Found this one in a Landscaping industry magazine while finalizing a presentation for a client. It was featured as a model site for the industry in an article on the value of a website for landscapers. And it really is a great site, but only on the desktop.
I’m posting this in case it’s useful to someone, you’re welcome to use the image however you want. If you like I’ll post the unprocessed one, I put this one thru the 70′s filter on picplz. Just let me know in the comments.

Enter wa.ag, a startup run by my buddy Dave Gise (@davegise). wa.ag does a few things well; they provide exposure and real value for an restaurant or event space, they create a great pop-up gathering. The one that captured my attention is the way they turn networking on it’s head.

I was lucky enough to attend the first wa.ag at the Irish Exit (great fries!). Instead of just sticking people together and encouraging ‘networking’, Dave features a startup or small business and all the attendees are given information about the business as they walk in. They are then asked to examine that information and offer them tips and assistance according to their expertise. If you’ve ever been to one of our LITweetUps, it creates a very similar atmosphere of smart people working together (wa.ag stands for ‘work as a group’) towards a common goal. In my opinion, there is no better way to get to know someone professionally than to watch them think and work and apply their knowledge and talent, selflessly, to help someone else.

Keep your elevator pitches. Grab a beer, connect your mind and your creativity to your mouth and help somebody else’s business out a little bit while we shoot the breeze. Now I’ve had a chance to see and hear your capabilities (the real ones, not the ones you tell everybody about) and I’ve seen you as a human being helping someone else. That tells me way more about what you’re really capable of and if I want to do business with you.

The next wa.ag will be in Long Island tonite, Tuesday 9/13 and here’s a VERY generous discount code: discountatrookies.

If you’re free (I’ve got PTA, sorry) you should check it out or at least register to get informed about the next one.

I’d love to hear what you think.

But wait, Patricia’s Klout score is lower than Mr. Imadethisnameup who also called me. He’s a bit of an ass, but he’s really well connected (he just RT’d Chris Brogan!) and he’s writing an post about {insert crucially urgent social media topic of the day} . Guess Patricia will have to wait.

This is a silly example of a serious decision that businesses small and large make everyday.  There’s no question Klout is an important tool and will continue to improve (I will not be joining the Social Media Hipsters who hate every tool that becomes popular just  because it’s popular), and that’s not the point of this post today. I’m just hoping to remind a few of you that it’s not the Media that’s important, it’s the Social.

When you decide how to treat your customers, employees, partners, or vendors, think about what advice you’d give your child if they were faced with the same decision.

Please get to know my talented Long Island friends @SteveHaweeli, @AmandaNMarsh, @SueanneShirzay and join me in getting to know @VeraSweeney.

Keep an eye on that space as I hear the FIVEtoFollow is going to be a recurring section.

The Well: Covering Capitol Hill from Chris Gregory on Vimeo.

I especially appreciated the comments by Melina Mara; it’s easy for me as a person outside of this world to think ‘oh good, the world of journalism is being disrupted, it’s about time.‘  My impression is still that it’s a good thing overall, but hearing explanations like this makes me understand how crucial it is that we become an “immediate, right now, short form story” and a “reflected upon, considered, investigated, thoughtful story” society.

The availability of both will be as important in our world as the availability of coverage from every bias has become today. Once upon a time, every news outlet appeared to be in agreement on most things, most of the time.  Today I think an educated consumer of news gets better quality.  Fair & Balanced comes from consumers learning that each point of view has a voice and an outlet and that there are a million fact-checkers waiting for them to screwup who now also have a voice & an outlet.

I hope in the same way right-now and thought-thru journalists and outlets will balance one another.  Just my two-cents, what do you guys think?

The talk I’m giving is tentatively titled ‘Hacking Long Island to Ensure Our Future’ although I’m also considering “No, I Don’t Want to Network, Again!”. I will not be just talking the whole time, it’s not my style; I like to keep a conversation going. We’re looking into UStreaming it, in case you want to check it out but can’t make it.

Here’s the details, it’s open to all who are interested:
Facebook Event

Tuesday, January 25 · 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Location
Paddy’s Loft
1286 Hicksville Road
Massapequa, NY 11758

American Express and FaceBook are promoting Small Business Saturday on November 27th in an effort to get consumers out to our local stores and strengthen the backbone of our economy. LITweetUP is doing what we can to help our Long Island Small Businesses. More details after the video.

What is it?

According to the Facebook page:
“First there was Black Friday, then Cyber Monday. This year, November 27th is the first ever Small Business Saturday, a day to support the local businesses that create jobs, boost the economy and preserve neighborhoods around the country. Small Business Saturday is a national movement to drive shoppers to local merchants across the U.S.”

 

What is LITweetUP Doing?

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to have been well promoted on Long Island (the capital of Small Business in my opinion!) so this only came to our attention late last week. We’ve put together a small team of a few of Long Island best (professionals in the fields of Writing, Social Media and Advertising) and came up with a quickie plan.

• On Thursday November 18th at 6pm we will be getting together with as many business owners as we can get to (and handle based on our numbers) in 2 locations, one in Suffolk and one in Nassau. The locations are TBD. See the Free Help or Small Business tab for more.
• A few of us have friends in local media and we’re reaching out to them to let them know about #SmallBizSat and that we’re trying to do something to help out.
• We’re reaching out to any Chambers of Commerce we can to let them know about the potential benefits this could have for our small businesses.
• We will be tapping our own networks to promote this day and encouraging people to Shop Small on 11/27.

 

Free Help for Small Business

Facebook is giving small business owners $100 in free advertising with a deadline of Thursday November 18th at midnight. Our goal is to spend some time with business owners on Thursday night and help them take advantage of this in preparation for #SmallBizSat. We will all be donating our time.

• We’ll be limiting it to 3 business owners per team member and doing a shortened Social School session. Would you like to come, let me know in the comments.
• Each business owner should bring along a laptop.
• We will walk you thru setting up your FB ad and / or FB Deal
• For those that can’t make it, one or more of our team members will post a free walk thru online. I’ll link to it from here.

 

The Team

Here are the members of this awesome team. Please check them out, they are some of Long Island’s finest!

Angelina Simms @angelinasimms
Constance Korol @constancek
George Torres @urbanjibaro
Louise DiCarlo @lovelylu
Manny Velasquez-Paredes LinkedIn
Meg Heckman @ruleyourday
Nathan King @nathanrking
Pete Shelly @peteshelly
Sueanne Shirzay @sueanneshirzay
Jeff Namnum @namnum @socialschoolli

 

So I’ve been blessed to be part of an amazing collective of some of the most talented people in Long Island, NY (@LITweetUP) for the past 2 years or so. One of the things that has made that experience amazing is that we do things, as oppossed to just talking about them all the time. In fact, the most amazing things we’ve done together so far, most people would’ve said we shouldn’t have tried. Shouldn’t have tried for a lot of reasons (distributed team, no command and control, etc) but the one that comes to mind right now is this:

we never had enough time.

Why bring this up? Because I read about something yesterday that could really help our community, if only we could put some legs behind it, and then I dismissed it because we have no time to get it done. I just realized that was stupid, better to try something and improve on it next time, than to do nothing at all.

So here’s the deal:

• I have an idea that could make an impact on our communities (focusing on the small businesses), help build your brand as a social media / marketing / PR professional and make you feel really good.
• It will be in my favorite style: inexpensive, we can do it anywhere, easy to do (if not plan), and fun & social.
• We’ll have to pull it together in 1 week or less to make it effective.

That’s it, that’s all I’m giving you for now. Wanna find out more, reply in the comments, shoot me a tweet (@namnum) or call me at 516-882-7712. I’ll be releasing all the details this weekend to those who ask.

If there’s enough interest, we’ll do it, if not, I’ll do it myself in a smaller way and then we’ll do it again & bigger next year, when there’s more time.

But come on, do we really need more time?