Wow! The turnout today was incredible… 38 people showed up at the “darrencamp” or “digital media holiday gathering” (depending on who you talk to) and it was fantastic! We overwhelmed the staff and patrons of Le Pain Quotidien but nevertheless, conversation flowed even moreso than the green tea and coffee.

The goal of today was to bring together a group of digital media mavens, finance finaglers, advertising gurus, technological wizards, and enduring entrepreneurs and talk about 2007 predictions in the digital world. After a brief introduction, we broke out into 2 main groups (seperated by Shreyas Pandit and David Honig) and spoke for an hour or so in our “trend groups.” Each larger group broke out into smaller sustainable conversations and topics ranged from mobile/wireless flat-fee pricing structures, consumer generated media consumption, RMTs/micropayments, web applications that are on the desktop, and other fascinating areas.

Prior to holding this holiday get together, I put together a spreadsheet which was debuted today. The goal of this sheet was to show what the blogosphere was predicting in 2004, 2005, 2006 and then for 2007. The spreadsheet is not the end-all and be-all of predictions and trends, but it’s certainly a starting point for any conversation. If you could not make the meeting today or would like a digital copy, drop me a note thru the comments section and I’ll gladly send you the .xls document. (If you did receive one today, I’d really appreciate feedback)

All in all, I thought it was pretty successful. Lots of extremely smart people in the room sharing their opinions always leads to interesting collaboration. I encourage anyone who was at the meeting to blog about the event and share your pictures… I certainly noticed a few cameras and cameraphones snapping photos.

I do not know the official title of this event, but if you’re looking for something quirky and short, lets officially name it:Â “darrencamp”

Also, I have received many requests to make the contact information of the attendees available but due to privacy and confidentiality, I’d rather you contact me for the direct contact information and I’ll gladly make the introduction you are seeking.

I’m usually skeptical of “networks” and aggregators, but aftering meeting David of MindPetals.com this past week for lunch, I’m a fan of what he is building. MindPetals.com came onto the scene (according to this Alexa graph) in June 2006 and has been a community site for entrepreneurs. Bloggers who cover entrepreneurial topics are found by Mind Petal scouts and have the opportunity of having their blogs listed on MindPetals.com. Their respective posts are fed thru RSS to MindPetals.com and summaries appear on the site. MindPetals.com acts as an aggregator of entrepreneurial posts but then sends the viewer to the respective blog the posts exist on… which is what sealed the deal for me.

I want to own my content (I’m not selfish, but if I put time into writing it, my site should benefit), not have it indexed elsewhere for other people to monetize. I’m happy about the stance MindPetals.com has taken in this regard and am proud to not just have my blog indexed for users to view, but have been extended an invitation to the MindPetals.com Advisory Board. When I met with David at lunch, we talked about how MindPetals.com was founded, where he wants to take it, and how he plans on getting there. We mutually agreed on many different aspects of this and am excited to help guide MindPetals.com strategy.

Feel free to check out MindPetals.com and leave your comments. I’d love to know how I can help make it a better place for the entrepreneurial scene.