“I want you to arrange a meeting with the heads of the Five Families.” – Don Vito Corleone, The Godfather
You have no idea how long we’ve waited for this. Not a clue in the world.
What? You thought we’d go for “make you an offer you can’t refuse”? Perhaps put a horse’s head in someone’s bed? Pfffffffffffft. Nothing of the sort. We’re playing nice, honest. This is too good for egos to get in the way. Not ours, not yours, not anyone’s.
As you know, we’ve been working with MEDC, TechTown, and a few other groups along the way over the past year for various events in the area. Well, we’ve started having preliminary conversations about pulling together an event that has the potential of being the Information Technology event here in the metro Detroit area.
But we can’t do it alone. The three of us don’t have the capacity or bandwidth to pull this off. So, that’s where our scene from the Godfather plays out…
…because we need you. We need to partner up with you, and we need you to partner up with us. If you run an IT-related networking group, we need you. If you run a technology based users group, we need you. If you have a group of 8 that meets for coffee weekly, we need you. If you have a group of 200 that does formal training and presentations, we need you. As long as your group is in and around IT…we need you.
Why do we need you?
Because we’re not going to do this if it can’t be done right, dammit. That’s why. There are already enough one-off, half-assed events going on that are either too narrowly focused or just designed to make a buck (or, let’s be honest – hundreds of bucks) off people with very little real ROI. We know, because we’ve been to them…and, well, sort of like networking groups back in the day, we’re not just going to sit back and bitch about what they don’t do right any more…we’re going to do it the way we think it ought to be done.
And we think enough of you agree that you’ll want to be a part of this. It will be good for you, good for your group, good for the IT community as a whole here in metro Detroit.
And we think that’s worth doing.
To be clear, this is not going to be a “ITintheD.com” event. It’s already been said this is too big for egos. No, this needs to be a group effort, and we’re not dumb enough (contrary to what some of you may believe…) to think that you’ll open your minds and your groups to us as a one-way street.
That’s not the point. We’re telling you…with all possible sincerity and honesty…that this isn’t about us. Well, in a way it is, I guess – the natural evolution of our own group has led us to this point, and made us realize that this is the next step that has to be taken if we’re going to continue doing the right things for the area. But it’s also made us realize that we can’t do this on our own, and so it’s time to start leveraging some of those relationships we’ve been building over the past decade to make this come together properly.
We want your group’s interests represented. We want people in your groups to have a reason to show up at this event. We want you to have a say in how things work, how things come together, and how things happen. But we’re not friggin’ mind readers. There’s nobody that knows your group better than you, so we need you.
Companies…we’re not ready for you yet. We know, from some starter conversations that we’ve had already, that you’re interested…but we’re just simply not ready for those conversations yet. We promise, we’ll talk with you as well. Right now, we’re asking you to have a little faith in us and our belief that we have to get this right from the end user and attendee perspective before we get to what this can do for you.
So here’s what we’re asking. We’re asking that you let us know you’re even interested in just having a starter conversation about all of this, and willing to see where things go from there. Use our contact form over at http://www.ITinTheD.com/contact/ and drop us a note. Or shoot us an email at contact@ITinTheD.com and say “Ok, I’ll listen”.
We’ll start working on schedules and finding a time that works for everyone, or at least larger groups of folks, to get together and start hashing things out. We get it…we’re coming up on the end of the year, and things are going to start getting a little crazy, so “sooner” is probably better than “later”. Plus, we’re thinking this will take at least five to six months of solid planning and work to pull off, and we want to pull it together for no later than late Spring or early Summer 2012.
If you get the chance, pop by the Dragonmead next Thursday and we can chat over a really good beer.