This past Thursday evening, Ligia and I attended the 2nd DC TECH cocktail mixer/conference, and it was a lot of fun. It was held at MCCXXIII, a club on Connecticut Ave. Frank Gruber and Eric Olson, the TC co-founders, hosted their first TC DC event at the same venue last year. They invited me to take photos at that time, and it looks like they were happy with the results, because they called me back this year.

I was glad to see how the event has grown in just one year. With 400 people in attendance, the club was literally packed, as you’ll see from the photos. There was no room to move — I had to squeeze between bodies and do a lot of shoulder tapping to get from spot to spot, all the while trying not to shove my camera in anyone’s face.

Selected photos from the event are enclosed below. The full set is available on the TC website, or in TC’s Flickr account. I tried a few new things this year, mainly different angles and a few movement/blur type experiments. You’ll see as you look through the photos.

It looks like Frank and Eric will need to find a new location for next year, given TECH cocktail’s growing popularity. I wish them all the best! They’re doing a great service to startups by making it free for them to attend and show their products to the audience.