Pete Cashmore, founder of the massively popular social media news blog Mashable.com, was near the bar chatting with dropi.io’s Sam Lessin at The Observer’s Internet Week Kickoff Party last night at the Puck Building.
Dressed in a grey vest and pinstriped white button-down shirt, the handsome young tech entrepreneur had flown in from the U.K. a few days earlier for Internet Week New York.
“For me it kind of feels like a homecoming,” he said, in a refined British accent, of the party. (Mr. Cashmore works out of Scotland but keeps an office and staff in New York.) “It’s a very chill vibe.”
We asked Mr. Cashmore, known as something of a man about town in Silicon Valley circles, how he felt about New York’s tech scene.
“I’m very optimistic about it,” he said. “Social media and media are fusing, and New York is the ultimate melting pot for those two things. When you take the Web, where everyone is sharing content, and New York, where everyone is creating content, professional content, it’s the perfect fusion of old media and new.”
Mr. Cashmore also shared his thoughts about New York’s Internet Week, which he said had “really ramped up” from last year—more parties, more panels and, above all, more people.
“I think New York needed something like this,” he said.
But Mr. Cashmore, who is hosting his own event at the 92YTribeca on Wednesday, is mostly looking forward to some of the week’s more off-the-cuff happenings.
“It’s not so much about the panels,” he said. “What I like is the serendipity of it. The corridor conversations. The people you meet”
Get out your dance cards!
