Conferences are a great place to do business development or get a high level introduction. This works for essentially two groups of people: hallway networkers, and new comers. Anyone looking to take home some real action items is left out. That’s why I’ve gotten involved in two new conferences: Social Media Business School and Startup2Startup.
Instead of multi-day mega-conferences, these two events are aimed at getting a select group of individuals into a room for a deep dive on a topic. Startup 2 Startup focuses on connecting seasoned entrepreneurs, rookies, and venture capitalists. Over dinner attendees listen to a talk on a specific business of technical topic to frame a moderated discussion at each table. Serial entrepreneur Mike Cassidy spoke at the last event, but the best part was that it’s invite only.
Social Media Business School brings some of the same philosophy to the social application development and advertising space. It’s just a day long and does a deep dive on the topics of analytics, marketing, hosting providers, advertising, and business plans.
Both conferences are priced to break even and cost around $70, which is a steal compared to multi-day conferences.
The next Startup2Startup event is in a month, but Social Media Business School is coming to L.A. on June 5th. (best deal on tickets)
I hope to see more people run events like these.
