At the last Providence Geek Dinner of 2009, DiJiPOP CEO Ji Kim, an online advertising veteran, and Bill Cesare, a highly successful and prolific entrepreneur/investor, gave an overview of their dynamic company. We caught up with Ji after the Geek Dinner to learn more. [Video link]

A few of the Mercantile Block’s 50,000 square feet. AS220 is currently renovating the building with a 2010 opening scheduled. Photo Credit: Jef Nickerson of GC:PVD

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009, 5:30 – 8:30pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

The last Providence Geek Dinner of the decade (yes, _ the decade_!) drops next week, and it’s going to be a doozy.

For starters, the excellent Providence-based DiJiPOP will be presenting:

DiJiPOP is helping to define a whole new category of online advertising by making it easy to create and manage cooperative advertising programs for retailers and their manufacturers. CEO Ji Kim, an online advertising veteran, and Bill Cesare, a highly successful and prolific entrepreneur/investor, will give an overview of their dynamic company, and a demonstration of its innovative turn-key online ad management solution for e-commerce companies. (Disclosure: DiJiPop is a “graduate” of this summer’s inaugural Betaspring program. I am a Partner in Betaspring.)

• We also are having our second annual “Geeks for Good” food drive, led by the awesome Michelle Riggen-Ransom of BatchBlue Software. Please bring non-perishable food items (canned fruits and veggies, pasta and sauce, soup etc.) – an item or two or twenty! – to be donated to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.  Last year’s Geeks for Good food drive collected an amazing 334 pounds of food and over $150 in cash donations thanks to the Geeks’ collective generosity.


• After the Geek Dinner, join us as we stroll a few blocks away to the Providence Blogopshere Holiday Spectacular, featuring all our good friends at Greater City: Providence, Providence Daily Dose, RIFuture, Kmareka, and Not For Nothing.

As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:

• The event itself is FREE! Beverages and food are for sale at AS220’s bar and new restaurant.


• It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whoever, arrive and take off whenever! And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities (that’s not say the food isn’t good – it’s actually great)


• Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about AJAX, mash-ups, start-ups, new devices, innovative business models, interaction design, social computing, digital art, web services, etc. etc. etc.


• There is Wi-Fi so bring your connected device of choice.