2005/04/24

Northeast Wisconsin Entrepreneur Networking Day (NEW END)

NEW END Was Worth It!

Last Thursday, 21 April, an event was held in Neenah, Wisconsin, gathering entrepreneurs and innovators from throughout the 18 counties of Northeast Wisconsin to build and expand relationships with each other. In short, to network. The Northeast Wisconsin Entrepreneur Networking Day (NEW END) was planned and organized by a group of entrepreneurs who are enthusiastic about networking and about improving the economy of the region. Over 200 people were either pre-registered online or came to the event as walk-ins. The statistics are still being gathered, but there were NEW END attendees from at least 25 different communities. When I began thinking back in December 2004 about having a meeting for area entrepreneurs, I had no idea whether we'd have 10 people be interested or 50 people. It appears there are more area entrepreneurs interested in networking than I had imagined there would be.

Because of the overwhelming show of interest in a networking event like this, another NEW END will likely be held in October 2005, with other NEW ENDs occuring two or three times per year. The NEW END website, www.thenewend.com, will have the details about NEW END events.

We had an outstanding kickoff speaker for the event, Liz Ryan, who talked about the value of networking for entrepreneurs. Liz is the founder of WorldWIT, www.worldwit.org, a women's online networking organization with 40,000 members worldwide.

Because of all the time invested in organizing and preparing for the NEW END, marketing efforts for myDigitechnician suffered and must once again be put into high gear. In addition to the marketing done by me, there will be an increasing emphasis placed on marketing by my son, Luke, who is the Chief Technology Officer for myDigitechnician. He participated in the NEW END, which was the first time he participated in an event focused on networking. Luke learned a few valuable lessons about networking which he will be putting into practice to help myDigitechnician grow and be as successful as possible.

One of Luke's areas of high interest for myDigitechnician is computer gaming. He is working on plans for a division of myDigitechnician which will assist clients in understanding what type of computer system is needed for the types of games they enjoy playing. He will build top-end gaming machines for them or he will assist the clients in building their own high-powered gaming box. The client benefits of helping build the computer are that they better understand how the computer works and when there are problems with the computer, they'll often know how to fix them or how to figure out how to fix them. If you're interested in computer gaming, contact myDigitechnician for more info!