Chicago 2016 Blogger Meeting: Monday August 11

Hi Everyone,

I received word of the following event that I'm sure some of you would like to attend. The folks at the Conversation Group and their sister organization, Social Media Club are hosting an event on Monday evening to talk about the Chicago 2016 Olympics.

The event is on Facebook - you can RSVP there. August 11, 7 pm.

I'm hoping to learn more at this event. With so many Chicagoans 'in the know' with things, I'm surprised so few of us knew of this get together happening.  I also hope that whomever puts this night on realizes how many writers, bloggers and tech types are in this city - and give a darn about Chicago and the possibility of us clinching it (but can someone please fix the CTA?)

Comments

[Chris Heuer]

Thanks for inviting your readers along Blagica - thats really awesome and should be a fun time. When I was in Chicago a few months ago, we had a little SMC tweetup at the last minute (also at Monk's - the burgers are so good), and it was a great time meeting everyone.

I am so bummed I cant fly back to my hometown for this one (born at Cook County Hospital and grew up in Glenview), but you will get a big kick out of meeting my Conversation Group partner and Chairman Peter Hirshberg.

Since I haven't had time this week to write a blog post on all this, I just want to lay out some background facts to help make sure everything is clear.

- this is a last minute meetup we just decided to organize late FRI morning, so you are perhaps one of the first to know, not the last :)
- invite is through social media, we expected maybe a dozen or so folks to show up for an informal blogger dinner, but it looks like it might be a bit bigger then that now with all the interest in what's going on
- Peter and Fred Graver (an uber creative and great guy) are flying in for some meeting with the Chicago 2016 team and we wanted to get to know the local blogger community
- Ogilvy has done some great work in making some connections with a few great Chicago area bloggers, so we wanted to try to connect everyone in person, in an informal environment
- The connection between Social Media Club and The Conversation Group is essentially me, so I wouldn't necessarily call it a 'sister organization' but I am a co-founder of both
- In that SMC Chicago just started getting organized recently and The Conversation Group just started working with Chicago 2016 and Ogilvy on some of the social media work around the Olympic bid, we are hoping to leverage our network's resources, creativity and connections to help Chicago win the bid for the 2016 Olympics

While I won't unfortunately be at this one, it seems that a lot of others will be - meet some of the Chicago 2016 team, Peter, Fred and some of the good folks from Ogilvy. This is a great opportunity to learn about what the Chicago Delegation is doing in Beijing as well as learn about some of the social media components to the bid itself. Have you been reading Blogging Beijing? http://blog.chicago2016.org/ Its a really good Chicago perspective on the games from a number of different folks.

Hopefully I will be out there sometime soon - in which case I will try to organize lunch at Giordanos...