EWomen Network is a business networking group for women, and it’s run very well by Kerry Brown.   Tonight there must’ve been 75 women there – and I knew easily 50 of them!  In that group, I have met the woman who sold my house, the woman who recruited me to work in her design group for the last two years, the woman who arranged our mortgage, the woman who helped us stage our home, the woman who coached me while I ran my own business, many social media clients, and many great friends.

I love my group of women, and recommend eWomen Network wholeheartedly for any woman running a business, or even just thinking about it.  But that might not be your calling.  In that case, I hope your take-away from this post is to find yourself a group to call your own.

It might be a church, a community organization, a business networking group, a running club or any number of organizations where people get together and share an interest.  Don’t stay on the fringes.  Get in there and get to know people. Offer your talents, take some phone numbers,  go out for coffee.

As a kid, I was told “You get out of it what you put in.” EWomen Network has shown me, on a monthly basis, how true that is.  Thank you to my wonderful network of friends.

It’s supports a wonderful local charity: Power To Be.  Kids with disabilities deserve to get out and try new things, and just be kids.  Power To Be gives them the opportunity to stretch themselves and find out just what they CAN do.  Check out their website at www.powertobe.ca.

It’s going to feature a great variety of local talent: CBC’s All Points West host Joanne Roberts will be the emcee through the evening, which will feature comedy by Mike Vardy, and music by Vikki Flawith and Easy, Char, Crimson Star, The Gruntles and RIPT.

Twestival has shown the power of social media – particularly Twitter – to build community quickly. While people organize hundreds of fundraisers every year for worthy causes, my experience has been that when you do most of your planning in person, and with phone calls, pulling together a fundraiser can take months.  Using Twitter both to organize and to get to know each other, we’ve been able to form a team in a very short time.  It’s amazing how powerful a sentence or two can be in conveying just the right information.

Here’s a fun little video that Cris Vleck cooked up for us to get the word out:  watch it and buy your tickets!

YYJ Twestival Video on You Tube

And remember to buy your tickets in advance and swish right past the people lining up at the door:

www.amiando.com/yyjtwestival

Only 7 more sleeps!  See you there?

Has the Vancouver social media community considered starting a chapter of the Social Media Club? I know it’s “yet another thing” for many people, but its whole mission is to have these conversations, both in person and online. It has benefited the Victoria community enormously for these reasons:
1) The larger organization is a wonderful space to share local discussions and “lessons learned”, and the arrangement is reciprocal, with wider discussions seeding the local level too.
2) It encompasses the full spectrum of social media – not just blogging, not just the “flavour of the month” – and many of our discussions are applicable across platforms.
3) It is becoming a recognized brand in itself. As a communications professional engaged in social media, I’d like to visit chapters in other towns. Are there great people visiting Vancouver who are missing connections because they don’t know where to look?

Since Paul Holmes and I founded the Victoria chapter (the first in Canada!) six months ago, I have been continually amazed by the quality of discussion and the building of community that takes place when we meet.  We’ve gone from 15 people to nearly 40 at the last event, and the momentum keeps building. We’re preparing for a very big event Sept 22nd, when we welcome n2y4 award winner Joe Solomon to talk about “Movement Building in a Connected Age”.  That deserves its own post, so expect to see more here about that talk this week.

At the same time, meetups, tweetups, an Open Coffee group and DemoCamp all add to our knowledge base and our contact files.  (For people who spend a lot of time behind screens, we sure like to meet!) At each event I’ve been to, I’ve come home feeling like I’ve shared a lot and learned far more.