PROPERBUZZ

Small Biz Bites Blog

Philip Tadros - Small Business

Posted by: Andrew Benkard : December 5th, 2007

Today we’re going to leave the crowded airspace of our EWR/JFK/LGA home and take a trip to the Second City.

Chicago resident and community builder Philip Tadros was at the NYT Small Business Summit in October. We exchanged thoughts on startups not long ago.

Entrepreneurs wondering how the internet can fit into their business should pay special attention to the second Q&A. But do not accept any bicycle rides from this man.

Philip Tadros
proper.tumblr.com
Founder / CEO of Metroproper.com
Founder / CEO of Dollop Coffee Co
(Both in Chicago)

AB: You’re a serial entrepreneur. When do you know it’s time to move on from a project?

PT: When it’s eating away at your other projects in turn people. I was 20 years old with my first coffee shop “Don’s Coffee Club” on the least traveled L stop in Chicago.

The community was great but the numbers kept you from exploring. Luckily with all the local buzz, it sold for a profit, but a less attractive exit was echoing in my brain. It was time to move on. AT 21, I had an exhibition space called “Chase Cafe”. It was a multimedia performing arts cafe in 4,000 plus 1920’s hotel lobby and ballroom. Now that was really hard for me to move on from. The relationship i had with the building owner was great, 10 year lease capped off at $2,500. But he lost the building in a divorce shake up & now I’m dealing with the owner financed slum lord army in a battle of “how do we get this kid out of here”.

I fought, and legally I knew I could of stayed. We went to court, I was doing pretty well. At the same time I had a very promising shop opening up called “dollop coffee co” and i moved into a community that not only supports your creations emotionally but financially as well.

I then became the brain child of Metroproper & moving forward and putting positive financial and emotional attention in where I need to be became more and more clear. Plus I don’t hold grudges, weighs you down. So I dropped the court case and moved on from the Chase.

AB: Your latest start up is a social networking site. Most of our readers here are offline boots-on-the-street entrepreneurs who might be wondering how they can leverage social web tools. What advice would you give them?

PT: Being community builder on the street myself, I couldn’t imagine not being prepared for the virtual merger. It’s slapped enough people in the face already & shaken up all our old media. Craigslist & blogs are passing up the newspaper industry. Online Video is on the rise. Wikipedia now documents how we agree on our information. Myspace & Facebook are cute and fun with pictures. Metroproper is a community of people that share social bookmarks, discuss local commerce & is geocentrically driven to encourage the online to offline relationships. (Jan 1st we go publicly live with our enhanced version)

Some people say being online takes you away from really interacting with people. I can agree flesh is amazing, but i have never in my life been in more contact with so many people. I would encourage “offline boots-on-the-street entrepreneurs” to get involved.

AB: Got any advice for me as I try to build a community here?

PT: Be open, honest & useful. Keep molding your frame work around the right people that get involved. Tie everyone in so the right paths will cross as you facilitate. Listen to people like Matthew Haughey in his blog fortuitous “for every success there are ten failures. ” who says:

1. Take emotion out of decisions
2. Talk like a human, not a robot
3. Give people something they can be proud of
4. Bring users in during community decisions
5. Moderation is a full-time job
6. Metrics spread the work out
7. Guidelines not rules

AB: Running a small business for the first time means lots of new challenges. What part of entrepreneurship have you worked hardest on?

PT: Well you learn how to do everything no matter what it is. Then at some point you have to work really hard on finding the right people, or letting them find you. I worked really hard on letting the right people take over different parts of the business. Allowing for more and more people to come in and help out. As far as passion and working hard, I’m always naturally awake and motivated & feel great. I want to work on more alone time & stretching sounds good.

AB: What would you do if you weren’t in business for yourself?

PT: I’m not in business for myself. I work for all the people I fight to take care of. For the people I look to hopefully do better for. The people I wish to be able to take on and get more involved in a better funded version of our quality of life. I’d wait tables over any job I didn’t believe in, any day.

Business Bio
Founder / CEO of Metroproper.com in Chicago, but virtually everywhere & Founder / CEO of Dollop Coffee Co in Chicago
I spend my time in my home office, coffee shop and on my bike looking for food. I like the little worlds I’ve reached out to create because so many solid people keep reaching back. I feel in love with the revolution in the Internet, and i just want to offer a useful version of a diverse community to fill my daily addiction. I’m here to answer questions and strive to make this a heartfelt site so we can waste our time productively

Bonus video! Scenes from Philip’s perambulations in Chicago… when it was warmer outside.

a day around town, food and shop from philcoextra on Vimeo.

http://www.nytsmallbusinessummit.com/2007/12/philip-tadros-dollop-coffee-co-metropropercom.php

(2 notes)

FlashBack Article, Just Found!

Filling Chicago’s communal cup

Babs Myers

Coagulate your talents.”

That’s what’s written next to the smoothie prices and coffee selections on the menu board, one of the first things you notice when you walk in the door. Then you notice the enormous three-headed dragon puppet dangling on the wall, all grinning, glittering gold and red and purple. Chairs of every shape and size — wicker lawn chairs, sections of church pews, mod molded plywood stools, overstuffed parlor chairs — cluster around glass-topped tables. You can’t quite tell how many rooms there are, because they seem to ramble into one another, their walls covered in paintings and blue plaster molding. Here there’s a chandelier, there a trampoline is stuck to the wall. In this room there are about 10 little mobiles hanging from lightbulbs right at eye-level — in that room there are microphones and speakers — everywhere is color and light.

You wander around trying to make sense of the layout when the guy behind the counter introduces himself and tells you not to bother trying to figure it out because it won’t be this way next week. It probably won’t be this way tomorrow, in fact; it’s changed every day, and would you like a spoonful of ice cream? He was just going to get one for himself.

Welcome to the Chase Cafe, located at 7301 N. Sheridan Rd. To the people who live and work here, it’s much more than a coffee shop – it’s a performance space, a studio, an art gallery, an Internet cafe and a home, and there are plans to make it a greenhouse, a radio station, a publishing house and a grocery. A large, indeterminate number of the people who work there aren’t on the payroll, and those who sometimes get room and board instead of a paycheck.

“This isn’t just a coffee shop gig selling coffee over the counter,” says Phil Tadros, 22, owner but not leader. The kind of guy you can’t describe without using the word “intense,” Phil is the one who offered the ice cream earlier. Now he sits restlessly, occasionally jabbing and gesturing with his spoon for emphasis. Phil says he’d had the basic idea for the cafe for years but never had the chance to make it happen until he moved into the apartments upstairs.

“This space had been empty for years, and this new owner wanted me here,” he says. “He knew I’d clean it up, you know what I mean? He gave me the freedom to write the lease myself and secure that this place is gonna grow.

“The way it’s happened has just been magical,” he continues, waving the spoon. “Everything I said I wanted just walked in through the door. I’m a huge believer in magic.” Almost all the furniture — all those couches and coffee tables and chairs — is donated; local artists helped remodel and paint, and one day a man named showed up set up a sound system.

“It’s nonstructured management,” explains Uriel, 23, volunteer/employee/resident. An ebullient kid with bright brown eyes and a red pharaoh-style beard, Uriel does construction and plumbing work for the cafe when he’s not “serving people, busing tables and flirting.

“Phil just wants you to do for yourself,” he says as he sprawls on a huge plush couch. “We’re trying to make this place into a viable, living organism for people who want to hang out and performers who want to do their thing. And the whole place changes every day.”

While he says this, a girl hangs a string of blue and white Christmas ornaments over a chair in the corner and people play Ping-Pong in another room. Someone knocks pots and pans around in the little kitchen while two men work out lyrics and backbeats in “The Ballroom,” where the stage and nascent recording studio are. Out back on the patio, a woman talks to her friend, who is idly gliding back and forth on an old piece of exercise equipment.

As a living, breathing community, the cafe hosts both regular and special events. According to its flier, every Monday and Tuesday are open mic nights; every Wednesday there are aikido lessons; every Thursday, tango lessons and every Sunday Tai Chi and milk and cookies. Recently they had a didgeridoo circle as part of “Trance Healing Dance” night, and this Friday they’re throwing a masked “ball” for a CD release.

“And we’re going to have Tantra lessons again in June on Sundays,” says Uriel, “but right now the lady who runs them is on vacation.”

“Anyone who walks in the door has a creative outlet and resources to do what they want,” says Sarah, 23, another employee/resident/volunteer. “It’s not about money — I mean, we have to pay rent and eat, but we don’t need money to, like, drive a Mercedes.”

“I’m not at all picky about who gets involved,” affirms Phil. “I never write anything down, and I don’t read resumes. I don’t tell people what to do.” The spoon quivers as he thinks. “To me, running a business is a joke. Money is a joke. I’m doing it this way to make a point — to show the world it can be done.”

As Phil talks, Uriel works steadily, moving books from his room upstairs and installing them in a large bookshelf by the front door. He says he wants people who come in to be able to learn something during their time at the cafe. Of course, he didn’t ask the owner if making a little library is allowed, he just did it.

“The whole point of this place is to do!” he says by way of explanation.

Sarah says her work at the cafe is better for her than most conventional jobs. “You know, at the end of the day, we can say, ‘Damn, I did this and helped a person do that. It’s fulfilling. The people that work here actually care.” nyou

http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/paper853/news/2002/05/17/UndefinedSection/Filling.Chicagos.Communal.Cup-1910101.shtml

http://www.luc.edu/orgs/accesschicago/entertainment/chasecafe.html

Midwest Minute on Social Networks:

 The Midwest has its own growing roster of social networking companies and Web sites looking to get a piece of the pie. There is Chicago-based Viewpoints.com, for example, which is funded to the tune of $5 million by a virtual who�s who of the city�s angel investors. Planypus, MetroProper and MyCampFriends.com (disclosure: this reporter serves as a director of that company) are also just getting out of the gate.

MetroProper: Give Props To Local Scene

MetroProper, a Chicago-based startup founded by Philip Tadros, will soon be launching into the public beta, after an extended private beta period which started in July 2006. MetroProper is a social network for business or personal profiles with citizen journalism in cities around the world.

MetroProper combines elements of craigslist, LinkedIn, MySpace and Digg into a one online social experience. MetroProper acts as the parent site to the 400 localized metropolitan area community sub-sites (similar to how craigslist several cities). Each site offers a plethora of social networking features (similar to MySpace). The currency of the community “props” can be given to cities, people and businesses (similar to the Digg system). Users can also collect contacts (similar to LinkedIn).

The goal of MetroProper is to give individuals and small business tools to create a professional online presence. Its business model is based on letting businesses really customize their own business profile like the small business profile below. The main differentiator for MetroProper is its explicit devotion to driving people to do things offline. Centered around your local scene, MetroProper offers local business listings and reviews in your city. Thus MetroProper offers search results that are extremely geocentric and are not compromised by advertisements and or sponsored results. Basically, MetroProper wants to help users find new local businesses and people. For more great information on MetroProper from the coffee shop building MetroProper founder himself, check out this interview with Phil Tardos.

Below are some additional screen-shots of MetroProper.

MetroProper will be launching to the public soon so check it out for yourself when it does but in the meantime, check out the video (below) from the MetroProper Launch Party.

Metroproper Chicago Launch Party from philcoextra and Vimeo.

http://www.somewhatfrank.com/2007/08/metroproper.html

Community 2.0 and the Built Environment: The Phil Tadros Interview

I had a chance to talk to Phil Tadros, who runs Dollop, the coffee shop that serves as a major third place in Buena Park, my neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. Dollop, from the front door to the back storage area, looks like your living room. It’s comfortable, cozy, and full of friendly-looking people chatting or typing away furiously on their laptops. Not gonna lie — I love the place.

So I was really excited to talk to Phil about the website he’s developing, MetroProper.com, this past week. The site, which Phil and his team hope to have up within the next month, takes a number of components from different Community 2.0 sites and combines and organizes them into a more locally-focused format that takes a lot of cues from the many third place-type businesses Phil has run over the past few years. It’s small business-thinking on a massive scale. Check out the interview, then go sign up at the placeholder site.


==========================================


Where: Describe, in your own words, what MetroProper is and why you are developing it.

Phil Tadros: It’s a city-based social network that I’m developing because I have a background of opening coffee shops and communty hubs that are productive safe havens that people are able to work out of or be a part of or meet each other in. One of the things I’ve learned is that there are not enough people that know each other or what each other does or each others’ names, even though they see each other’s faces every day…so MetroProper is an extention of my coffee shop background. Like, in a way, my whole business history has been leading up to this one, really big coffee shop.

The site also includes an independent, front-page citizen media component as well as classifieds and individual pages for businesses. I really just wanted to create the most productive atmosphere for community-based media…I want to cut the crap, basically. One of the things about the internet is that it is cutting the crap from a lot of the old media. It’s getting you your information more quickly and more productively and it’s not as controleld by a small group of people and, I guess, manipulated, even ad-wise.

I mean look at craigslist: they’re unbelievable, right? They could have sold out but they’re actually making a ridiculous amount of money and they’re doing it in a really respectful way. They’re not insulting the communities they serve or undermining their intelligence and they’re treating people with a lot of respect. And that’s the kind of environment that I want ot create on land life as far as coffee shops, etc…so MetroProper is kind of bringing that mentality of what I do and what I respect that others do and trying to offer a more productive version and mixture of a lot of the sites that I like.


W: There’s still this fear, I think, of the internet for some people where they worry that communities will get increasingly focused on the web and less on the real world. How would you say—or would you say—that MetroProper would deal with that?

PT: Well some people, you know, they’re just not into technology at all, and they’re more into everything being completely natural and going back to everything being earth and trees and I repsect that highly, but I think we’ve gone too far in a man-made world to just go back to that, or even to try to maintain the world as it is. We, as animals, have already made up more things than any other animal in the history of the world — language, art, etc. So it’s like the internet, in terms of democracy and information to the masses is, I guess, the only way that i’ve learned about so far that you can actually organize all of that information and bring back a lot of things that have lost meaning or touch through being controlled by other types of business and media.


W: Like taking what you learn about online and bringing it back to your land life?

PT: Yeah, you’ve got to take the connections that you make and the stuff you learn about and use all of that along with your values to choose what to be a part of. In a general positive sense — again, I compare the web to newspapers because those things are controlled by a small, powerful amount of people — I believe that the masses, as far as people who are more pro-honesty and pro-humanity, would probably like more options. That’s what the internet has offered. Anybody can publish information. It’s amazing.

MetroProper is basically about offering a true productive democracy. Like with our business listings: you can’t give us money to be on the top of the list. We won’t take it. If you have votes, you’ll be there. The way we would make money (if we make money) is on businesses activating a profile and then customizing their page and making it their web presence if they choose to because a lot of small businesses struggle with that. So on the business side, it’s about interacting with local people in a more charming, down to earth, and intelligent, productive way.


W: How do increased connectivity over the web and all of these new ways of learning about other people and working with them online — how does that play out in the physical landscape? How does that change the way that we build cities?

PT: Well it ties into knowing your neighbor more and knowing your local businesspeople more and just kind of offering something that’s useful and charming enough where, if you choose to get involved, there are other people there who are saying “I want to be involved in my community also,” and those people can communicate. With MetroProper specifically, we’re doing a lot of interesting things for sure but we’re not inventing anything new; we’re just offering ways to shape the information differently, really — and in my extreme opinion, more productively once the site is populated.

So as far as tying in with “how does it develop communities” from the net and how does it translate back into each neighborhood…take Bojono’s Pizza [the restaurant next to Dollop] for example: they have no website. So if I can give Craig, the guy who runs the shop, the url map for Bojono’s Pizza through MetroProper, he’s basically running a social network that he can customize. He can let people that come in that shop know about the site and use it to post specials or news or have people leave comments, or just say to new neighbors “hey, we’re here.” So with MetroProper, we are offering a way for the community that he already has to be a tighter community and a more informed community. It’s a really productive way to enhance relationships in your outfit.


W: Let’s talk about what you call “land life” a bit…as you mentioned, you’ve run several “third place,” community hub-style establishments…how have you seen, in your own experience, that type of space working within a community and creating change?

PT: Well when I ran Chase Cafe, the space was a 4000sf 1920s hotel lobby and ballroom, and in it we had a kitchen, we had a broadcast-level video production room, we had a sound studio, we had a design office, we had a commercial printer and we were printing posters for bands and flyers and whatever, and we had an art gallery and there was so much going on there…we didn’t lock the doors. We didn’t need to. There was always somebody working on a project in there, 24 hours a day. People checked in, basically, it was like a lifestyle. It was an independent, artistic, productive community, and I was more in love with the experiment of it and watching it happening than trying to control the majority of it.

Most businesses would not do what I did in land life, with my neck out there, on my dime. But the thing is, that was a place where someone like Eve, this girl who cause a lot of trouble, learned to make beats and make music and got into the music industry. You know, everything I’ve been a part of, in a way, I feel comfortable in believing that they have been community hubs that were actually helping the community, or evolving peoples lifestyles. There are so many people who, on an emotiional level — and I mean, we’re basically all emotions all the time — have appreciated having something like that, to be a part of a place where you can just sit there and feel, and it’s beneficial…I think we need more of those, period: more coffee shops and local businesses and community hubs.

And with Dollop, people are so happy about it, it’s a very very loved and respected coffee shop, and it’s very cozy and productive, It’s taken this neighborhood [Buena Park], where people have lived forever, and brought together the whole freakin’ community. There wasn’t a place for people to hang out and just talk to each other, and that’s what we brought here.


W: The internet has this kind of amorphous, fantastical geography of its own but it’s not actually a place; we think of it as a place, but it’s not actually a physical place. But MetroProper is very focused on specific areas…I don’t know any other community sites that focus on that aspect. What made you decide to go that way and really focus locally and give each metro it’s own page, instead of the Myspace model, which is more universal?

PT: Well the whole thing started with the name ChicagoProper.com, about five years ago. I wanted to do a newspaper online and interview bands and chefs and whatever was going on in Chicago and do a really unique version of news, whether it was video or articles or whatever. So then I thought, if ChicagoProper works out, I might want to secure NewYorkProper.com and LondonProper.com, and that became an addiction and I wound up doing 400 cities. So now, if I go to London and find a cool bar there and I I ask them “Hey, can I throw a party here for MetroProper,” it can be for LondonProper.com and we can let people know this is for their city and about their city.

And there’s also the fact that Myspace and other sites like it are more generic…but people like repping their city. If you’re browsing for people on sites like that you’re going to look wherever is close to your house. So it’s about wanting to make real life connections happen more. MetroProper is about making the web experience be honest and productive so that my land life experiences can be enriched.


W: To wrap up, how do you envision, or how do you hope MetroProper as a website and community will affect physical communities?

PT: It feels good to interact with people; you need to. It’s more important than eating. So I want to be a part of facilitating good things in general for other people, and that’s a huge goal and ambition that I feel good about. We live in a world that we really don’t have any answers to at all. So if I know these things [about the importance of connections] for sure, then I want to be a part of facilitating more of that. And I want to be able to help people who are running small businesses, too — and being a small business owner I know what all goes into that. I have a proven track record of really getting things done. I’ve contracted and built seven stores in seven years, so I know what it is on the other side in terms of “I need everything at once: I need help with an electrician and a graphics person and I need help with this espresso machine,” and you get into the details and the list becomes enormous…so I want to be a part of helping facilitate those resources on a more local level, and that’s what I hope MetroProper will allow me to do.


==========================================


And so ends “Community 2.0 and the Built Environment.” Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the series…I’ll be posting nice and easy trackback links later this weekend, but right now it’s the weekend, and I need a break. See you all next week!


Links:
MetroProper

MP @ MySpace

(Sorry about the length on this one…I can’t figure out how to do those “after the jump” things, but I’m working on it.)

Posted by Brendan at 7:14 PM

Labels: chicago, community, community 2.0, internet, london, neighborhoods, new york, social media

http://thewhereblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/community-20-and-built-environment-phil.html

Chicago Tribune

MINDING YOUR BUSINESS

Informational sites seek ways to turn a profit
Growth of job boards, social networks lure wave of entrepreneurs

By Ann Meyer
Special to the Tribune
Published March 12, 2007

The growth of online social networks and job boards has inspired a new crop of entrepreneurs looking to get in on the action.

In Chicago, Philip Tadros is testing MetroProper.com, which combines local business listings with a social network. He hopes the combination will encourage users to linger a while on the site, much as they do at Dollop Coffee, the North Side coffee shop Tadros runs.

Tadros plans to charge a nominal monthly fee for business profiles, allowing companies to create their own MySpace-type content, while standard business listings and personal profiles will be free, he said.

http://forums.techcrunch.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=1927&tstart=400

Crain's Chicago Business YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS 2007

One thing after another THE IDEA MAN

“At this point, I would consider myself a serial entrepreneur,” Philip Tadros says. Photo: Stephen J. Serio

For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to get loans for crazy projects. But the first one I actually got was for Don’s Coffee Club in Rogers Park, which was listed for $25,000 in a Chicago Reader ad.

Don was an interesting guy, but his place wasn’t really a business — it was more like his living room. I bought the place for $13,000 in 2000 with no coffee shop experience and a loan from Palos Bank, which I got by putting up some family-owned property for collateral.

To attract more customers, I funked the place out, expanded the menu and stayed open more hours. Word must of have gotten out because we were packed. Ten months later, I sold it for $34,000 because I had another idea.

I was living in a building down the street from Don’s that had a 4,000-square-foot ballroom on the ground floor. I made a deal with the owner to rent the space for $1,000 a month. With money from the sale of Don’s and $75,000 from two investors, I started the Chase Café. We held live events, let bands record their music, developed Web sites and had an exhibition space for artists. I let people charge for their services and I would take 30%. The place didn’t make a ton of money, but it paid my bills.

Unfortunately, the building changed owners and I had to get out. But I had already moved on to other projects. My brother-in-law, who owns seven cell phone stores on the Southwest Side, wanted to open one in Evanston. So we launched Evanston Wireless with $50,000. The store did well because it was a good location. After two years it sold for $120,000.

In 2002, I met my next business partner through a friend at the Chase Café. He approached me to open another coffee shop, Dollop in Lakeview. We pooled our personal savings, which totaled $75,000, and got an $80,000 loan from the bank. Last year we made $360,000.

At this point, I would consider myself a serial entrepreneur. My dad was a big example. He moved here from Jordan and worked his way up washing dishes at restaurants to buying grocery stores and properties in Chicago. He was more money-driven than I am, but I got the hustle and the guts from him.

Now I’m building MetroProper.com, an online social network that’s a combination of Craig’s List and MySpace. We launch in a few months.

It’s taken a lot to get this project going, about $100,000. We don’t have gobs of loot, but I’m not going to worry about the spending. How else are you going to take a chance at doing something over and over again without risking everything?

As told to Christina Galoozis

©2007 by Crain Communications Inc.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?page_id=2142&seenIt=1

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?article_id=27423

(1 note)

Valentine's Day Party

a fundraising event for chances by choice dot org

SiliconValleyWatcher - diggrz: Hypervideo, CG reality, Metroproper: On the Radar

Former FT reporter Tom Foremski and team on the business and culture of innovation Posted on 09/26/2006 15:12 PM | Link | Post Comment By lucaso for Silicon Valley Watcher

As hypertext transformed the written web, so too may hypervideo transform the multimedia web.

Imagine watching a video piece on the web. Up pops an image of Hunter S. Thompson. You click on the image and the video you’re watching stops and takes you to a video interview with the Gonzo journalist and Johnny Depp. You click on the image of Johnny Depp and you’re brought to a clip of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” You complete the clip of “Fear and Loathing…” and you’re brought back to the original clip where you first saw Thompson. This is hypervideo: a non-linear approach to web video viewing that is now in the early stages of development. Thanks to Crazy Wanda for pointing this one out to me.

CG reality

Is this photo real or CG? Spirit Monkey posted this on his tribe blog today and I was definitely blown away. Check out the CG society for more info on CG developments.

Metroproper: On the radar

My friend Phil Tadros has been working hard on this project for over a year. He tells me they’re very close to launch date. Metroproper is a social network for business or personal profiles with citizen journalism in 400 cities around the world. I like the design a lot and I had sneak peak at the interface, which looks hot. Sign up to be notified when they go live at Metroproper.

http://www.themoneyblogs.com/siliconvalleywatcher/my.blog/diggrz-hypervideo-cg-reality-metroproper-on-the-radar.html

TechCrunch - Midwest Startups Unite for Second TECH cocktail

Frank Gruber 25 comments »

The second TECH cocktail rocked Chicago on October 12 at the Gramercy. TECH cocktail - highlighted previously on TechCrunch - is a quarterly event co-hosted by Eric Olson and Frank Gruber that focuses on better connecting the local technology community. The second event attracted more than 350 guests: a mix of bloggers, podcasters, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, developers and tech enthusiasts. Vonage founder Jeff Pulver even dropped in from New York for a guest appearance. Photos from the event can be found here.

The event was captured on video by Liquid Talk, a Chicago-based startup focusing on enterprise podcasting solutions, which filmed event attendee testimonials (coming soon). Liquid Talk creates podcasts for large corporations to update employees with the latest company information. Technology Evangelist and Stone Cliff Productions also filmed interviews which should be out soon. Limousines were provided by midPhase hosting to give guests a classy way to get home, but according to Chicagoist there were so many limos that one was even reported stolen!

A number of established companies and startups showcased demonstrations:

eSigma, founded by Troy Haaland, offers one of the first standards-based consortium for publishing, consuming and managing Web Service-based business processes. Businesses that are looking to develop online products can leverage common elements, thus saving them time and money since they will not have to re-invent the wheel.

GrubHub is a Chicago-based free restaurant search engine developed by Mike Evans and Matt Maloney. GrubHub currently allows users to search for restaurants in Chicago, New York, Milwaukee and San Francisco with plans to expand to more cities soon. The site enables users to enter an address and then GrubHub returns restaurants that deliver to that address. Once a restaurant is selected GrubHub displays a menu, reviews, and coupons and even lets you create an account and place a food order online.

Pawky is an online video site for short film enthusiasts. It is about a year and half old and looks to grow short film content on the web. The selection of short films is currently in the hundreds and growing every day. The site also offers some web 2.0 social hooks which include film rating and comments. The most interesting or best-rated films are often bubbled to the top like the animated film Dealing with Women or the timely Life and Death of a Pumpkin. Since the short films are independent and user-contributed they do not have the same types of copyright issues that similar video sites might encounter.

Planypus, a product of Fifteen Reasons, a Chicago-based startup, makes planning a get together easy. Planypus works by notifying your friends by email, SMS text messaging, syndication feed (RSS) or by integrating into your online personalized homepage. Planypus has implemented tagging to allow for easier findablity of events or friends. Planypus sports a “My City” tab which suggests a number of local events and venues to help spark the planning process. In addition, Planypus enables user to organize a number of friends by creating groups. Planypus is soon to have a mobile version which will enable users to text to see plans, make plans, RSVP and make comments.

Time59 is a web-based timekeeping and invoicing product developed by Chris Monaghan, a Chicago tech developer with more than 20 years of experience. Time59 allows its users to create and manage multiple projects with various hourly rates, generate invoices and integrates with other third party applications like QuickBooks.
A few other startups did not demo but deserve a quick mention:

FitLink.com, founded by Jason Borro is a social network of people that want to get fit. It offers tools to help you get motivated connect with people tied into the health scene. For example, FitLink helps trainers connect with new clients, local gyms to find new members and local fitness groups to get their message out. FitLink’s business model revolves around selling premium services to health clubs.

HouseBlogs.net is a community-powered home improvement publication that allows users to blog about their home and home improvement projects. If you enjoy numerous weekend trips to Home Depot then this could be the site for you. HouseBlogs.net was started by Aaron and Jeanne Olson last year and was recently named one of the best real estate websites by Money Magazine. The site stemmed from blogging success in authoring House in Progress, a blog about living in a 1914 Craftsman-style bungalow in Chicago. It’s amazing the power of blogs these days. J

Menuism is a product with the slogan: “rate what you ate.” It’s similar to GrubHub and carries the restaurant theme as a mashup of open user-contributed restaurants, reviews, maps and menus. It also has a social network feel. Menuism was developed by Justin Chen and John Li, two UC Berkely engineers, as part of their company Two-Bit Operation and currently supports all US cities. Finally on a lighter note, Menuism has an orange mascot named Foodha who enjoys all kinds of foods and meditating on picturesque waterfronts, to guide users through the Menuism experience.

Metroproper, founded by Phil Tadros, is a social network for business or personal profiles with citizen journalism in cities around the world. MetroProper also acts as the parent site to the 400 localized metropolitan area community subsites – sort of like a local MySpace. Each site features blogging, RSS feeds, buddy lists, forums, event listings, real-time online status awareness, e-mail, instant messaging, classified ads, photos, tagging and bookmarking. The goal of Metroproper is to give individuals and small business tools to create a professional online presence. Metroproper had a pre-launch party in July but the site is set to officially launch soon.

Bottom-line: TECH cocktail 2 rocked an otherwise quiet Thursday evening in Chicago!

http://forums.techcrunch.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=1927&tstart=400

ChicagoProper Launch Party Video

thanks motorola, ana and caroline stolnik, victorganic, dollop crew, friends and family for a great party:) close to 300 no booze no parking so thank you for the turn out everyone!