When we were asked to ask ten people by personal invitation, I was a bit overwhelmed. I thought that it would be very difficult to find other people I knew would be interested. Then I realized that I may not know, exactly, who is and is not interested and simply need to ask! I sent personal invitations to 13 people -- I narrowed down my list of friends and/or people I know to invite those I thought would have most interest. So the inviting began--here is a list of people who I invited and a little bit about them:
1) Robert Scoble is someone I found from doing a google+ search for people and pages. I looked, specifically, for people who were technologically inclined and/or were business professionals. I chose Robert because he seemed to be an expert in modern technology and internet resources. Here's a little bit about him, as posted on his blog "about" him ...
I'm a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley (my dad was an engineer at Lockheed) and since 1985 I've been building online communities. In 2000 I started my technology blog, http://scobleizer.com, and my life has been on a rocketship ever since. In 2003-2006 I worked at Microsoft as an evangelist and one of the five guys who started Microsoft's famous Channel9 video community.
He responded to my request/invite by saying that he was too busy and didn't have the time to participate.
2) Jeff Clavier is also someone I found on google+. I chose him also because of his expertise I read in his "about" post about himself...
Based in Palo Alto, California, Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested in close to 100 consumer internet startups (Fund I, Fund II, Fund III) in areas like social media, monetization, search, gaming or B2B/B2C web services.
I never got a response from him... a little frustrating. But I kept trying!
3) Marsha Collier is another google+er. Here is a little bit about her...
Marsha Collier's name crops up a lot in the same breath as e-commerce and customer service. No surprise there. She’s the author of eBay For Dummies, eBay Business All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies plus many other related, best-selling titles. She's sold over a million books and been on the Business Week Best Seller list and has published more than 35 books in the Wiley "For Dummies" series. (List of books in print below).
She is a popular keynote speaker, inspiring online sellers to success, the lead instructor at eBay University, speaks at conferences worldwide, and runs a successful online business – so is she an internet fanatic? Well, let’s just say she’s on a mission: educating current and future online sellers.
My interaction with her was really exciting because she emailed me right back and said that she was interested in what we were doing and that she would include the doc I emailed her (our business chapter) to her nightly reading.
4) Nathan Munson is a computer tech guy and has a lot of interest in the digital field. I emailed him a personal invitation and told him about the event and what it was about. I never heard back from him.
5) Kevin Newton is a business major. I know him from one of my business classes and emailed him a personal invitation. I never heard back from him.
6) Matt Winn is an Information Systems major. He responded to my personal facebook message to him and said that he was really interested. He was going to try and come, but said it was late because he had a work meeting Wednesday at 7 p.m. I don't think he ever made it--I never saw him.
7) Deving Basinger is interested in business and is applying for a job right now for Ebay. He responded to my personal facebook message and told me it sounded like something he'd really like and thanked me for thinking of him. He was planning on coming, but then text me right as the event started and told me that other things came up and he was spending time with his wife.
8) Yohanes Tanutama is in the field of economics and business and responded to my facebook message. He said that he would consider it, but I never saw him at the event.
9) Dane Olenslager is an engineering major and loves innovation -- I sent him a facebook message and he never responded.
10) Kent Dodds is a computer guru. He spends a lot of time in the digital world and I thought he'd have a lot of interest. He responded to my facebook message, but wasn't able to come.
11) Ben Brown is a friend and loves being involved with many things. I thought he'd love to hear about what we had to say and sent him a facebook message, but I never heard from him.
12) Chance Allen is a business guy, but he never responded to my facebook message.
13) Dallin Bastian is going into accounting. I sent him a facebook message, but he never responded.
I enjoyed my interactions, mostly, with Marsha Collier. That was definitely a highlight of my social proofing and gave me a desire to do more. I struggled a lot at first with the idea of social proofing and felt like I'd be bothering other people, but because of the positive and enthusiastic response from Marsha, I realized that there is probably a whole lot of people out there like her who want to be involved and hear what you have to say about something applicable to their field of work or interests.
My wife also came with me to the event and it opened her eyes. She thought it was a little abstract at first, but was impressed by the possibilities of integrating much of what we do currently with the digital world. I enjoyed having conversations with her afterwards about how to be more digitally civilized and use the tools available for our benefit.
I was also very proud of myself for setting up a Twitter account! It is very new to me and I have a lot to learn. But I enjoyed being able to see the comments and questions of the online and present audiences. I tweeted a few of my thoughts and/or questions. I thought it was a very useful tool in getting a feel for how the audience is feeling and what questions are a majority that need to be addressed.
The event was excellent. To everyone . . . Way to GO!
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