Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Thanks to Boring for shooting the video.

Check out the next gathering, sponsored by:

VIAPOST - http://www.viapost.com/

ViaPost is the Skype of post (Post Over Internet Protocol)…send physical letters direct from your computer at the touch of a button from 27p, including print, stationary, envelope and 2 day delivery. No more stuffing envelopes or licking stamps.

http://iq-development.com

An ideal development house to partner with for delivery of exceptional online solutions.

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LOOKING FOR ONE MORE SPONSOR

Please get in touch if you’d like to sponsor this event paul@wubud.com

OpenSoho continues to attract more people every month. What was an idea to connect thirty to forty likeminded friends/acquaintances each month, has spiraled into something entirely different. Now in its third month, OpenSoho has 350 confirmed attendees and 200 maybes - of whom, 250 confirmed within 48 hours of creating the Facebook event page. I don’t mind the fact that it has evolved - that just means I’ll have to think of another regular gathering.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to demonstrate one of the reasons I love to host events. Below is an email I received from a guy who travelled from Ireland specifically to attend OpenSoho. I’ve asked for his permission and he’s happy for me to publish the entire email. You can find out more about why I love networking events by checking out an interview I did on Sky News Tech Talk.

Just a quick note to say thanks again for organising the event last night. We talked to some interesting people, made some good connections, and I think we’ll get to work on some cool projects because of it.

I think the most important thing we got out of it is that we got a chance to fine tune our elevator pitch, which, as a three month old start up is kind of important

Our target market is web start-ups or companies with existing web apps. So thanks to OpenSoho we now know what people respond to, and how to better present ourselves to our target market.

If you’re back in Dublin in the next few months, look us up, the pints are on us.

Cheers,
Eamon.

–

Eamon Leonard
Director, echolibre.
echolibre - Web App & API Development
24 South William Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.
web : http://www.echolibre.com

The next OpenSoho gathering is on January 15th at Floridita, 100 Wardour St, W1F 0TN. It starts at 18:30 and it’s important to arrive early to ensure you get in.

We’re looking for sponsors to help make the evening more enjoyable. If you’d like to show your support for the best attended networking event for the Tech Industry in London, then please email me paul@segala.com

Join the OpenSoho group on Facebook.

Sign up for the next event.

We’re likely to use an event Web site for the next one as not everyone is on Facebook.

Do you attend networking events and if yes, why? What do you get out of it? If you don’t, why not?

Thanks to Newspepper.com for covering the event.

Alex Tew and I recently hosted the inaugural OpenSoho event and I’m delighted to say it was a great success. We expected 30 to 40 but ended up with around 130 in attendance.

Check out the Facebook group for more information and to see who’s likely to attend. The last one included the likes of:

1. Paul Birch, Co-founder, Bebo (sold to AOL for $850m) and BirthdayAlarm.com
2. Richard Moross, Founder, Moo.com
3. Alex Hoye, Chairman, SeedCamp and CEO, Latitude
4. Angus Banks, Founder, Moreover (sold to VeriSign for $30m)
5. Alex Tew, Creator, Milliondollarhomepage.com and Co-founder, PopJam.com
6. Paul Carr, Writer
7. Mike Butcher, Editor, TechCrunch UK & Ireland
8. Michael Smith, Founder, MindCandy.com
9. Tom Boardman, Co-founder, Firebox.com
10. Nick Bell, Founder, Quick.tv
11. Cate Sevilla, Founding Editor, BitchBuzz
12. Zoe Margolis, Writer
13. Me and about 120 others…

The next gathering

The next meet-up is on December 4th - put it in your diary now as we’re likely to keep the numbers down this time. Please get in touch if you’d like to sponsor one of these events.

Register your interest on the Facebook event page now.

Register your interest on the Upcoming.org Web site now.

I’m sorry if I failed to mention you in this post - maybe next time