We spend a lot of time telling people about the power of blogs and the networking that is possible. It is something we really believe in and through blogging we have made great contacts and find it a super place to find and share information.

Just recently, this was brought home to me. When reading Tom Raftery’s two months ago I saw that Shel Israel (co-author of Naked Conversations) and Rick Segal (Canadian investor/blogger) were coming to Europe. I saw that Ireland and other European cities were on their schedule but not Belgium. I thought I should ask why they were not coming here to Brussels, given an emerging interest here in start ups, collaborative software and of course our central position in European affairs :)

Shel responded and asked “Why Brussels?”. A fair enough question, so I gave him the selling pitch (I think I included great beer and chocolate). He said he would talk about it to Rick and come back to me. It turns out that Kris Hoet from Microsoft had also been in contact with them for the same reason and in the end they are coming over on the 21st of October and we will get together a group of bloggers, entrepreneurs and eMarketers for a round table and dinner. (Hopefully we can experience some Brussels night life as well…)

In conclusion, the blogosphere is a great way to make contacts and most of all it’s fun. Their agenda is below

Oct. 14. London– dinner with small group of entrepreneurs.
Oct. 15-16–Scotland. Learning about social media in public education system
Oct. 17–Cork. Meetings with entrepreneurs/blogger dinner
Oct. 18–19 Dublin. Blogger dinner; participate in SaaS conference Trinity College
Oct. 20–Brighton, England, meet entrepreneurs
Oct. 21,2–Brussels, meet with entrepreneurs
Oct. 22-24–Estonia, meet leaders of online community, private dinner.
Oct. 25–Berlin, meeting with entrepreneurs as well as companies in Jenna.
Oct. 25-30. Rome, Guest of American Embassy. speaking meeting with Italian entrepreneurs. 

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