Coworking and Networking at The Piazza
EE Coworking and Networking Days are here to stay in 2010!
We have been working from various wifi spots throughout the city this year, with great turnout at all of our events. Entrepreneurs, business owners, freelancers, and other independents looking to get out of the office and network have been coming together at these events to meet, work, eat, and share business cards. Check out some of our coworkers in our quickie vlog post: http://www.watchuslaunch.com/
This month we are heading to a clean, bright, and friendly cafe in Northern Liberties called Euphoria Cafe. They have great coffee, tea, smoothies, sandwiches, and our personal favorite, iced bubble coffee! Euphoria offers free wifi and a comfortable area for us to all sit together to work and mingle. This cafe is also in the exciting Piazza, surrounded by restaurants, shops, galleries, and of course the big outdoor courtyard with the giant screen TV so you can stick around and watch the Phillies game that night!
If you are committed to evolving your business in 2010, coworking is for you. Entrepreneur’s Entourage’s Coworking events are a great way to get a change of scenery from your home or corporate office and hang in the presence of some of Philly’s brightest entreps. Our group brings together the open share of ideas and the strength of the entrepreneurial community here in Philadelphia across all industries. Our meetup days are informal and a great way to share your business, make connections, get some work done on your laptop, grab a bite to eat, and gain new perspectives.
“The collaboration, feeling of not being alone, and ability to get out of the house without being in a completely public place is why I am a part of these coworking and networking events”- Gloria Bell, owner of Red Stapler Consulting
Please join us for our next coworking day!
Date: Thursday, June 10, 2010 starting at 10am.
Come and go as you please; we will be grabbing some food around 12:30pm, and making business introductions all day!
Location: Euphoria Coffee
1001 N 2nd Street in The Piazza
Philadelphia, PA
Be sure to RSVP here.
Then please tweet that you will be attending, or just follow all of our participant tweets using #EECoworking.
Evolve Your Biz Through Coworking in 2010!
Happy New Year to all! As we look back over 2009 and look forward to 2010 a great mantra comes to mind- Rather than creating a list of “resolutions” that quickly fade away (and leave us with deflated egos!), decide to evolve instead! As business owners and entrepreneurs, we are constantly forced to evolve our businesses to stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive. Evolution is simply that- change over time.
What better way to focus on your biz evolutions than to spend the day working side by side with like-minded entrepreneurs! Coworking is a great way to get a change of scenery from your home (or bland corporate) office and hang in the presence of some of Philly’s brightest entreps. Share ideas, make connections and gain new perspectives- all of which are limited by the confines of your isolated cube!
Coworking is at it’s core about reciprocity- The mutual or cooperative interchange of favors or privileges; i.e., you give, you get. Your ideas and hindsight 20/20 reflections on lessons learned can translate across industries to help other professionals (new or veteran). In turn, those same peers have perspectives to share from their unique experiences that can help you as you work on your own business. This organic approach to business development promotes the open share of ideas with the common goal of improving all of our businesses in a collaborative process.
If you are committed to evolving your business in 2010, coworking is for you. Our group represents the open share of ideas and the strengthening of the entrepreneurial community here in Philadelphia across all industries.
We had a great turnout at our last event, and have an even bigger crowd registered for our event on 1/7. Check out some of our coworkers from December in our quickie vlog post: http://www.watchuslaunch.com/ and check out the pic below:
We would love to have you join us for our next coworking day!
Date: Thursday, January 7, 2010 starting at 10am
Location: Chapterhouse Cafe- we will be downstairs
620 South 9th Street Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia, PA 19147-2028
Learn more about the event and be sure to RSVP on our site. Follow all of our participant tweets #EECoworking.
Finding The Relevance of the GCECS/Innovation Philadelphia Conference
The Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit was not only a mouthful to say but an earful of information. From workshops to panel presentations to pecha kucha slide shows one could gain insight on just about any topic closely related to the creative workforce. Both Emily and I were glad to be a part of this convergence summit on October 5th & 6th, 2009, and pleased with what we got out of it.
Day one started off with a welcome by Kelly Lee, President of Innovation Philadelphia, and was followed by an interesting breakfast talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. We all know her from her famous book, Eat Pray Love, but few of us knew (before this week) about the next book she is putting out early 2010 about marriage! Yup, you guessed it with whom she got remarried to! Elizabeth told us of her life and dreams and inspired us to find our creativity in ours.
Entrepreneur’s Entourage gave a Social Media workshop following the breakfast keynote. We expected a much different crowd, and not knowing anything about our participants’ backgrounds, nor how many were planning on attending, we decided to be creative in our presentation to better meet the needs of our participants. Our workshop introduced effective ways to build any social media campaign and then turned it into a Q&A/Discussion. We found that many people had specific questions about their current practices and wanted feedback on how to do it all better. I am so thankful that our web guru Mary was presenting with me to help answer the dozens of questions. All in all I think we helped a ton of people understand how to run their campaign with differentiation, relevance, efficiency and quality.
Later that afternoon Emily, Founder of Entrepreneur’s Entourage, sat on a panel discussing alternative workspaces. Many participants here were interested in the co-working buzz and how to find ways to make their office use some of the alternative practices to save money and go green. Emily talked a lot about industries that are ideal candidates for outsourcing and the benefits of using virtual professionals. Her other fellow panelists included David Walker, who runs a co-working space in Austin, Todd Sundsted, a manager of Shift101, and Nathan Gasser, Founder of Rock River Star.
The second day of the event was kicked off, rather abruptly, but the one and only Peter Shankman. He was his usual entertaining self and focused on the importance of relevance in a social media campaign and how to effectively market your business. Other great sessions throughout the event were delivered by Jane McGonigal, via Skype, all about the use of gaming to optimize human ability (which was really fascinating); Gloria Bell, Hajj Flemings and Melinda Emerson on growing your creative passion; and Emily Morgan on taking your office virtual and the green benefits. You can see that presentation at: http://watchuslaunch.com
The opportunities for networking each night of this 2-day event felt rushed. We had so many contacts lined up to speak with and ended up speaking to only 1 each night! Just one! But, that one conversation each night was fun, insightful and meaningful. We thank David Walker of Conjunctured and Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady, for their time and open discussions about business growth and networking!
Innovation Philadelphia hosted a great event and brought together some very talented entrepreneurs and professionals as speakers, sponsors, attendees and volunteers. We look forward to working with them again in the future. We also look forward to following up with everyone who attended our sessions and provided us with such great feedback and support.
