July 28th, 2008A Community needs events
imply attending any live event–from the three-person lunch meetup to the 100-person local user group can give you the most positive effect of being at an event like SXSW.
In my talk, I mentioned two implications of the importance of face-to-face:
1) We should encourage our (human) users to get together in the offline world.
2) We should add more human-ness to the interactions in our software.
Events are an important part of helping foster community. Face-to-face connections are important for building connections between people and helping them to share their passions. The benefit of events like DemoCamp have never been in the presentations but in the connections created between people. Tech entrepreneurs around the world seem to find inspiration and passion from connecting with others. Whether they are demoing their products, pitching their companies, sharing information, or having a drink there are a variety of different organizational formats happening around the world. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and after dinner drinks. What ideas should we be bringing to Toronto?
- TECH Cocktail
- Web Innovators Group
- Ignite Seattle
- SF Beta
- Founders & Funders
- STIRR’s Founders Hacks, Founders Table, PITCHLab, DealHacks
- Founder’s Lunch
- SF NewTech
- nextNY
- Pecha Kucha Night
- Launch Party
- StartupDrinks
- DemoCamp
- OpenCoffee
- Social Media Breakfast
- Girl Geek Dinners
- Austin Tech Happy Hour
- SFentrepreneur Challenge
- Powerpoint Karaoke
Tell me your favourite conference or event experience/
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July 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
PodCamp3 Boston was one of the best conferences I have attended in my career. What made it successful was the way they facilitated networking both before, during and after the conference. Using Twitter, Facebook, Ning and Eventbrite, people were able to find out who they may want to meet prior to the conference, have impromptu gatherings during the conference, and continue to network afterwards.
In order to truly form a community people need to think about what they have to give and not just what they are at an event to receive. Meeting the same people at every event is not networking — all of us as attendees need to get out and invite new people into our circles and get out of our comfort zone.
It starts with the event organizers and goes from there — the organizers of PodCamp3 Boston talked the talk and walked the walk - going around and introducing them to new faces and helping people form connections. People really wanted to help other people, not just helping those who they could gain from.
I left with many new contacts as well as some new friends and an overall great feeling about the group of people that put these events together.