Any interest in a Twin Cities event?

I'll be in the twin Cities next week do you want to co-host and event?

Great suggestion, Avonelle. I've been talking with another local Bizniker (do we have a moniker for ourselves yet, because if not, Bizniker seems as good as any other), Martin Mosman. We were thinking of putting something together along the lines of a semi-regular social networking happy hour. I was thinking sometime around January 9th. Oh, and I'm partial to Mancini's as a location, but I'm open. Thoughts?

I'll be in town until Christmas Day... I plan on doing some downtown St. Paul touring on Monday/Tuesday and thought about a late morning coffee event at Grumpy Joe's at the Wabasha Street Caves

or a Happy Hour event at The Waters Brewery to be followed by live music at the Artist Quarters for anyone interested in an Open Mic on Monday or Jazz on Tuesday...

I will be calling the venues tomorrow to find out appropriate timing and event sizes...

With 112 people in your network as of today I think you could definitely get some events going on here on a regular basis.

If anyone is interested in joining me let me know. And I'll post an event tomorrow.

Okay, with the holidays more or less wrapped up, I thought I'd look forward a bit and plan for this informal happy hour we'd been discussing. Tuesday nights are the best nights for me, so I'm going to offer January 27th as a possibility, say around 6 pm? As for location, it sounds like that was still open. Since we're still in the planning phase, I'll once again offer up Mancinis, but if there's somewhere closer to Shoreview that you know of that would accommodate a (hopefully) large number of people, feel free to toss it out there.

We should also discuss how to generate some interest in this. This thread seems to have only attracted the attention of a few of us, but I'm guessing it's because most of us don't regularly check this website for threads that might be of interest. As a method for drumming up interest, we may want to send out "cold invites" to other biznikers to join our network, along with the note that we're planning this networking event. We'll probably only get a few more folks interested, but it's a quick and easy way to get others involved. I'm also planning on inviting all the small business owners that I know (mostly lawyers).

Any other ideas?

My experience was when I coupled personal messages with my post I got responses...there are under 200 members in MN right now so in under a week with just a little bit of time investment...with 2-5 ambassadors...I'm looking forward to spending some time in MN in the spring and would be interested helping with the message sending and planning to get the ball rolling. ;-)

Avonelle, thanks for stepping up to this, when I first joined Biznik there were only a handful of folks in the Mpls community on here.

Count me in!

I agree with Mike about setting up some sort of effort to engage others. Perhaps we could set up a quick poll to gather opinion/ideas/interest first, then go from there with an Evite or something that is trackable?

Also I would second Mancini's not just because it is good for a larger group, but because it's close to me... I'm a true urbanite and take public transit so anything in the metro that's within reasonable distance to either of the downtowns is OK by me!

Way to build a TEAM...

Public Transit rocks...

Evites are warm and friendly,

In Health, Celeste

Alright, BATTLE PLAN-

I recommend we get together at Mancini's from 5-8 on Jan. 27th (I'll commit to being there the whole time, others can feel free to drop in when they can make it) with name tags, a relentlessly positive attitude, and a drink (to help with #2). I'm also going to send out an invite to 1) all the biznikers in Minneapolis to join my network, with a mention of the event, and 2) an email to all my personal contacts that I think might be interested.

If anyone else can think of another broad-scale way to reach out to folks, feel free to toss it out.

Beyond, that I think we should use this forum as a chance to talk after the event to decide how to make the next event better, more effective, better attended, etc.

Suggestions? Thoughts?

Hello Biznik Minnesota! I just wanted to jump in on this thread and offer my help in making it easy to invite everyone in your area to your event. If you add your event into the Biznik calendar, I'll send out personal invites to everyone on Biznik who is within a 50-mile radius of the event location. And, I'll blog about you guys putting Minnesota on the Bizniker map. Nice work :-)

Dan

I'd like to chime in here and support Dan as well. My name is Christian, and I am responsible for reviewing and approving all Events.

What you guys are talking about is a perfect Happy Hour event. A great way to get the widest variety of Bizniks together in one place at one time, to meet, greet, chat, and make that all important face-to-face connection.

I look forward to seeing a bunch of new events in the Mpls area!

• Christian

Woohoo! I love the event calendar...it is how I found all my favorite events...

A big thanks to Dan and Christian for the input and guidance. The event has been created and is awaiting approval. Once it's up, let me know what you think.

Looks like a great event, Michael. Congratulations on hosting the first Biznik event in Minnesota!

Perfect! I have approved the event, and included a link to this discussion in the Description of the Event.

Best of luck! - Christian

Hey, folks

The event is TONIGHT. Anyone going besides TWO of us?

Please RSVP at this link.