Last Wednesday, March 5th I had the pleasure to mingle with a spectacular community of smart people attending TMT.Ventures’09 Warsaw: innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, bloggers and so on.

What else would you want? Oh, maybe a networking dinner the night before, celebrity arch-angel investor straight from Le Web video, 7 minutes contest during the event, great speakers, great lunch and last but not least… flute playing lesson broadcasted via video stream.

So many memories, new businessfriends, old acquaintances refreshed, things to think over. I’ll be relaying those over to you during the next few days on this blog. So stay tuned.

Yes, we are experiencing a downturn. Yes, in the macro-scale it will probably get worse before it gets better. But let’s not worry about the broken financial system or gloomy future of some financial institutions. Let’s not worry about the economy while there are fat juicy opportunities to be harvested out there.

The airheads and smart-asses are gone back to their safe and warm jobs - says celebrity investor Morten Lund. The supply of new and innovative projects is lower so it’s easier to achieve first mover advantage - says Holtzbrinck Ventures CEO Konstantin Urban. Easy UE money is out there for the taking - says serial entreprenuer turned investor Rafal Styczen. Grab whatever is left from your bankrupt competitors’ assets - says Piotr Czublun of CMS Cameron McKenna. Exciting stuff.

So what the heck are we having these conferences for?

Remember what Friedrich Nietzsche said about The Financial System being dead?

The Financial System is dead. The Financial System remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?

And then good ol’ Friedrich tells us to get together and have a conference before we get to work:

Companions, the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks — those who write new values on new tablets. Companions, the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. … Fellow creators, The Entrepreneur seeks, fellow harvesters and fellow celebrants: what are herds and shepherds and corpses to him?

So let’s get to work and let’s not allow this crisis deter us from being creative and innovative. When the going gets tough only tough get going. And it takes one tough entrepreneur to build anything meaningful. Determination, hard work and lots of good luck - says Morten Lund. Also fellow harvesters and fellow celebrants - reminds Friedrich Nietzsche, famous management coach.

Stay tuned for another transmission from a memoir of TMT.Ventures’09 Warsaw participant.

PS. Here’s how we got into The Financial Crisis:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Every decent conference has a networking after-party, a cocktail or a bar meet. If there is none the conference is 50% impaired. Demand one from your event organizer or demand your money back ;-)

I won’t brag about what should be done at networking parties. You know the drill. I’ll just indulge myself in posting some pictures of me and pretty businesswomen I’ve met. Notice how I look the same on every picture - that’s years of practice. Here you can see Yulya Filippovska accompanied by yours truly. Yulya is a bit secretive about her future plans but definately a quality professional.

Above you can see Rafal Stroinski and Inna Proshkina with yours truly. Inna Proshkina is an ex-marketing manager of invisibleCRM, an Ukrainian-originated company which rolled-out globaly and created significant traction with major business analytics firms such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC and others. Currently Inna is a founder and CEO of Go2Market, a trans-atlantic marketing consultancy firm. Check out Inna’s Linkedin recommendations. She’s all business.

Rafal Stroinski is a person deserving a separate blog post but I’ll try to squeeze him with businesswomen - I’m sure he won’t mind. We met in California in November 2006 and since then Rafal is a good businessfriend. Also a great networker, a Fullbright scholar at Stanford University, a renown academic teacher in Poland, an animator and active member of US-Polish Trade Council based in Sillicon Valley, and an active legal advisor in new technology deals with a track record of several important deals and M&A transactions. He holds a Ph.D. in law and an LLM degree from Harvard Legal School and is admitted in New York as Attorney and Counselor. The list goes on.

Ewa did a good job again validating the claim phrase under her company’s logo : “Watching trends with businessfriends, making deals and having meals”.

In the next episodes:

• Sightseeing Kiev with Alex Riabtsev of startup.in.ua
• Networking party - the-day-after

Stay tuned.