Why I love hosting networking events
January 8, 2009 //
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
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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.
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?
Alan Dix says
Edwin Yip | dev of Gmail Keeper says
Tarek Agrefa says
Darragh Grealish says
BArry IrishDev.com says 
Happy days. This is a test
January 15th, 2009
thanks!
February 7th, 2009