• "In my career, I've always swung between the big and the small and it's time for another shift." — Jeff Veen, Design Manager
• "These days, it seems like a lot of the true innovations are made at small startups, which have the benefit of being orders of magnitude times more agile and efficient than a large company will ever be." — DigitalHobbit
• "I wasn't looking for a new job, but a great opportunity fell in my lap that I felt I had to take." — Jess Lee, Google Maps Project Manager
• "The one thing I began to miss at Google as it grows was the ability to be a generalist within the company. In a startup, it is easy and encouraged for folks to wear multiple hats. I used to buy data centers and fiber, manage an acquisition, work on Google Talk, pitch an access partner, receive a dignitary and give a speech about the future of media all in the same week. As a company gets bigger, inevitably, it begins to organize itself vertically and employees are pushed to specialize." — Chris Sacca, Head of Special Initiatives
• "The challenge of creating something new in a space that's so young and evolving was too great to pass up." — Vanessa Fox, Google Webmaster Central Product Manager
• "I'm ready to do something new with a smaller group of people." — Nelson Minar, who created Google's first APIs

(Photo by Sebastian Bergmann)

Get Satisfaction president Lane Becker and CEO Thor Muller, who bought the tacos, delivered a spiel about their company's widget-based platform for Web-enabled kvetching. (Okay, I wasn't really paying attention, but I think that's close.) I chatted up the likes of Google design czar Jeff Veen and Blogger veteran Jason Shellen, freshly hired at LiveJournal. Shellen talked up the large team of engineers based in Russia now at his disposal. I don't think he liked my suggestion that they develop an algorithm to automatically filter out LiveJournal users based on statistical measures of their irrelevance.

There are meetings I attend to promote a specific agenda item. So I half-listen off to the side until the thing I need comes up.

I agree that meetings can be poisonous. When I feel a meeting going off into endless debate, I try to hijack them — get my laptop up on the projector, or stand at the whiteboard and draw.

Disempowered team leaders of the Valley, take note. Remember that it helps if you have something to say.

Fireside chat with Khoi Vinh and Jeffrey Veen [37signals]

Valleywag's first SloshCon at the House of Shields was so successful that my hangover's having baby hangovers. Remember the live-audience interviews and speeches on the game plan? Scrapped. We didn't want to ruin the vibe (half the crowd had arrived in the first 20 minutes), so we all kept on drinking and bullshitting one-on-one. (Top photo by Jeremiah Owyang)

Tag your Flickr'd party photos with "SloshCon" — just like the Mopping Up post says.

Irina Slutsky, host of Geek Entertainment TV, and Amber MacArthur, host of commandN and Call For Help — 66% of the blond vlogosphere. [Irina Slutsky]

Irina was overheard telling GETV producer Eddie Codel, "You need to feed me or videotape me, right now!" And who wouldn't gladly do both?

"So your claims to fame are a snarky site called Fucked Company, a nearly fucked company called AdBrite, and recording yourself in various costumes and, most disturbingly of all, your undressed body? And she is willing to date you?" Pud: "Yes." "Oh my God you're my hero." [Adam Engelhart]

A bewildered Jeff Veen points in bewilderment as TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and I (the tiny one) re-enact a favorite Arrington pose. [Brian Oberkirch]

Arrington says he made the first shocker when Tara Hunt went around at a party, telling everyone to do it. At the time he had no idea what the gesture meant. (Sure, Michael, sure.)

A friend of Jeff, by the way, greeted me with "So you're the one who almost fucked up Jeff's Measure Map deal?" (Yes. Yes I am.)

Famous awesome people who showed: Philip "Pud" Kaplan (a Valleywag favorite this week), TV star Amber MacArthur, Jon Grubb and Thor Muller (the Lennon and McCartney of Rubyred Labs), and Michael Arrington (Web 2.0's war correspondent)

Famous less awesome people who must have had a sudden emergency, like, their entire hometown just blew up: Digg founder Kevin Rose

See more of these webstars! Click past the jump!

Rubyred Labs and Valleyschwag co-founder Jonathan Grubb tastes like magic ice cream. [Adam Engelhart]

"Aaaaaah Pud, that's the best man-boy-love joke ever!" [Adam Engelhart]

Technorati principal engineer Kevin Marks and fresh Google hire Catspaw stare into the laptop photobooth of a fellow #joiito IRC chatter (that's at irc.freenode.net), Other Maciej, who has a whole gallery of liberally applied Photoshop effects from the party. [Other Maciej]

Best thing about geek parties is, if you're bored, you can just find a laptop and surf some animal porn. [Adam Engelhart

We had a webcast and a backchannel chat up in honor of the sober vicarious party-goers living in the middle of nowhere (read: not in the Valley). [Adam Engelhart]

Valleywag does Top Gun: "Too close for shots, I'm switching to beer." [Jeremiah Owyang]

That smile says "I don't know they're winding up for a Roxbury hip slam." [Adam Engelhart

Thanks for hanging out, Silicon Valley! Come back in the fall for "SloshCon 2: The Disappointingly Boring But More Productive Sequel!"

Flickr Galleries:
Other Maciej [Flickr]
Jeremiah Owyang [Flickr]
Adam Engelhart [Flickr]

Told ya. If you haven't already seen Jeffrey Veen's post on the Google Blog, the Measure Map creator just left the UI consultants at Adaptive Path and sold his user-friendly stat-tracker to Google. (Of course, Valleywag readers knew it five days ago.)

In his post, Veen doesn't mention Google Analytics, the all-business stat-tracker that cares more about clickthrough rates than conversation. Om Malik says that Google could help Measure Map, which "sucked wind." Assuming the company doesn't kill MM, maybe that cute interface can take some of the ugh out of Analytics.

(Meanwhile, Mint's still the classiest stat-tracker on the market. Will Yahoo scoop it up? Haven't heard any such rumors.)

Here comes Measure Map [Official Google Blog]
Measure Maps Hooks Up With Google [Om Malik]
Measure Map goes to Google [Adaptive Path]
Earlier: Google eyes Measure Map]