{"id":256,"date":"2007-03-27T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-28T03:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgillin.com\/2007\/03\/an-impressive-meetup-for-the-strategy-paradox.html"},"modified":"2007-03-27T20:32:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-28T03:32:00","slug":"an-impressive-meetup-for-the-strategy-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/an-impressive-meetup-for-the-strategy-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"An impressive meetup for The Strategy Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>You know social media is mainstream when the big accounting firms get on the bandwagon. <\/p>\n

This evening I attended a meetup for Michael E. Raynor, author of the new book, The Strategy Paradox<\/a>. I learned of it from HeyLetsGo<\/a>, a regional social network. I wanted to meet Raynor since he co-authored one of my favorite business books, The Innovator\u2019s Dilemma<\/a> and his new topic sounded like it might make interesting fodder for a blog I write on innovation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It turned out, though, that the social-media aspect of the meetup was as interesting as the author. The event was an experiment for Deloitte<\/a>. Held in a small upscale restaurant in downtown Boston<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>, it had no guest list. Anyone who showed up was free to attend (and with open bar and a fine selection of hors d\u2019oeuvres, it was a bounty for those who did). Promotion was through an announcement on PBWiki<\/a> and news of the event spread entirely through word of mouth. Mark Doerschlag posted the notice on his MarksGuide.com<\/a>, a blog devoted to professional networking, posted the notice on HeyLetsGo, which is how I learned of it. Anyone could have come: in that respect, it was quite different from the tightly controlled press events of yesteryear.<\/p>\n

Deloitte reps delivered a short presentation highlighting the experimental nature of the event. There were no attempts to sell the company\u2019s services. Everyone got a free copy of the book. I\u2019d say there were about 30-40 people there.<\/p>\n

I found the audience to be of surprisingly high quality, given the lack of restrictions on attendance. In addition to spending some quality time with the author, I spoke with several other attendees whom I had never met before. All were business professionals with a strong interest in social media and in the strategy-focused topic of the book. It happened that nearly everyone I spoke to was self-employed. Several appeared interested in the networking aspects of the event. All were bright and inquisitive and the type of people who will probably blog about the book.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if this meetup will ultimately prove successful in promoting the book, but I was impressed with both the attendees and the discussion. I\u2019ll certainly be looking at applying this idea to marketing my own book<\/a>, which is due next month. For an event with so few restrictions, I thought it was a notable success and a testament to the power of word-of-mouth marketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know social media is mainstream when the big accounting firms get on the bandwagon. This evening I attended a meetup for Michael E. Raynor, author of the new book, The Strategy Paradox. I learned of it from HeyLetsGo, a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[62,115],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-48","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}