The Wheels on the Bus Go ‘Round and ‘Round

Grassroots and Green!

Last Thursday, SpeakerBox and partners MemoryBlue (Marc Gonyea), LeverPoint (Larry Roe), R2i (Cheryl Dickison) and London, Ink (Bob London) pulled together a bus trip down to Twin Tech III, the hottest networking function to hit DC in recent years! Co-sponsored by iStrategyLabs and NVTC, the event saw over 2,000 attendees! The event was written up (along with our bus trip) in Kim Hart’s The Download column in today's Washington Post and in TechBisnow among many, many others. Twin Tech is THE event series not to be missed, and we were able to make it even more fun.

Our friend Bob London had the idea to shuttle "friends and family" down to the event, extend the fun and be “green” while we were at it. We had a week to pull it together (that's right - 7 days!). It came together with the same community-oriented passion that Twin Tech is all about: before you knew it, Reston Limousine gave us a great discount and provided great raffle prizes, Shashi Bellamkonda (social media swami from Network Solutions) showed up with his high-end camera and took great photos, folks showed up with beer, wine, food and fun, and as the bus departed at the end of the night, all we heard was “I don’t want to leave yet!”

It warms my heart to see the accountability in folks to pull something together so quickly, and to not sweat the small stuff. No nametags, no “elevator speeches” to the rest of the bus - just good, grassroots fun. And no pretense of publicity; that happened naturally. The cost? Minimal. Let’s just say it was less than what we might spend attending an awards dinner.

- Elizabeth Shea