Recently I was at a Bootstrap Austin meeting and Bijoy (www.bootstrapaustin.com) led the discussion – What is Bootstrap?
Listen to the Pod Cast here:
Even more fun, I got to give my opinion first and got a great plug in for what BridgeATX does. Woohoo!
It is a 20 minute conversation, but it is well worth it if you want to talk about entrepreneurship. And as always Bijoy is an AWESOME speaker. 
Enjoy and have an awesome Memorial Day Weekend!
I think we can call the first Bridge ATX Networking Event a success on all accounts – at least from the attendee’s perspective. Smiles were plentiful and many new acquaintances were made.
The Little Challenges In Life
Of course, there are always little hitches behind the scenes that no one sees.
One of the major hitches was the fact that the event was advertised as having Bands performing. Um.. There were no bands. Although, I know a lot of musicians around town – most of them were unavailable.
One of the musicians who was able to attend had to back out at the last minute due to technical difficulties. She had told me that she needed an AMP/PA to be able to perform. Union Park does not have one to provide. I had one secured via a friend. Then at almost the final hour we discovered it was unavailable.
As for the other musician who was able to attend. Originally he was going to come with a group, but the group was in a state of flux. So, to be kind to me – he was going to come with his Tenor Sax and perform solo for me (for 2 hours if I needed it). Unfortunately, he is not over 21 and they were not going to let him in – even with a legal guardian present.
So, no music.. Which turned out to be a good thing – because it was WAY TOO HOT to go and sit upstairs on the balcony where they would have performed.
The other technical difficulty was in the way that EventBrite indicates that tickets are no longer available for purchase online. I had shut down the online ticket sales at 10 AM so that I would have enough time to print nametags and prepare for the event. I had several frantic calls and emails from people who wanted to make sure they could get a ticket. People were able to purchase tickets at the door. However, the EventBrite confusion caused many people to give up and not attend. ON the brightside of this one, people thought that the event was so great that it sold out – which means they will buy early for the next event.
Congratulations
Congratulations to Chris Rudd from ITT. He was the winner of the door prize for the 2 Bellagio Gift Certificates!
Special Thanks
Special thanks to my friends who helped me work the door – Loren Guerra (Recruiting Bad Ass), Mike McGee, Chrissy Zupfer (Pure Romance), Beth Santasiero, Jessica Falscroft, John West and Wesley Faulkner. There’s no way that I could have done this without you.
Special thanks to Liz Handlin for being the event sponsor. If you are looking to have your resume professionally recreated contact her at www.UltimateResumes.com.
Special thanks to Cindy Feyereisen for providing some of the yummiest dips ever. If you are looking for a caterer contact Cindy at www.prettydishes.com.
Special thanks to Steven Noreyko for coming and taking some amazing professional headshots. Not everyone was able to participate due to the fact that they didn’t come prepared to be photo’d. Watch for my new headshot to appear soon on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, etc.
Pictures
I did have a few very unprofessional pictures taken at the event. Most of them came out very blurry. I’m not sure if I need a new camera or just need to adjust it to Auto Focus better. 
Or, maybe it was the person taking the pictures. Anyway, next time I’ll get someone much more professional to take the pictures. I apologize for the blur.
My Thoughts
I would love to gather everyone’s thoughts and comments in this blog regarding the event. I think it was a huge success for everyone. I was surprised by how many people were waiting at the door to come in at 5PM. I was also surprised to see how many people were still hanging out and having a good time when I left at 9 PM. Both, very good signs. In fact, I saw many a Facebook comment this morning about festivities lasting late into the night.
Several times I looked around the room and saw people smiling and deep in conversation. I knew I had achieved my dreams for the event when I saw this.
I had someone come up to me who couldn’t quite remember how he had heard about the event. Even though he was a master networker in town – he didn’t know anyone at this event. A brand new untapped resource for making new friends and business partners.
I had one friend who doesn’t frequent a lot of networking events. He was in awe at the end of the night. He was going home with 15 cards in his pocket all for people he was going to be able to do business with.
Now, the only question is when should I do this again? Is May too soon? What fun!
Stay tuned…….
I am involved in a lot of different organizations in Austin.
One of the common issues that I see come up is trying to define exactly what the organization is and what the organization does for its members. An equally trying challenge is defining what the organization is not. Sometimes organizations have defined charters – but over time as officers and interested parties change the organizations change away from their charter. Or, the charter is reinterpreted.
I was just talking to a friend of mine. She was considering rejoining an organization for a very large amount of money. She was weighing out the pro’s of being a member versus just being a non-member and paying that price to attend the events. What she didn’t know was a recent discussion that I had had with the leader of that organization.
Recently, I was contacted by the organization in question because there was a sponsor for one of their events that was a competitor of mine. The sponsor had requested that no competitors attend this event. This organization had never made such a request of me (or anyone else that I know of). I have been to countless other events within this organization that were sponsored by competitors (there’s lots of recruiters out there).
This request upset me because the organization (which I also paid a hefty amount to become a member) had a tradition of holding networking events every month. However, due to a leadership change, there had been no networking events for several months. The only one so far this year (which was to be held late in April) was the event that I was asked not to attend. So, basically I had paid a bunch of money to not get to go to the only events that I wanted to attend.
I told the leader of this organization that he/she was sitting on a critical pivot point for their organization. This was supposed to be an organization that served its members. Now, all of a sudden in a blink of an eye the organization was now serving it’s event sponsors instead of its members. Sponsors were now being given the right to tell the organization which members could attend and which could not attend.
The excuse that was given to me was that the sponsor had paid a lot of money to sponsor the event. The sponsor has paid this money each year for the past 3 years. So, since this sponsor had been such a valuable sponsor they were going to meet the sponsor’s demands. How about the large sums of money that were being paid by its members?
I asked the leader of this organization whether the organization was there to help it’s members or whether it was there to provide a pool of people whom sponsors could pick from. I was given no clear answer other than the sponsor had full authority to do it for this event and the leader would go back to the board to find out what the policy should be going forward. I have not heard any response on this policy.
The other thing that is truly upsetting is that non of the membership of this organization know that a decision has been made in favor of a sponsor over an individual member. Slowly but surely this organization is changing out from under its members.
Yes, this organization does have other events. However, for a lot of other reasons the other events either don’t interst me – or I’m not allowed to attend because they are for a specific sub group of the membership to which I do not apply.
This particular organization had involved me in a discussion in December about how to increase membership. Lots of smaller businesses showed up to participate in the discussion. Our main complaint was that small businesses needed to have some way to be able to participate without having to shell out all the money that large businesses could easily afford. At that point I asked whether the organization was truly there to help small business members.
This organization is in crisis. In reality, this organization has been in crisis for some time.
I write this blog not to cause any ill will towards this organization. I have been very careful to leave out any details that could help you determine which organization it is.
Instead, I’m writing this to warn organizations how terribly important it is to define the mission for your organization and stick with that mission. If you stand by your mission, then people really can’t argue with you about what your organization is trying to do. You take it or leave it but you understand.
When you start to make decisions that are not in line with your mission, it causes bad blood and causes many people to become very upset. We all know how I feel about burning bridges.
It will be interesting to watch what happens with the organization in question over time.
I wrote my last General blog on March 8th with the intention of adding new blogs daily (or at least weekly). I was so busy “doing” that I couldn’t spend time “writing”.
Quick recap:
March 9th – Meet with some cool people and then attend the Network in Austin – NetStorming Event
March 10th – Meet with more cool people and then attend – AWT Tech Tuesday, TiE Event and Landmark Forum – had to skip the Spec’s Wine Tasting, Refresh Austin Networking Event and the ATC Luncheon
March 11th – Discussed an interesting new business partnership (lips are sealed until it’s official) and spent the evening bonding with old friends
March 12th – Discussed another new interesting business partnership and attended the Austin Tech Happy Hour at Moltov – almost missed spending time with my brother on his birthday but was able to catch him at the last minute
March 13th – Met with friends to tell them more about Bridge Austin, reviewed a venue for an upcoming Bridge Austin Event and attended a friend’s Pre-St Pat’s party
March 14th – Attended BarCamp all day long and took brief breaks to check out SXSWi
March 15th – Rested and caught up (Sunday is the day of rest) before attending the Austin Tweetup that evening
March 16th – More business partnership discussions – Attended 4 events in the evening for SXSWi – “Austin on Rails” at Buffalo Billiards, Convio event at BD Riley’s, Microsoft’s Phizz Pop at Pangea and Austin Venture’s event at Malverde
March 17th – Met with clients, rested a little and then went out in search of Green Beer with friends
March 18th – More Business Partnership discussions followed by a NetParty Event at Union Park
March 19th – Met to discuss a very cool idea regarding Cultural Assessments with some amazing women
March 20th – Today
So, please forgive me for not posting sooner.. It’s been an exhausting couple of weeks and I am seriously considering giving up drinking permanently.
All of the events that I attended were very cool and I met some very interesting people. I’ll go into more detail seperately regarding the various events.
Now, it’s time to hunker down and focus on generating business leads and finalizing some of the technology that needs to go up on the site to capture information so that I don’t have to keep up with everything via my Outlook Inbox.
Stay tuned and have a great weekend!
Kim
This week was a real eye opener for me.
On Monday I was laid off from my job as a Technical Recruiter for a very large public staffing company. I was faced with the choice of starting a new business or going back to the Technical World that I had worked in for 12 years. Last summer, I had read the book “Eat, Pray, Love” and it inspired me to do what you love. My love was working with people to help them grow their businesses.
I decided to take the great leap of faith and start my own business. I could always go back to technology later if it didn’t work out. I assessed my strengths and came up with my new business.
I am a born networker. When I was little I used to spend my time talking to grownups at all of my parents parties. Children who were around my age had nothing interesting for me to learn. Grownups and their stories fascinated me. As I grew older I did whatever I could to never forget a friend’s birthday (no facebook reminders then). If I moved or a friend moved I tried my best to keep up with them. This was long before the days of the internet where an email address could travel with you wherever you went. I felt an intense need to connect.
As I got older I found that I may not know the answer to everything (okay, I knew the answers to very few things) but I knew who I needed to go to to find the answer I was looking for (this was before Google). I was able to pair people together in order to drive a solution. Naturally, I am a bridge builder, hence the name Bridge Austin (BridgeATX).
The next question became “how do I make money doing what I love to do”.
I had already found that I loved technical staffing. It allowed me to put a special slant on the staffing model since I had already worked so many roles that I was now staffing (BA, PM, Developer, QA, Implementation, Support, Data Mining, etc). I was able to look at the candidate and decide if I were my client would I want them to work for me. I also received great satisfaction from helping to make the connection between two needs. One need being a client who needed an employee who could fill their role perfectly and the other need being the job seeker who needed a job that they were going to love.
I also needed to add in my love for meeting people and finding out what they do. The more people I met, the more connections I was able to make. If someone were to tell me – “I need to move my business” - I would immediately think of all the people I knew who could help make that happen. I know companies who lease commercial real estate, who give commercial real estate loans, who do the physical move, who rent (or sell) the office furniture, who set up the wiring, who print the business cards with the new addresses, who ………
This all lead me to decide to start my Business Bridge Building Business (say that 5 times fast). For the time being I know that I want to continue to be involved in Technical Staffing. There are just too many people out there who need that right now. However, I also want to become know for the goto person for anyone with a business problem looking for a solution by partnering with another business.
So, that’s where I’m sitting now.
Wish me luck!
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