I've been attending quite a few entrepreneur group meetings recently, and I think I've found a pattern that correlates with their life-cycles.
Hypothesis
All tech entrepreneur groups devolve over time to where they are only attended by predatory service providers, at which point a new group will have been formed to avoid said service providers.
Methods
Simply attend meetings from each forum at least once and talk to as many people as I can, and Google to find out when they were formed. I considered counting business cards, but that would favor the service providers; many entrepreneurs don't have business cards yet.
Results
WTIA(WSA): (est. 1984) This, the first group to really become popular in the area, is all but overrun by service providers. I've been to a few of their networking events, and of the 50+ people I've talked to I met two other entrepreneurs. Pretty much everyone else there had a service they were looking to sell.
MIT Enterprise Forum: (Seattle chapter est. 1984) The meeting I attended here was a different format, being a sit-down presentation with relatively little networking opportunity, but of the few people I did meet, there was a rough parity of entrepreneurs and service providers. I wouldn't consider this a
NWEN: (est. 1985) Due to my wife's work schedule I haven't been able to attend one of these, so I'll rely on my co-founder Colin's experience: "...out of the people that I talked to, I'd say that about 25% were service providers, and the rest were entrepreneurs or NWEN old timers."
SeattleTechStartups: (est. 2006) These meetings are almost exclusively attended by (SHOCK!) actual entrepreneurs! While there was at least one service provider there, it was a company that exclusively works with startups and tries to use that experience to give advice rather than actively seek clients.
Open Coffee: (est. 2007) I didn't talk to a single service provider at this meeting, although I'm told there may have been one there.
Conclusion
While I don't think I have enough data points to validate my hypothesis, the trend looks rather compelling. I was surprised that the first three were founded in such a small time-frame and that only recently have the newcomers been formed. My guess is there are others groups I haven't attended (such as Ignite), don't know about, or were founded in the 90s but were short-lived. Suggested future research directions would be attending additional meetings, especially in groups not listed above, and interview long-time attendees from these forums to find out their past compositions.
Last summer I signed up for twitter while at OSCON, I was there with a group of coworkers, and we thought it would be a good way to keep each other appraised of where everyone was having lunch/drinking beer/etc. It worked pretty well despite some technical issues twitter was having at the time.
A $30 charge for text messages and a month later I pretty much stopped using twitter. At 8:51 on November 28th, 2007, I sent a message: "Wondering if I'll ever use Twitter again" intending that it would be my last twitter message. I had given up on twitter.
Fast forward four months and twitter seems to have a new life. It has really come into its own as THE forum for quick broadcasting and link dissemination. After following @JasonCalacanis I saw the ability of twitter to communicate, feed, and especially mobilize a social network. When he can post a link and within a minute have over 200 people watching him broadcast live video, that is power.
So I've begun using twitter again. Mostly I don't have much to say, as I don't post here enough to broadcast my new posts. I do, however, feel I've found more of the pulse of the tech world again. It is interesting to see people carry on instant-message style conversations in the public domain. Sending each other links and replying with more links in a forum which will cause tens if not hundreds of uninvolved viewers to follow along. It seems like this is a win-win situation; those being followed are feeding their social networks and driving traffic, and those who are following get to be a step ahead of everyone else. These conversations end up being elaborated upon in blog and news stories the following day.
I wonder where the pulse of the tech world will move next...
We're building one monster of a gamer with our oldest daughter so far. A few months ago, unintentionally, playing a card game became part of her bed-time routine. So every night we play one of two games: Go Fish or Uno. Sure, neither one are very complex and both are heavily luck-based, but there is a skill element in both. (We've also done some checkers a couple nights)
My wife and I don't really take it easy on her, either. Sure, the first few nights we let her win a couple times so she didn't get completely discouraged with the game, but now she regularly wins on her own merits.
Watching her developing her skills is fascinating. She is developing one wicked poker face, and is picking up on our tells as well. While playing Go Fish the first week or so when she got a card she knew we had she'd make a huge grin and hold it up to her face and smile and look at the person who she knew had the matches. At which point we'd know exactly what card to ask her for. She figured that one out quickly. Now she'll wait until after she gets the cards from us and say, "How was that, Daddy? I didn't make a face, did I!"
Right now she's slowly learning how to bluff. Since we don't play Uno every night, and even when you do you don't often get chances to bluff in Uno it is going slowly, but I think she is catching on.
Now I just need to pick the next couple games to teach her.
