Bing says G’day Mate from Sydney Australia!

Some folks take coals to Newcastle – I take beer bottle openers to Australia. Though I’m officially on vacation, we Bing folks never really rest, especially when there’s an opportunity to spread Bing love via beer. Constant vigilance is our watchword!

So the place I got to share the Bing love was Silicon Beach drinks at the Grace Hotel in Sydney. While others spent their Friday-after-Thanksgiving bloated from turkey and football overdoses, I got to hang out with about 50-60 folks from IT, start-up starters, programmers, designers, and general populace at the 77Bar on the Mezzanine level.   The chats were amazing…Australian startup culture is very different than in the United States – the state of venture capital and angel funding is different, and the government plays a unique role. 

Here’s a pic as the party was getting started – later on our section of the bar was hard to move around in.

And lest folks in Silicon Valley think we forget all about them when we go to Silicon Beach, the Techcrunch50 Startup t-shirt I sported was GlideHealth a startup that helps doctors manage patient information from their mobile phones. Made sense when going to a country where “country doctor” could mean flying or helicoptering into the bush to find your patients.

Besides the beer bottle openers, I left ouf piles of Bing stickers – when we closed down for the night I realized people weren’t fooling around with putting them on their laptops – they were WEARING them out to the pubs they hit next!  The fellow second from the right in white shirt is Bart Jellema, the original organizer of these events. He noted with pride (and others confirmed) there are events Sydney tech folks can go to pretty much any day of the week – their scene is really picking up.

 Big thanks to everyone for making the event a success!

Betsy Aoki, Senior Program Manager, Bing