I love online social networking.
In fact, a good portion of my online life in 2007 seemed to revolve around social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, among others With a bit of effort on my part, I’ve managed to build a quite sizable network of ‘friends’ within these sites fairly quickly.
Now, having a big online network is cool & all, but I’ve found that the real connection happens when you bridge the digital divide and make contact in person, in “meatspace“.
Last night, I attended a MeetUp group for East Bay entrepreneurs & small business owners.
How did I end up there, you ask?
Well… while doing some poking around a couple of weeks ago on MeetUp.com, I came across the East Bay entrepreneurs & small business owners group, and decided that since we share a bunch of common interests, I’d join up.
Quickly after doing so, I noticed that Patrick Schwerdtfeger, the group’s organizer was trying to put together a mastermind event, where group members could break off into small groups and brainstorm ways that we can help each other build our businesses.
I thought, “Hey, I’ve got a small business & I know a thing or two about internet marketing. This is something that I’d definitely like to check out.”
The only problem was that Patrick was looking for a venue to hold the event.
Hey! I work in a cool office and we have plenty of space. Let’s host the event at our office.
So I contacted Patrick, and after determining that there was no chance that the Green Bay Packers would be playing on that day (gotta have priorities), we committed to holding the event at our office on January 19th (more on that tomorrow)
Fast forward to last night.
Since our mastermind event is coming up, I thought it would be a good idea to actually attend a MeetUp to check this group out.
So after work, I went to my first East Bay Entrepreneur and Small Business Meetup and it turned out to be a dynamite group. I met a bunch of people, saw some great presentations and left feeling quite inspired.
So there you have it. If you’re looking to build and strengthen your network, I encourage you to check out the online tools available to us.
Just make sure to take it that extra step and connect in the real world as well.
Who knows what it will lead to?
flickr photo credits: (tag:idea, Tiago Daniel) (tag:digital divide, palmetshofer) Thanks for using a Creative Commons license!
