Big Fish Gets Cut Down To Size – And Smiles
By Troy on Jul 8, 2008 in Blog
Last year I went to PodCamp Boston 2 to listen to some of the top thinkers in the social media / podcasting world. I went there with the perception that I was very isolated living here in Iowa, and there were no like-minded people in the area that could possible be interested in the same things as I was, and certainly nobody along the lines of my mentors Chris Brogan, CC Chapman, Jeff Pulver and others.
Enter a couple of months ago.
Because of a chance mention by a friend that Iowa native Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame was coming back to the area for a couple of days, I went to downtown Des Moines, and my perception of the area changed forever.
Sure this isn’t Los Angeles, San Francisco or even Boston – but I have learned that Des Moines has its own market share of new media thinkers and strategists that were just looking to be connected.
I have since joined a group called #dmtweetup, a bunch of people in the area who get together almost spontaneously for a drink, or just to get together. While the majority of the members seem to be in the tech field, there are people from all industries present, with one common thread – they have embraced the power of Twitter to market their businesses and skills.
I have also been going to meetings that is officially called “Central Iowa Bloggers” but is also known as The Des Moines Bloganostra. This group is more unanimously comprised of people working in technolog – bloggers, web designers, marketers, etc. We get together the first Friday at a local Panera in West Des Moines to share tips, techniques and URLs.
Through these groups I have found out that I am hardly alone in the new media world here in Des Moines. There is actually a new media marketing firm in Des Moines, Podcasting News is based in Des Moines, The Age of Conversation project is organized by Drew in Des Moines, the world’s first social bank is in Des Moines, and it continues.
With this new-found knowledge and professional associations, I am seriously considering a move to Des Moines from Ames in the future. It is quite humbling to find out I’m not such a big fish in a small pond as I thought. But the opportunity to actually challenge myself and learn new techniques from these new associations is very exciting. Thank you to everybody I have met in the last few months, and here’s looking forward to some great years coming up!
You know what I’ve found through meeting people all over the US? That we’re a lot alike, and that some of us are hiding out in the weeds, but lots of us are clustering in diffuse places, like Pittsburgh, Bangor Maine, Fredericton New Brunswick (canada) and all kinds of places in between.
You’re not alone. And you’re part of a global community. Should you move to a physical place where there are more meetups and like minded things? Yes.
Troy, it took me a while to come across this post, but thank you for the link and we’d be glad to have you in Des Moines if you ever decide to move here. I believe we’re at the forefront of something great!
[...] Des Moines has become a hotbed of web entrepreneurs, strategists, social marketing mavens, and other services and businesses catering to the tech community. I even wrote about some of them in a previous blog post, here – http://www.troyrutter.com/2008/07/08/big-fish-gets-cut-down-to-size-and-smiles.html. [...]