The Power of Networking

One of my major takeaways from class this week was about the fact that your reputation can be a growth driver. Eventually this will be true for the organization by itself, but especially with a consulting company a lot of the initial credibility and interest has to do with the Founders themselves. So the reminder to update my LinkedIn page was quite timely.

This week we started conversation with several people who had been inquiring about the idea of a new initiative. I have already had one look me up on LinkedIn to learn a little more about me, as I am an unknown.

This had also lead to further thinking about outside events that we plan to conduct during the semester. So far we are thinking:

• Sunday I am attending an Arisia ConCom with the goal to speak to the head of Diversity Team to better understand what the convention is currently providing for training and material is covered.
• C and I have a meeting this week with an organizer of an open source conference that is representative of the market most closely served by the AI. This will give us early information about that market and potential interest in collaboration
• On 9-28-15 WEST (Women in the Enterprise of Science and Technology) is hosting an event on Best Practices for Hiring, Developing, and Retaining Women Leaders in High Tech. I plan to attend to meet with learn about best practices and resources available, which would provide material to incorporate into our products, network and identify potential competitors already in this market.
• Next week C and I have a meeting with an organizer from a similar organization to the one we are proposing except focused on technology and maker communities. Early discussions have included exploration of collaboration or alternative options such as having this work end up being within their organization at least initially. This might allow for some time to gain more reputation for this sort of work before needing to commit all the capital upfront in order to startup.
• Oct 2nd-3rd C will be attending Open Source & Feelings, a two-day conference about the intersection of software and the humanities in Seattle, WA in order to network and start discussions with potential donors and customers.
• Oct 9th-12th C will be attending JOFCon, a three-day convention for sharing best-practices on running fandom conventions. This will provide an opportunity to start conversations with leadership from many fandom conventions about what they would be looking for in a service such as ours.