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Last Thursday night, Rich and I trekked down to Manhattan to attend a special Dribbble meetup hosted by our friends at Squarespace. When we arrived in SOHO, we quickly realized this wasn’t going to be just another meetup. The folks at Squarespace had designed a team competition: Renting a mini hoop basketball game, using the Dribbble API to assign attendees to color-coded, headbanded teams. Team members’ profiles were displayed along with their shots and projected on the wall.

Competition was fierce. Elbows were thrown. Tube socks were pulled up high. And in the end, a winner emerged, winning a black basketball signed by myself, Rich and Squarespace Creative Director (and hoop master), Tyler Thompson, among other prizes.

We can’t thank Squarespace enough for putting together a very memorable night. It was fantastic meeting ~80 local NYC Dribbblers, hearing how they use the service, getting feedback, and seeing a portion of the community in person. The hoop tournament, beer, headbands, swag, and snacks have set the bar high for future meetups, and perhaps created a model for others around the globe.

I’m tired of web work. I’m this close to calling it an opening a cookie shop. It’s not for a lack of amazing clients, I love each and every one of them, and what’s more, I love serving them with passion and respect. Doing good work is in my blood and I’m good at it. But lately I’ve been burdened. My work isn’t making a difference for a greater good, for people who are hurting or in need. I’m not working on something that “matters”. Granted selling cookies out of a shack to locals doesn’t “matter” all that much either, but at least I’d be talking to people face to face, conversing about life and not the latest CSS animation (God help us all) on Twitter.

Enter Brooklyn Beta.

Brooklyn Beta is unlike any web conference out there. In fact, I wager to say that it’s not a even web conference, it’s a people conference. A ‘really-smart-people’ conference. Somehow I managed to work my way into the presence of the aforementioned group at this year’s Brooklyn Beta and what I found was that I wasn’t alone in my thinking. By communicating with our voices (where you open and close your mouth creating sounds by manipulating your tongue and lips into different positions) I discovered people who had families, wives and children, passions ranging from social justice to craft beers, ideas that had nothing to do with aggregating hashtags on Twitter via a new web app that required a Facebook account to login but instead were attempting to solve real problems.

In an almost Jobs-esque style, Chris Shifflet and Cameron Koczon were able to forecast a growing passion/movement that was reflected in their selection of speakers. We heard from Joel Rose about the problems our US education system is facing. We heard from Todd Park about the problems with the US health care system. We heard from Viktoria Harrison about the lack of clean water for millions of people around the world. Definitely not something to expect from a web conference but as I said, this wasn’t a web conference, it was a people conference and the people were buzzing.

The thing about really-smart-people is that if you throw a problem their way you can almost start to see the gears turning in their head. Put three or four of those people in close proximity and all of the sudden it’s an impromptu SWOT analysis of proposed solutions around a table of bacon flavored cookies. Yes, bacon flavored. I didn’t get a chance to ask Chris or Cameron but I don’t think I’d be too far off to say that this was part of their plan all along: using our talents for causes that are bigger than ourselves, working on things that “matter”.

And thats where we come full circle. Brooklyn Beta hit home with me and with so many others that I talked to. I can only hope the inspiration that was gathered in those few short days continues to grow and spread.