theregoesdave

Last Thursday was the first ever Tech Cocktail Conference out in Chicago. The agenda was focused on helping startups to learn about different areas of online business and to help them find the resources that they need to be successful. The list of speakers included industry experts from a variety of area startups that have successfully grown their businesses such as Threadless, Feedburner, 37Signals and Wine Library TV. Organizers Frank Gruber and Eric Olson have done an excellent job of helping to build a startup community in the Chicago area and have recently expanded to DC, Boston and Boulder.

One of the most interesting things about this conference is the amount of momentum around transforming traditionally offline industries into thriving online communities. Sometimes it seems like the online space is overcrowded and is headed towards consolidation. While this is true to some extent, there are many industries that haven’t found a great way to connect with their consumers online. For example, Threadless has brought online t-shirt design community together to create a fresh perspective on the t-shirt industry. Or Gary Vaynerchuck whose maverick take on making wine fun for everybody is making waves in the traditional world of vino.

Gary Vaynerchuck’s keynote on building community around your business was the highlight of the conference for me. You can tell that Gary is very passionate about wine and his enthusiasm is contagious. Gary personally responds to every single email and twitter direct message that he possible can. His take on building community around a site is that every single person that you meet is important to your brand. When asked how many people a new social tool or blog needs to have in order to be relevant to building community is just one. In fact, even the smallest site or blog could potentially be the loudest advocate for your community.

Overall, I thought that the conference and the speakers rocked. I took a lot of insight away from the sessions and was really pleased that I made the trip. Next year the conference will probably need to be two days since it was hard to squeeze that many sessions into one day as it was!

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