Melbourne StartupDigest – December 12, 2011

12/12/2011

Below is an archived version of the Melbourne StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Melbourne. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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Hello Melburnians! Please take a look at what’s happening and we look forward to any feedback you might have. Have a great week!Cheers,
Humphrey and Geoff

Melbourne StartupDigest is curated by:
Humphrey Laubscher - Co-Founder of a stealth startup focused on improving businesses through customer feedback and loyalty engagement
Geoff Burns – Designing software products and solutions for 15 years

 

 

What’s Going on in the Melbourne Startup Community

Melbourne Mobile (Free – RSVP)
When: Monday 12 Dec 11 at 6:00:00 PM
Where: Inspire9, 1/41 Stewart Street, Richmond

This meetup group is for people doing creative things with mobile. This can be anything from
mobile-optimised websites to frameworks such as PhoneGap and Sencha to Objective-C and Java.
Or maybe you’re purely an interface or icon designer. Or maybe you’ve come up with some other
crazyly cunning way of utilising a mobile device. However, this isn’t a group for mobile marketeers, business folks and the like… Sorry!

Topic: Discuss Sencha. Sencha is a framework for creating rich HTML5 web apps for iOs and Android devices with a host of features.

 

Agile Business Analysts Melbourne (Free – RSVP)
When: Tuesday 13 Dec 11 at 6:00:00 PM
Where: Pugg Mahones, 112 Hardware St, Melbourne

A community of business analysts wanting to learn more about agile, working on agile projects and/or with agile teams. Tonights topic “Release Planning” is vital for any project as the sponsor needs to know how long it will take. This talk focuses on building an effective and reliable release plan for small and large projects. Speaker Brett Maytom is a Senior Consultant for Readify, Melbourne Australia.

 

Connect Community Hacker Space (Free – RSVP)
When: Tuesday 13 Dec 11 at 6:00:00 PM
Where: Camberwell, Vic (Please contact andyg (geekscape) http://bit.ly/evIkBVor DM @geekscape)

Meetup focused on hacking hardware and software. You might be organizing a project or common domain of interest, e.g. vehicle telemetry or smart energy grid, Presenting a tutorial for a given area of expertise, e.g. PCB making or schematic design.

Getting a head-start on the Arduino, before the next big weekend session! These smaller, shorter sessions are intended to provide continuity between the larger monthly weekend meetings. These sessions are typically held in Camberwell, but may occur at other member’s residences (often when they are hosting a session in a particular area of expertise).

 

Melbourne Knowledge Management Leadership Forum (Free – RSVP)
When: Wednesday 14 Dec 11 at 6:00:00 PM
Where: RMIT Graduate School of Business and Law, Corner of Russell & Victoria Streets, Melbourne

The KMLF is a face-to-face education and networking forum, run by KM practitioners for KM practitioners. Meetings are held every month or so in the central business district in Melbourne, Australia. Membership is free, and attendance at meetings usually requires a small donation to cover drinks and nibbles.

Topic: KMLF Annual review – KMLF Performance and Future directions. Our final gathering for the year has developed into an open dialogue about what we have achieved for the year, so reflections about what worked best and where we should be doing for the future.

 

WordPress Melbourne (Free – RSVP)
When: Wednesday 14 Dec 11 at 6:30:00 PM
Where: TBA

The WordPress Melbourne Meetup is for any WordPress user from new to experienced to get together and discuss all things WordPress. If you are a Web Designer or manage a website for your company but have never used WordPress please join, as we will try to alternate between advanced and beginner topics at each Meetup. Please join the conversation and let us know what WordPress topics you are most interested in.

Topic: Melbourne Christmas 2011 Meetup

 

Social Melbourne (Free)
When: Friday 16 Dec 11 at 8:00:00 AM
Where: 1000 Pound Bend, 361 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne

Social Media Melbourne or #socialmelb is a weekly social gathering of passionate and inspirational Melburnians who have one thing in common: social media. On Fridays at 8am, we collaborate and share ideas, stories and views on a variety of topics from start-ups to business strategy, the latest news and social change to the latest joints worth a visit around Melbourne. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join us, as long as you come with an open mind.

 

Melbourne Jelly Meetup (Free – RSVP)
When: Friday 16 Dec 11 at 10:00:00 AM
Where: TBA

Melbourne Jelly is a fortnightly co-working event where folks from all disciplines get together at a pre-determined location and share a working environment.

 

 

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Houston StartupDigest – November 7, 2011

8/11/2011

Below is an archived version of the Houston StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Houston. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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Happy Monday!Houston Startup Weekend is looking like it will sell out well before our November 18th date. Houston Startup Weekend is competing with more than 50 other Startup Weekend’s around the world in Global Startup Battle. I hope you will come and compete with other tech entrepreneurs internationally – bring your winning idea to Houston Startup Weekend. Tickets are going fast so don’t wait!

Have an event you would like to add to the calendar? Or did you really love or hate one of the events from this last week? Let me know – send in your feedback, comments, suggestions, rants and raves to: sarah@thestartupdigest.com or @sarahmworthy on Twitter.

Houston StartupDigest is curated by:
Sarah Worthy – Schipulite at Schipul

 

Houston StartupDigest is made possible exclusively by:
Global Entrepreneurship Week kicks off in one week. Be among of millions of people in 123 countries celebrating, networking and learning about entrepreneurship. Find an event near you or plan your own. Visit gewusa.org for U.S. info. or unleashingideas.org for all other countries.

What’s Going on in the Houston Startup Community

Django Houston MeetupWhen: Monday November 7th, 2011 7:00PM

Where: Stag’s Head Pub: 2128 Portsmouth, Houston TX 77098

Join the Django Houston meetup group to learn more about this open source web framework.

WordPress e-Commerce with Flexishop

When: Monday November 7th, 2011 7:00PM

Where: UCTC : 1730 Jefferson Street, Suite 127, Houston, TX 77003

Learn to install, setup and customize the WordPress e-commerce theme WP FlexiShop. This theme allows for the sell of online goods with a built in shopping cart, with options for shipping, taxes, and payment gateways.

NASA/JSC – Introduction to Entpreneurship

When: Thursday November 10th , 2011 7:30AM to 4:00PM

Where: JSC Gilruth Center

Join the Houston Technology Center and NASA, Johnson Space Center for this introduction to what you need to know to be a successful entpreneur.

Startup Metrics – Lean Startup Circle

When: Thursday November 10th, 2011, 6:30PM

Where: Houston Technology Center :410 Pierce St, Houston, TX 77002

Hiten Shah of KISSmetrics will talk about metrics that Startups should measure. He’ll cover A/B Split Testing, Cohort Metrics, and more.

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Lexington StartupDigest – August 1, 2011

1/08/2011

Below is an archived version of the Lexington StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Lexington. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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Hi everyone, Nick here. It has been an honor to help launch the Lexington edition of StartupDigest and to serve as your curator for the past 8 months. I’d like to introduce you to Sean O’Leary (who many of you already know) who will be taking over the reigns as I focus my last few months on AwesomeTouch before heading to Stanford for grad school in the Fall. I had the pleasure of working with Sean at KSTC, and can ensure you are in good hands. Keep rockin!

The hotlist: Lexington Startups and emerging companies gDoc (contact me to add your startup)

 

Lexington StartupDigest is curated by:
Nick Such – CEO of AwesomeTouch, Founder of bikeKY
Sean O’Leary – Director of Venture Finance, KSTC

 

 

Lexington StartupDigest is made possible exclusively by:
Winners of Global Entrepreneurship Week’s Startup Open competition, sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation, could win a trip to Liverpool to hang out with global entrepreneur experts or a year’s worth of mentoring from the founders of Redbox. Learn more about all of the prizes here and submit your startup here.

 

What’s Going on in the Lexington Startup Community

Shift Design Meetup
When: Tues, Aug 2nd, 7pm
Where: Base 163, 163 E. Main St, downtown Lexington

Coders have been getting all the love lately, but now it’s time for all you designers to shine. New meetup group is working to better connect local design community.

 

Startup Slam/ Startup Advantage August – Lexington/Louisville Entrepreneurs Mashup!
When: Wed, Aug 3rd, 5.30pm
Where: Bluegrass Brewing Company, 300 W. Main St., Louisville

Meetup to connect Louisville and Lexington entrepreneurs.

 

Top Upcoming Lexington Startup Events

August 24 – 5 Across

 

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Melbourne StartupDigest – July 25, 2011

25/07/2011

Below is an archived version of the Melbourne StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Melbourne. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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Hello Melburnians!

Please take a look at what’s happening and we look forward to any feedback you might have.

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Humphrey and Geoff

Melbourne StartupDigest is curated by:
Humphrey Laubscher
Geoff Burns – Designing software products and solutions for 15 years

 

 

What’s Going on in the Melbourne Startup Community

Melbourne Mobile (Free)
When: Monday 25 Jul 11 at 6:30:00 PM
Where: Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale Street

This meetup group is for people doing creative things with mobile. This can be anything from mobile-optimised websites to frameworks such as PhoneGap and Sencha to Objective-C and Java. Or maybe you’re purely an interface or icon designer. Or maybe you’ve come up with some other crazyly cunning way of utilising a mobile device. However, this isn’t a group for mobile marketeers, business folks and the like… Sorry!

Melbourne Scala User Group (Free)
When: Monday 25 Jul 11 at 6:30:00 PM
Where: VLSCI, Ground floor, 187 Grattan St, Carlton

Bernie Pope will be presenting a talk that follows up topics discussed at last month’s meeting on type classes, on understanding the  differences between the object-oriented and functional styles of  programming.  Bernie will be explaining what the concept “Open Recursion” means by way of an example, and show how it can be used in the OO and  Functional styles. He will also explain the concept of the “fixed point” of a function.

The Growth Faculty (SD Special Rate $295 Normally $350 – Code:AFF001)
When: Tuesday 26 Jul 11 at 8:30:00 AM
Where: The Sebel Albert Park, 65 Queens Road, Melbourne

In this highly interactive half-day workshop, Liz

Wiseman will show you how Multipliers get more done with fewer resources, develop and attract talent and cultivate new ideas and energy to drive organisational change and innovation. Liz will introduce the five disciplines that set Multiplier leaders apart – skills and practices that everyone can learn and apply.

ACS Scrum and Lean Leadership SIG (Free)
When: Tuesday 26 Jul 11 at 5:30:00 PM
Where: Pugg Mahones, 106 – 112 Hardware Lane, Melbourne Vic

The deal is this: People take 5 minutes to pitch an idea at the audience. We follow up with 10-15 minutes discussion and then move onto the next speaker. We keep going until we run out of talkers or time.

Melbourne Cocoaheads – Hack Night (Free)
When: Tuesday 26 Jul 11 at 6:30:00 PM
Where: Joe’s Garage, 366 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy

Our Very Special Speakers:
1.Daniel Kagan – An update from Lookout Mobile
2.Stewart Gleadow (Thoughtworks) – Automated testing on iOS
3.Jeff Tan-Ang (Apps Perhaps, makers of OzTV) – Topic TBA

Android Australia User Group (Free – RSVP Mandatory)
When: Wednesday 27 Jul 11 at 6:00:00 PM
Where: OpenHub, 243 Collins Street (Manchester Lane Entrance),Melbourne

Welcome to the our July Meetup. This month’s main topic is “Developing Smarter.”

Social Melbourne (Free)
When: Friday 29 Jul 11 at 8:00:00 AM
Where: 1000 Pound Bend, 361 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne

Social Media Melbourne or #socialmelb is a weekly social gathering of passionate and inspirational Melburnians who have one thing in common: social media. On Fridays at 8am, we collaborate and share ideas, stories and views on a variety of topics from startups to business strategy, the latest news and social change to the latest joints worth a visit around Melbourne. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join us, as long as you come with an open mind.

Melbourne Jelly Meetup (Free)
When: Friday 29 Jul 11 at 10:00:00 AM
Where: TBA

Melbourne Jelly is a fortnightly co-working event where folks from all disciplines get together at a pre-determined location and share a working environment.

 

Top Upcoming Melbourne Startup Events

August 4 - The Churchill Club ($33 Members, $55 Non-Member)
August 11 – The Growth Faculty (SD Special Early Bird Rate $550 then $650 normally $750 – Code:AFF001)
August 15 - Mobile Monday Melbourne (RSVP Required)
August 20 – ProductCamp Melbourne
October 21 - Sir Richard Branson and Tim Ferriss Summit ($197 for 2 People Special)

 

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Silicon Valley StartupDigest – July 18, 2011

19/07/2011

Below is an archived version of the Silicon Valley StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in the Silicon Valley. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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StartupDigest officially passed 100 curators!

We are now global team that covers 67 cities and 14 tech verticals. Pretty crazy to see this and to think about where we were just 1 year ago (designers please don’t look at this).

So much has changed. Welcome to the media revolution :)

- Chris

Silicon Valley StartupDigest is curated by:
Chris McCann – Co-Founder, StartupDigest

 

 

Silicon Valley StartupDigest is supported exclusively by:

Dorsey & Whitney – Get to know the lawyers in our Palo Alto office.

 

 

What’s Going On in the Silicon Valley Startup Community

When: Tuesday, July 19 @ 6pm

Where: Parisoma, SF
A meetup around the legal aspects of fundraising.

 

Hacks/Hackers YouTube’s API (Free)

When: Wednesday, July 20 @ 6:30pm
Where: Google, SF
A meetup with 5 demo’s from media centric tech companies who are using YouTube’s API.
When: Wednesday, July 20 @ 6:30pm
Where: Dolores Labs, SF
Here is a new meetup group around the topic of search. This week’s panel includes Brian Pinkerton (A9.com) and Jon Gifford (Loggly)
EU Startup Demo Night (Private)
When: Thursday, July 21 @ 6pm
Where: Parisoma, SF
A demo day for 10 European startups. This event is private for investors, but you can request an invite from office@parisoma.com.
When: Thursday, July 21
Where: Hotel Vitale, SF
Nook is a new Android tablet build by Barnes & Noble. All of the upper management will be in attendance. To request an invite, email cgrant@book.com
When: Thursday, July 21 @ 7pm
Where: PeopleBrowsr, SF
A new meetup group around design, technology, startups, and all manners of geekery. Their first speaker series features Bryan Zmijewski, founder of Zurb.

 

When: Friday, July 22 @ 9pm
Where: 185 Clara Street, San Francisco

The StartupBus guys are throwing a hackathon!

 

Startup Flip Cup Tournament – Hosted by StartupDigest ($10)
When: Saturday, July 23
Where: StartupPad

Startups should be fun, so grab a team of 4 and join us for a kickass flip cup tournament. There are only 5 more team spots left!

When: Wednesday, July 27 @ 6pm
Where: California Billiards, Mountain View
A mixer for all geeky people who have started companies, who want to start one, or who just love building things for fun.

 

Top Upcoming Silicon Valley Startup Events

October 8-9 – Silicon Valley Code Camp
October 24 – FailCon 2011 (20% off with startupdigest)

 

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Miami StartupDigest – July 17, 2011

18/07/2011

Below is an archived version of the Miami StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Miami. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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Events in Miami are starting to fill up early – this is a great sign for the startup community and I hope we see more of this type of behavior. Registering early (and showing up once you’ve registered) helps event organizers effectively plan their offerings. If you’ve signed up for Tuesday’s Pitch Deck workshop that I’m leading, I’ll see you there. Otherwise, I hope to see you at one of the startup events throughout the region.

Miami StartupDigest is curated by:
Seth Elliott – Founding partner at the Apheleon Group, Founder of Eurek.Us and Co-Founder of The Startup Forum

 

Miami StartupDigest is made possible exclusively by:
The Kauffman Foundation supports entrepreneurship and innovation so that economies grow and prosper and ultimately human welfare expands. Kauffman develops, operates and funds programs such as Startup Weekend, Kauffman Labs, and Global Entrepreneurship Week. Follow the Foundation on Twitter @KauffmanFDN.

 

What’s Going on in the Miami Startup Community

Miami Ruby Brigade (Free)
When: July 18, 7:00 PM
Where: Prisa Digital, 4770 Biscayne Blvd., Miami FL

Review of Bryce’s Git presentation from Miami Design. RVM is fun, so we’ll play with that as well.

The Startup Forum: Building an Investor Pitch Deck ($10)
When: July 19, 6:30 PM
Where: MiamiShared, 990 Biscayne Blvd., Miami FL

Palm Beach Ruby Meetup Group (Free)
When: July 20, 7:00 PM
Where: Intergi, 1000 E. Hillsboro Blvd., Deerfield Beach FL

We will default to playing boca-golf in the event that we don’t have a scheduled presentation or other formal material prepared. Boca-golf is a fun, accessible programming game well-suited to beginners and experienced programmers alike. Find more info by clicking here (scroll over the readme for setup instructions) .

NewTech Community: Building Websites of the Future With Drupal 7 (Free)
When: July 21, 7:00 PM
Where: Wyndham Garden Hotel, 1950 Glades Road, Boca Raton FL

 

Top Upcoming Miami Startup Events

July 25 – SocialMedia Society of Miami: Facebook Business Page
July 26 – Girl Geek Dinners Kick Off Event ($5)

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Cincinnati StartupDigest – June 6, 2011

6/06/2011

Below is an archived version of the Cincinnati StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Cincinnati. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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The Cincinnati StartupDigest is focused on highlighting the best events and opportunities for startups in the area. Our goal is to bring the startup community in Cincinnati together to connect and inspire. We are just getting started, so please help spread the word to sign up here. We’d be happy to hear any feedback you have to improve the digest or any events you’d like us to tell the community about. E-mail danny@thestartupdigest.com or james@thestartupdigest.com.

We had a great time at The Brandery cocktail hour where we were able to meet several of the applicants. A special thanks to the leadership team and the Brandery participants for all you are doing for the Cincinnati Start-up scene. We’re excited to hear about the next class of stud tech startups!

Cincinnati StartupDigest is curated by:
Danny Stull – Founder of Venturepax
James Dickerson – Founder of Wellthy

 

 

What’s Going on in the Cincinnati Startup Community

The Cincy Web Tech Meetup Group: Developing on the Social Scene
When: Monday, June 6th 6:30 PM
Where: Join the group on the Meetup to see the location

Participate to talk about leveraging and integrating API’s from popular social sites into your application.

Cincinnati Javascript Users Group
When: Wednesday, June 8th 12:00 PM
Where: Cincinnati Coworks 2400 Gilbert Ave Cincinnati, OH

Vine Street Interactive will be talking about developing a Javascript app inside of a native iOS.

Title of Event: B2B Tech Lunch
When: Friday, June 10 11:30am – 1:30pm
Where: Hamilton County Development Company 1776 Mentor Avenue Cincinnati, OH 45212

Next generation speed-networking event connecting businesses with technology resources.

 

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Chicago StartupDigest – May 2, 2011

2/05/2011

Below is an archived version of the Chicago StartupDigest Events List – a weekly curated listing of the best tech startup events in Chicago. If you would like to get next week’s digest on Monday, sign up here.

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Happy Monday. My name is Benhard Kappe and I’ll be your new curator for the Chicago StartupDigest!

If you missed last week’s Chicago Lean Startup Circle talk on Marketing in the Lean Startup, you can see the video here. This week has a few interesting events, but there are quite a few cool things on the horizon.

For newcomers: The Chicago StartupDigest is an event list, created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, that is laser-focused on the needs of startups in the Chicago Area. Please send feedback to bernhard@thestartupdigest.com

- Bernhard

Chicago StartupDigest is curated by:
Bernhard Kappe – Founder of Pathfinder Software

 

Chicago StartupDigest is made possible exclusively by:
The Kauffman Foundation supports entrepreneurship and innovation so that economies grow and prosper and ultimately human welfare expands. Kauffman develops, operates and funds programs such as Startup Weekend, Kauffman Labs, and Global Entrepreneurship Week. Follow the Foundation on Twitter @KauffmanFDN

 

What’s Going On in the Chicago Startup Community

TiE Midwest Leaders & Legends Event with Eric Lunt
When: Monday, May 2 from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Where: Drinker Biddle, 191 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL

Eric Lunt, CTO BrightTag and Senior Technology Advisor to Twitter will share the stories of Spyonit.com and Feedburner, what it’s like to grow and sell a high growth technology company in Chicago, his lessons learned along the way, and why he chose to remain in Chicago with BrightTag.

When: Monday, May 2 at 5:30 pm
Where: Morningstar, 22 West Washington Street Chicago

Casandra Meetup group discusses Brisk, an open-source distribution of Hadoop that leverages the high availability attributes of Apache Cassandra to provide a distribution that is simpler to operate, maintain, and use than other distributions.

 

ChicagoRuby: Downtown – Marking Up the Web with Graffiti
When: Tuesday, May 3 at 6:00 pm
Where: ThoughtWorks, 200 East Randolph Street (Aon Center) Chicago, IL

Chicago is the home of Ruby on Rails, and this meetup brings out the best and the brightest. Tuesday’s talk by Hashrocket’s Aaron Kalin focuses on the power of regular expressions which are seldom used by developers.

When: May 4th, 8:30 AM to 8:30 pm
Where: Grossinger City Autoplex, 1500 N Dayton, Chicago

Guppy Bowl? Piranha Pond? Kraken Cave? Sunfish Sea? Built around public pitches to investor panels, The Funding Feeding Frenzy is the place to be for CEOs and founders of fast growing companies to get connected with a group of investors who just may be waiting to sink their teeth into their winning idea.

 

Top Upcoming Chicago Startup Events

May 10 – Morningstar Tech Talks
May 12 – Chicago Product Management Association
May 19th – Michigan Lean Startup Conference with Eric Ries
July 22 – 27 TechWeek and Sparkweek

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Event Marketing with Influencers, Producer Spotlight with Edith Yeung

20/07/2010

Below is Chris McCann’s interview with Edith Yeung, a well-known event producer here in the SF Bay Area, about how she got started as an events producer and then specifically how to use conference influencers to help market your event.

Edith Yeung is the founder and executive producer of BizTechDay, an entrepreneur conference where inspiring entrepreneurs share practical business and technology strategies. BizTecDay 2010 will take place in San Francisco, Seattle and New York (you can save 30% on tickets on our Conference Deals page) this fall. Edith has successfully produced over 40 entrepreneurial events and brought over 5500 people together in the past 3 years.

What’s your story, how did you get into the event production business?
In 2008, 10 years after working for many different enterprise software companies (Siebel, Oracle, and AT&T) I left my last corporate job with Autodesk and decided that I really need to find what I am truly passionate about and what really want in life.

Immediately after I left, I realized that I need a new set of friends – entrepreneurial friends. I went to a couple of networking groups which I thought really sucked, so I decided to start my own entrepreneurial meetup group.

Tell me about the first meetup you organized.
3 years ago, I started my first entrepreneur meetup with 5 people at the Hotel Kabuki, San Francisco. I paid $300 bucks and I knew 3 out of the 5 people who attended… I thought it was kind of silly I had to pay to see my friends, but I really enjoyed the process and the experience of bringing people together.

Slowly but surely, I learned and became a little bit smarter about organizing events. My meetup group grew from 5 to 10, to 20, to 50, to 100, to 300 and later on became BizTechDay – the conference!

BizTechDay’s purpose is to bring together amazing innovative and scalable technology ideas and help grow a new generation of entrepreneurs. It is about bridging the gap between technology and business people.

How long did it take for you to transition from your meetup group to your first conference, and how big was your group at the time?
It took about 12 months, my group was about 1200 people at the time.

What is the most unusual thing that has happened during an event you produced?
The first year of BizTechDay – Tim Ferriss (our 2008 morning keynote speaker) decided to come back in the evening and ended up spending almost 3 hours with us just chatting and drinking wine. It was a blast!

What was the most fun event you have organized?
I really like the Co-Founder Matching event I did recently… it’s basically speed-dating for co-founders. Over a hundred potential business partners got the chance to meet in one room. I will match them (email intro) only if both sides want to meet afterwards.

Thanks for sharing your story. Now let’s talk more about marketing your conference and getting your conference members to help you out.

Who exactly are you bringing together at your conference?
Entrepreneurs, small business owners, and investors,

If you had the resources to ask for only one type of conference member to help you with marketing, who would it be?
First, start by reading this post I wrote on identifying influencers: http://www.biztechday.com/how-to-identify-influencers-for-your-business/

My guess is that you are asking about the mavens and the connectors. These are individuals who are in the know of your industry. They are on top of things. They like to gather all the latest industry news. The mavens are the ‘Hubs’ of the human social network.

How do you ask these members for help marketing your event?
Just ask the mavens!  Fundamentally, all mavens want to help. They want to be on top of things. But think about how you can help them. As much as mavens love to help people, they especially appreciate those who think from their point of view. Offer them something of value. Help them to help you. It could be:

  • Member discounts
  • Group discounts
  • Bring a friend for free
  • VIP passes

For your marketing efforts using “influencers and conference members” what marketing channel do you use most? Email, Facebook, Twitter?
We used them all!  But one thing I have to say:

  • Emails serve a particular purpose. When people open your email, they expect you give them specific information. It’s OK to sell in an email.
  • Twitter and Facebook, on the other hand, are for social purposes. Your audience doesn’t expect you to sell or market your event directly (or you may lose all of your friends). This is the channel where you generate buzz and conversations around your event. This is where you put your creative hats on and get people to talk about you and your event.

Can you give me an example of another conference organizer that you think does this well?
Not exactly using Twitter or Facebook, but South by Southwest successfully used Foursquare really well to let everyone else in the world know where all the tech influencers are, which certainly drives buzz and gets the tech world’s attention.

You can follow up with Edith on Twitter @edithyeung.

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When to Cancel an Event: Lessons from a Failed Event

1/07/2010

partners for growth and innovation logo

Putting on an event is like producing a movie. There are actors (speakers), there are financiers (sponsors), the showing (the event), and the release to the viewing public (attendees). Just like many movies, not all events succeed.

Some events fail small, such as a meetup group not happening, and some fail big, like an international conference where people paid to travel oversees and the event was canceled on them at the last minute. Just this week an event called the Partners for Innovation and Growth produced by Tanya Noel was one of these events.

The PGI event was planned for July 27th thru July 30th with no set location or schedule given to speakers or attendees. For full disclosure, I was supposed to be speaking at this event and StartupDigest was actually a media partner for this conference for a short time. I pulled out as a speaker and partner when I felt the conference was not going to be organized as well as I thought it could be.

On June 27th at 8:01am, the attendees who paid to attend this event were sent an email informing them that the conference had:

“changed from Viareggio, Italy, to a beautiful conference center in Umbria. We’re very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause to you. The conference will take place Monday & Tuesday June 27th and 28th, and will be less structured, following the Unconference style.”

The attendees were not informed that the event had been canceled but changed locations to Umbria. What followed remains largely unclear, but what is clear is that Tanya never showed up to Italy, and we have learned from the stranded attendees that the event in Umbria never took place and that she blamed her Italian counterpart for “hijacking” the conference.

All speculations aside, the bottom line is that there are people who paid for a conference ticket, paid to travel to Italy, and have gotten neither their money back nor even a straight explanation.

There is no mention of any updates on the situation besides the event’s cancelation on the PGI Twitter page, Facebook page, Eventbrite page, or website. The last time Tanya tweeted about the event at all was on June 23rd. What’s worse is that I found a press release on their media page promoting their next event in the Fall 2010 with a list of speakers that “may or may not be attending.” I’m not kidding. Here’s a screenshot of this page if it’s taken down (keep in mind some of these speakers listed here were people she stranded in Italy):

pgi may include

I understand that producing an event is hard and sometimes ends in failure. What I don’t understand is failing to give a straight story to the people who spent time and money to attend the event, failing to help them out in its wake, and failing to show any lessons learned for promoting the next event.

In the future, if you are organizing a paid event, especially one that involves travel, you need to:

  1. Commit to definitely paying or definitely not paying for a speakers travel & lodging from day one so you can avoid confusion later. This decision should never hinge on a sponsor and should not change over time.
  2. Set a specific “go or no-go” deadline on the event for yourself. If you’re openly recruiting an international audience, this deadline must be at the very least one full week ahead of time. If you push forward beyond that date, there’s no turning back, even if only 10 people show up. Anyone would much rather show up to a lame conference than chase one that doesn’t exist.
  3. If you do decide to cancel, email all attendees, speakers, sponsors, presenters, media partners, and everyone else involved in the event immediately. Mark it as URGENT in the subject line to maximize readership of the initial message.
  4. Post daily updates on your website and Facebook/Twitter channels about what you’re doing to wind down the event and get people their money back.
  5. Do not try to transfer attendees or speakers at the last minute to another event, whether it’s yours or not, and avoid the inevitable cancelation.
  6. If someone pays you for a product or service you can’t deliver, give them their money back immediately. Don’t drag it out. And if you’re broke and upset because you can’t pay back what you owe, at least be honest about it so people know what’s going on.

If you are one of those very unfortunate people to have wound up in Italy stranded with nowhere to go, please reach out to me and I will connect you with our StartupDigest curators in Italy. We might as well try to make the most of this experience for all of you.

Below are some of the tweets I pulled around the situation. The official hastag is #ievc. Leave any comments you have below or tweet with the #startupdigest hashtag and I will make updates to this post as needed.

idarose: I am suddenly realizing that I am the only person remaining in Tuscany for the canceled #IEVC conference…talk about my hopes squashed

vc20: RT @valto: #pgivc #ievc it’s starting to look like the PGI conference is not happening. Some mess by the organizer: http://bit.ly/b5HGNj

RT @christinelu: thinks @PGInnovation owes people an elaborately well made up explanation for why the organizer is a no show and gave people no warning.

@papadimitriou @valto she’s making fun of us. Moving the conference to Umbria is fraud. Am I the only one very pissed?

@papadimitriou I asked for a full refund yesterday but got no answer yet

@christinelu thinks @PGInnovation owes people an elaborately well made up explanation for why the organizer is a no show and gave people no warning.

PGInnovation: We have a new venue for IEVC Tuscany! Please contact us for further details.It will start on Monday at 10am. info@pgi.vc Thank you! #pgivc

steookk: @valto can anybody give a full explanation of what is going on for tomorrow’s event in Viareggio? Our complains in FBpage were deleted #pgivc

@christinelu: @PGInnovation stop perpetuating bullshit Tanya. i read the email. people know i’ve been patient w/ your crap. you screwed people over.

I have reached out to Tanya directly and asked her to give an open and honest face-to-face interview to explain exactly what happened. Let me know if you have any specific questions for her. I will post updates as soon as I have them.

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