Introduction To Our Business Network Expo

December 9th 2008, will be our 4th Business Network Expo. We hold them once a quarter and started them this past April 2008.

This idea sprung up out of our frustration from attending many networking events that last only one to two hours. Usually because they are paid events that include a meal, you want to eat and then you don’t get that much of a chance to actually network with people. So Lisa Barbieri of Ameriprise Financial and Terry Jones of Cruises, Inc. came up with this idea and created this event.

Lisa Barbieri has created a group of business woman who network on Collective X by sending out network events other woman can attend. Her group is called Diva’s After Dark and you can join if you go to Diva’s After Dark @collectivex.com . Lisa tries to have her group plan and have fun networking events after regular business hours. Her aim is to combine social and business networking, so woman can have fun all the while making business connections. They range from many different activities such as just meeting for dessert to meeting in the dog park.

Making connections in business is very important to women and trying to learn more about the connections you make is sometimes hard during normal business hours. As a member of Diva’s After Dark Lisa and Terry have gotten to know each other. We also attend many of the same networking events and were frustrated that we could not make the type of connections we wanted at times from these events.

Really, how can you learn anything about anyone, let alone their business from a 15 or 30 second elevator speech? It is impossible! Many times at these events you can’t even stand up and introduce yourself because there are so many people attending. So together we decided to create this Business Network Expo.

We have been adding more and more to each time but the premise stays the same. We have 15 vendors who pay for a display booth, this covers for the cost of the community center room rental, snacks for our vendors and other cost such as a banner to help direct traffic, display signs advertising the event on the road plus items such as business cards etc..

None of the money goes into Lisa or Terry's pockets. It is all put back into the next event. There are no distractions, just networking. The event is FREE for everyone to attend but the vendors are Business to Business only. We do not have vendors who are Business to Consumers but they are welcome to attend, hand out business cards to everyone but we don’t have anyone selling at these events.

Guests can stay a few minutes or the whole 3 hours, however long they want to continue to network. We started off with 15 vendors and 20 guests in April 2008. At our last event in September 2008 we had 15 vendors and 84 attendees! We don’t want it to grow so much that people can’t network anymore and say their elevator speech again.

So ‘Throw away your elevator speech and come network!’