• The French Embassy is having a soirée at 5:30 at Mighty in Potrero Hill. [Facebook]
• The Wall Street Journal's Don Clark leads the Third Annual Tech Industry Charity Jam at 7 p.m. at the Rickshaw Stop. [Jam Party Invite (pdf)]
• The DNA Lounge, owned by early Netscape employee turned nightclub promoter Jamie Zawinski, hosts Ignite SF, a networking event with presenters ranging from Charles River Ventures VC Susan Wu to San Francisco mayoral candidate Chicken John. [Upcoming]
• Conde Nast's news-aggregator site Reddit is hosting an open bar at the Gallery Lounge from 7-9 p.m. [Reddit Blog]
• We hear that VCs Eric Chin and Mike Jung are throwing an intimate get-together at Fluid, 2 South Park Street in SoMa, to bring together all of the guests from their monthly Alpha dinners in Woodside.

Got a to-do that's a must-do? Send it to calendar@valleywag.com. Check out more events on our Google Calendar:

If true, then the organizers — Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington — have figured out a very clever hack on the startup-conference business model. Instead of charging startups directly, charge venture capitalists to let their favored portfolio companies in. And throw in a handful of unfunded startups to make it all look above-board. Surely the sponsors — Sequoia Capital, which has backed Calacanis's Mahalo; Mayfield Fund; Charles River Ventures; and Clearstone Venture Partners — would heartily approve of this scheme. It's brilliant. Ingenious. My hat is off to you, Jason and Michael, if you have indeed pulled this off.