Just a quick note that I'll be moderating a Technology Council Event : Social Networking as a Business Strategy May 19, 2009 - Culver City Social networking media are used on a daily basis to grow businesses and expand career opportunities. Individuals use social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo as career-advancing tools, even more useful in a down economy. Corporations increasingly see social media as a key PR, communications and marketing medium. Social networking sites and microblogs are used not only to build company brands, but to foster productivity;

He talks about a bunch of the different networking events that occur in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California. Often good topics and interesting networking. And here's where you can find more events: SoCalTech Calendar – A great aggregation of events around Southern California that has been pulled together for years by Ben Kuo. Meetup – My personal experience has been mixed with these. Southern California Tech Central – Brings together posts from top bloggers around Southern California including John's blog and this blog. Great post by John Shiple.

This past week has had an interesting confluence of events that's led me to conclude that I want to start doing a lot of visible networking among the tech / web crowd here in Los Angeles. I want to take you through a bit of what brought me here, because I think it will help explain what I mean by visible networking. Networking Events – Questionable Return on Your Time Last week I posted about Networking Events in Los Angeles and Southern California and received back some interesting comments, some of the best from a LinkedIn Group. Several of the comments there echoed what I've been feeling: Person 1: I have attended a plethora of networking groups and have also found it harder and harder to continue to be motivated to go. Person 2: Very discouraging (few if any happy with their networking efforts) but not unexpected.

My friend Mark Long recently asked me about networking in Los Angeles. This past couple years, I have been doing a ton of networking. Rather than write something just for Mark, I thought I would let everybody else know what the good, tech-oriented networking events are in Los Angeles. For the tech-oriented networker, there is one primary thing Mark is a CTO, see, and his company, PortBlue , was recently acquired (congrats, Mark!). After transitioning to the new team, Mark was left to wonder, what now?

Attendees: If you have review comments I'd be happy to consider them. Name: XING Community Los Angeles Sites: https://www.xing.com/net/la/ , www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=33803 gid=33803 (main), https://www.xing.com/ Self-description: "This forum is dedicated to all Los Angeles inhabitants, visitors of the area and business minded people from all around the world, who would like to explore business opportunities with L.A. This is will be a continually updating post. I'll be creating additional lists for educational, chamber of commerce, etc. Organizational representatives: please contact me directly for updates, etc.

Great by Cliff Allen Business Networking Online who I had blogged about previously in Marketing, Startups and Networking in Los Angeles . In this post, Cliff provides some feedback on what works when you move towards doing business networking online. I'm trying to get the concept of visible networking going, so his feedback is really valuable. Cliff's feedback: Your idea of "Visible Networking" can help people take the "glad to meet you" networking to the next level -- "glad to know you" relationships. Then, face-to-face

Last night I attended a DealMaker Media (whom I love because they always host such great discussions) panel on raising angel money moderated by Dan Gould and with panelists Rob Hayes (First Round Capital, more seed or A round than angel), Scot Sangster (with OrganicStartup and the best spokesperson for Tech Coast Angels that I have met to date), Tom McInerney (TGM) and Jarl Mohn (who invests on his own “account” and whose track record is truly humbling). recently wrote a post on angel financing covering the topic of convertible notes but I realized

Sid Mohasseb, one of the Tech Coast Angels, just emailed out about a new “entrepreneur happy hour” the group is running in Orange County, which got me thinking about how entrepreneurs should (or shouldn’t) approach angel and venture investors. I’m sure there are many opinions out there, but based on my time working with angels and investors, here’s some of my random advice for would-be entrepreneurs going to the event (or similar ones): 1. Don’t start your conversation telling them the terms of your fundraising effort.

Los Angeles? At parties in Los Angeles people talk about a media deal they’re “closing”, what TV star is at the party, and some “gray hat” spam-like technique that made them an extra 100K last month. Folks in Los Angeles are shrewder business people, have better interpersonal skills, but are more full of shit and two faced, and struggle to build products that get virally adopted. Is there a difference between tech startups in Silicon Valley vs. Most emphatically, Yes !

Empty networking doesn't work. So they approached me and they said, we will work for you for a quarter for free, helping you navigate improving the reflections of your products on social networks. I used to live in Los Angeles, so we'll experiment by clicking on Los Angeles. We’ve heard about you know networking is so important; building The Harvard Business School Case Study on Heidi Roizen talks about the dinner parties she hosts for tech leaders like her personal friend, Bill Gates, and how people skills helped her build one of the most admired careers in Silicon Valley.