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What It Was Like at PayPal X Innovate 2009
Posted by
Bradburn Young
Wednesday, Nov.04.2009, 9:17 PM PT
Right as you went in there was a high platform with a white-clad quartet playing stringed instruments exuberantly.
A high school principal took a PayPal credit of $60k for his school, donated by conference attenders.
There was a lot of tweeting. People tweeted all kinds of things: that we have seen the future of payments, that the netbook giveaway was Oprah-like in a nice way, that everyone involved deserved a round of beers, that you could use PayPal to turn all kinds of otherwise wasted things into commodities and trade them for other commodities, or money.
Approximately ten percent of the tweets on day two were retweets of Tim O'Reilly giving the location of his presentation deck (here). A lot of people said the netbooks were nice. Some people said that social media is good for a business, and others disagreed, saying it's often boring. A lot of people liked the bean bag chairs. One person said the human chain was creepy, and another person said it was great. Somebody refused to be associated with the stealing of bean bag chairs. Many, many people agreed with this: "Two best characteristics of an entrepreneur are resourcefulness and ability to sell a vision." Someone said that they were on the stairs of the press room. Someone else said that the bean bag chair had been acquired. Chained payments, microsavings, adaptive payments, charge backs, and identity provision were much discussed. Several people said it all seemed very well organized, and I think somebody else said it was too organized. Someone said they were going back to the hotel early because they were afflicted with swag arm, but another person didn't seem tired at all, and tweeted that the PayPal API lets you establish pre-approvals with date and frequency and amount limits, allowing payments via mobile.
All that and more, at #ppxi09.
Atlanta was in the house, and so was Germany. Also in the house: eBay, Salesforce, Sun, and Andreeson. Burkina Faso was seriously in the house, looking to bring eBay and PayPal to Africa.
There was Red Bull and BLTs.Twinkies and Ding Dongs were never far away. If you held still, eventually someone would come up to you with a tray and offer you one.
On the first night, there was poached halibut dusted with cumin, if you knew where to look for it.
There was massive VC firepower on day two. Everyone felt that.
x.com came back to life.
If you can, you should always attend a PayPal developer's conference.
