geekSessions is yet another tech networking event in the Bay Area. More specifically (according to their site):

1. A high-end networking event that brings recognized experts from the Web space together to speak on a new topic each session.

2. A place with smart people and free beer.

Having seen the event topic — Web Infrastructure: Surviving The “Hockey Stick”, I decided to check out the second sold out geekSession held at the City Club in San Francisco.

At the check-in table, they had stickers so that you could be classified if you chose to self-identify (very much like the ribbons you see at conferences):

alpha geek
foundr (web 2.0 spelling)
recruiter
hiring
cisco
b-hive
hacker
looking for a job

I was telling a friend that if I were really looking for a job, I would not wear the looking for a job sticker. It just seems to have a hint of desperation.

The panel of speakers were Sandy Jen (Meebo founder), Ron Gorodetzky (Digg Senior Systems Administrator), Nick Heyman (Video Egg VP of Operations), and Jonathan Abrams (Friendster/Socializr Founder).

I was looking forward to hear what Jonathan Abrams had to say as Friendster clearly had scalability issues. He was very frank about his experiences which I appreciated. He pointed out how their MySQL database setup didn’t work for Friendster, yet MySQL uses the company in a positive case study which was somewhat amusing.

MySQL: Check out the cool things Friendster’s doing with our stuff and how much we rock!
Friendster: Wait! STOP! Don’t listen to them! It didn’t work!

I was surprised to hear that for the Friend updates in Friendster (Facebook’s News Feeds equivalent), Friendster writes to the database for each friend in the person’s network which Abrams also acknowledged was inefficient.

Also unexpected was a question from an attendee during the Q&A section moderated by Sean Plaice, Yelp’s Senior Systems Administrator. The attendee asked the respective speakers about how they handle Quality Assurance. Many companies don’t pay as much attention to QA as they should (ahem, Google Groups), so it was great to hear a QA related question.

On top of that, I wasn’t expecting to meet someone more closely related to education, but I talked with a guy working on an education related Facebook App. Considering Facebook had only recently announced that they were pulling their Courses feature six days earlier, it’s amazing that the app will be launching next week. Talk about moving fast (I also hear it’s easy to develop on the Facebook platform).

There was great content at this event and it definitely held true to its name — a session with geeks, in the technical sense. But it’s not the only one; there’s always something going on to network in techosphere each week (Lunch 2.0’s not really lunch, but Happy Hour at Facebook was this past Wednesday as was the SF New Tech Meetup on Women in Tech).

The tech events are also a hotbed for recruiting and getting a job. Cisco was recruiting people for a stealth startup for within the company, Socializr was looking for developers, Meebo was looking for customer service staff, and even someone who won one of the eight skateboards in the drawing exclaimed to the crowd that they were hiring as he went up to pick up his prize.

In one of the Community Next: Viral Marketing panels, a speaker remarked how he’s looking for smart people to recruit. How? From an event like Community Next. I completely agree with his strategy. Techies who love technology and want to learn more about it will flock to these events. The passionate ones are the ones who are proactive. Forget the résumés submitted online.

If you’re looking for a job, all you need to do is to become a networking event groupie. Besides, it’s not about what you know; it’s more about who you know, right?