As I blogged previously, Justin, Matt & I from blist attended the University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering department’s annual intern career day today. It was a terrific event that far exceeded my expectations. These are some of my random thoughts:

1) I was blown away by the turnout both in terms of the number of great Seattle companies (and a few from Silicon Valley) with booths and the number of phenomenal students we met. My guess is that there were 35 companies. We accumulated no fewer than 50 resumes from great CSE students. Maybe the event drew more people than they anticipated. Box lunches quickly ran out. Kudos to Kay and team for quickly ordering a bunch of pizzas.

2) I figured out why Zillow recently raised another $30M VC round. It went into paying for that gigantic tradeshow prop. It was huge. And the 8 or 10 person Zillow entourage was impressive.

3) Industry giants Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, IBM, Real Networks, Expedia, Amazon and Adobe were all there. Some of the other companies with booths were: TalentSpring, Pluggd, Pelago, Redfin, WhitePages.com, Ford, Chief Architect, Intelius, Cozi, Adapx, LiveMocha, Ludic Labs, Cray, Pure Networks and TeraNode

4) My vote for best schwag goes to Amazon for their Amazon logo emblazened decks of cards they were doling out. If you were a student coveting the deck of cards it seemed you had to answer the question of what a link list is. With this crowd it seemed akin to asking a gardener to describe a shovel, but maybe the point was to make people feel like they earned the schwag.

5) UW students come prepared! Most came with resumes and were ready to make a solid 5-minute pitch about their interests and backgrounds. Every student who emailed me in advance and said they’d introduce themselves at the event actually did.

6) The Paul G. Allen Hall is a beautiful building. State of the art.

7) It was great to see UW CSE profs making the rounds and talking with companies and students. We chatted briefly with Ed Lazowska, Blake Hannaford, Dan Weld and Hank Levy.
We gave sneak peeks of blist to most people who stopped by. They don’t know it, but that was the first time a public audience has seen blist. Feedback was very positive and the blist UI impressed most of the folks.

Congratulations to Kay Beck-Benton, Ed Lazowksa and the entire CSE department for hosting a great event. blist will definitely be back next year. If you’re a prospective summer 2008 intern or a June 2008 graduate and you want to tell me a little about yourself, my email address is kevin.merritt _at_ blist.com