboration is difficult.

I think that Dave showed a hint of disappointment when Hank explained that he was basically interested in making money from blogs (or at least in understanding if there was money to be made there), because Dave abruptly ended a conversation that several people were about to roll with. However I understand any potential apprehension against VCs or the like in a field that has so far been largely untainted by money-grubbing and built from the passion and toil of genuinely interested people.

Finally, dinner was great fun. Rick Heller tried to talk with me about politics, but I think I let him down as I am rather poorly informed and unwilling to take firm positions on political matters. (Aside from hating Bush, of course; I'd have to be a real dolt to miss that meme or the horrendous acts of misgovernment that reasonably prompted it.) I gave Critt and Steve a short demo of frassle over Steve's LifeBook and GPRS net link. The demo not only made me glad I had used almost no graphics but also netted me a valuable dose of encouragement as I continue to work on frassle.