Tags: meetup

RSS - Atom - Subscribe via email

Pub nights and thinking about networking at events

| connecting

One of the lessons we took home from the Quantified Self Conference in September was the importance of a pub night for turning a meetup into a community. We tried it last Friday at our first post-conference meetup, squeezing twelve people around a long table at the Firkin on Yonge. I sprung for appetizers for the table and dinner for one of our attendees, who had driven for five hours from Detroit in order to join us. It turns out that three appetizers is too much for 12 people (some ordering food); next time, I’ll get one plate for every six people.

It was good to continue the conversation in a non-meetup context. I got to hear about people’s lives and even offer some help. I think it would be fun to get to know folks more. I wonder what ENT101 would be like with an informal pub night afterwards!

I really like the Quantified Self meetup. People are geeky in all sorts of different ways. I’ve taken on more of a hosting role, greeting people as they come in and checking with them after the event. It’s a good stretch, and I don’t feel as strong a need for introvert recharging after the meetup than, say, after parties or conferences.

I wonder what it is, and maybe if I can shift my experience at the other events I go to. I think part of it is the ease of introductions. With regulars, I don’t have to introduce myself, and I can ask about things we talked about before. With newcomers, I can quickly introduce myself as one of the organizers and ask them what got them interested in the group. At other events, I think I can take on the quasiofficial role of a sketchnote recorder.

Social get-togethers are still a little awkward, but that’s just more incentive to host them myself, so I can skip the introductions. Come to think of it, my tea parties are usually more about group conversations than about pairwise introductions… Hmm.

I liked supporting conversations with food. I should bring people together more often. I’m planning to have lunches and coffees more often, but I should also look into organizing communal get-togethers for coffee or dinner. We had 12 people in the coffee shop and I think that might be as large as I want to make it so that I can still listen to everyone. Maybe even six for dinner parties? We’ll see.

Sketchnotes: Jeremiah Owyang @ Third Tuesday Toronto (#3TYYZ) on the Social Business Hierarchy of Needs

Posted: - Modified: | sketchnotes, social

20120514-jeremiah-owyang-third-tuesday-toronto

Click on the image for a larger version or contact me for a high-res version (2608x1600px). Feel free to share this under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence.

Lots of great research released under Creative Commons. Yay Jeremiah Owyang and Altimeter!

Quick notes for searching, more later: Social business hierarchy of needs: Foundation –> Safety –> Formation –> Enablement –> Enlightenment

If you like this, you might also like:

Enjoy!

Here’s the text from the image to make it easier to search for:

Jeremiah Owyang
Third Tuesday Toronto: May 14, 2012
Sketchnotes: Sacha Chua (@sachac): LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

untrained employees
advanced companies prepare internally first

~180 accounts for average enterprise
-only 25% active
Social media mostly separate from rest of site/db

Frequency of social media crises
-exposure to poor customer experience
-poor influencer relations
-violation of ethical guidelines rogue employees

Social sanitation
Reinforcing bad behavior
We’re teaching them to yell at their friends.

Constantly getting ahead of themselves.

Advanced companies
Social business hierarchy of needs

5 Englightenment
4 Enablement Empowerment scaling
3 Formation asset inventory Center of Excellence
2 Safety Team workflow Crisis prep
1 Foundation Policy
Education required
social media & communities

Holistic
Real-time
Predictive
Predict what customers are going to do
Integrate into databases, etc.
Build better products
Tap employees

self-serve hubs Chatteratti (EZE help, compensation) bit.ly/Altimeter Social

strategic internal communications tactic
Governance
Policy
Guidelines
Training
important for scaling

10.8%
Decentralized centralized

41% Hub and spoke
sometimes on their behalf

18%
Dandelion
COE empowers business units

1.4%
Holistic
Safe & consistent
(Best Buy, Zappos)
I do customer support

Team Aug. 11
1.5 social strategist 3 comm manager soc media manager 1 analyst 1.5 dev

content strategist, emerging role
-editorials, ex. journalists, comm agencies…

Education
-Executives
-Strategists/Business units
-all employees

Access
-Tools
-Everyone has access & must be trained

Listening centre
some involving business unit centres
triage
-good
-bad
-ugly

FireBell simulation of social media crisis

Most crises: Friday afternoon

Q&A: #3TYYZ
-Analysis? CRM, Omniture (Adobe), SAS, Eloqua… A number of different directions. System integrators.
-Adobe Social. Very bullish, if they can act like a small company. Paid, earned, owned media
Also watch Lithium Technologies & bazaarvoice (300% ROI for ratings). New ad units, IBM social metrics.
-Soc media correlations? Social loyalty (people are loyal to each other), gamifications.
C-suite: Novelty, fear, potential for new business models.
any data company stands to gain early in the space, lots of experimentations
-Social software: Combrian explosion. Lots of duplicate companies, VCs investing in clones
Best-in-class will probably connect with each other.
-Startup? Yes, but you can go through steps faster. Our research focuses on enterprise, but can still help.
-Soc media agencies? Ads right now. May need to restructure. Everything starts with earned.
-Disclosure? Vendors unlikely. Agencies making tech-agnostic methodologies.
-Facebook fans? Loose affinity. Facebook wants people to pay.
-Product is info? Utility, etc. Go up a level: Lifestyle, workstyle. G8, IBM.
Get clients to tell stories. See banks for examples. Orsten in.

 

Sketchnotes: Red Rocket Coffee, Toronto Public Library Small Business Network meetup

Posted: - Modified: | business, sketchnotes

20120508-red-rocket-coffee-toronto-public-library-small-business-network

Click on the image for a large version. Want an even better version for printing out? Contact me. Feel free to reuse or share this image under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

We heard from Pamela MacDonald, Liako Dertilis, and Billy Dertilis of Red Rocket Coffee at today’s Small Business Network meetup at the Toronto Reference Library. They shared hard-won lessons from building a coffee shop business that now has three locations.

The small business network meetup at the Toronto Reference Library happens on the second Tuesday of every month. You can view my sketchnotes from past meetups:

View more sketchnotes, read my notes about business, or browse around my blog!

Here’s the text from the image to make it easier to search for:

redrocketcoffee.com
RED ROCKET COFFEE
Pamela MacDonald Liako Dertilis Billy Dertilis

Small Business Network Meetup
Toronto Reference Library
May 8, 2012
Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

Make sure you have enough money to live for a year.

You always have to be “on”, even at the grocery store.

Be adaptable, but watch out for over-adapting. You can’t please everybody.

Book recommendations:
-Setting the table: the transforming power of hospitality in business
-The little black book of entrepreneurship

Be prepared to wear a lot of hats.

Take care of yourself. Give yourself time to recharge.

Soft opening: work out kinks

The smartest thing an entrepreneur can do is learn when to let go.

#1: Good relationships
clients suppliers neighbours…

Hire a Lawyer. Any kind of contract, any kind of lease

Organization is important!
Suppliers etc. make mistakes, bill you twice…

Reassess success.
Had to buy out partner. Have partnership agreement!

Dedicate time to schmooze.
Customers can become suppliers!
Building relationships with people who understand

Trust your instincts.
Build a team you can delegate to.

Knowing WHO to ask & WHEN
Made up recipes
Passion!

We don’t micromanage. We’re very very careful about hiring, and we let them run the show. We let the store develop its own personality.
self-employment benefits

 

Sketchnotes: Marketing Automation, Jeffrey Yee (#torontob2b)

Posted: - Modified: | sketchnotes

UPDATE 2012-11-15: Here’s the video recap!

Marketing Automation
Jeffrey Yee, Eloqua

Like these? Check out my other sketchnotes, visual book notes/reviews, and visual metaphors.

Here’s the text from the sketchnotes to improve people’s ability to search for it:

Marketing automation

Marketing Automation
Jeffrey Yee, Eloqua

leads small
list management
forms
scoring
analytics
events
challenge
-Too expensive
-Not fully used
-Not implemented correctly
-Did not address business needs

1. Focus
one thing! business need!
2. Identify
Look for what your top performers are already doing
3. Start small, then build for mass adoption
-Target the second-tier salespeople!
4. Wait patiently for the lift.
incremental improvement

Best practices from client side
Dun & Bradstreet
credit risk management sales & marketing supply risk management

1. Focus
Example
Retention trigger-based e-mail
one need
40.1% opens
13.4% click through
10% increase in retention rates
2. Identify before you automate
Focus group?
Study top performers
How are we achieving this today?
Can we automate and scale this?

Repurpose

Think linear, it’s easier that way

Get personal and add value
plaint text e-mail from sales, not marketing
3. Mass adoption (but start very small)
advocates get others on board

Look for the people who are close to their quotas:
Tier 2 segmenting your salespeople!

Have reps vet leads before adding to program

3rd party data
4. Wait patiently for the lift. Set expectations.
Ex results
-6 months
pipeline value *19%
# of yes 14%
average upsize 3%
ops won 25%

Budget 12+ months

Like low-hanging fruit
Scaling up what already works
Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, LivingAnAwesomeLife.com