Get Connected with the Web User Groups in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area

Categories: Events, Web IndustryPosted on June 2nd, 2007

I’m often asked how one can get super connected and get to know a lot of folks. For me, I started to attend every web group and meeting that I could, from 2006 to now. While my co-workers didn’t understand why I did it, It paid off in spades. Of course, I want to see you succeed and meet other birds of a feather, so I’ll construct this list.

The bay area is an amazing place for technology meetups, there’s about 4 tech related events, workshops or mixers almost every night. What’s even more interesting as this group even extends to social events on the weekends, it’s a true community

Requirements: This must be for the Web or web-related industry. As a web strategist, the concept of marketing and PR are certainly relevant. This must be an ongoing and regular meeting group, likely it has a charter, and organizer, and supporting website. Often they have job and networking opportunities. This is not an annual conference, these are on-going events on a frequent basis.

Web User Groups in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area
Please leave a comment below if you want me to modify or edit the list.

Internet Strategy Forum, Silicon Valley & San Francisco
Web Strategy, Web Management, Web Marketing

SF Bay Area Web Site Management & Marketing Meetup
Web Strategy, Web Management, Web Marketing

Bay Area Internet Marketing Strategy Meetup
Web Strategy, Web Management, Web Marketing

American Marketing Association
Web Marketing, Communications

Social Media Club: SF and Silicon Valley
Social Media, PR, Communitacions

Lunch 2.0
Community, Web Development

Web Guild Silicon Valley
Software Engineering, User Experience, Markeinting, Management, Search Marketing

Silicon Valley Web Builders
Web 2.0, Web Development, Web Design, Web Analytics, User Experience, Usability, Information Architecture, Search Engines, Web Audio, Video Production, Web Tools, Web Hosting

STIRR
Entrepreneur, Start-up, VC

SVASE
Entrepreneur, Start-up, VC

Web Analytics Wednesday – Menlo Park – Yahoo Group
Web Analytics

Third Thursday
Social Media, Marketing, PR

Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup Group
Web 2.0, Development, Design

BayCHI
Computer-Human Interaction, User Experience, Design

Palo Alto Semantic Web (PAWS) Group
Semantic Web

SF Beta
Start-up, entrepreneur

The Palo Alto Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group
Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

SF New Tech Meetup
Startup, Nanotech, Digital Content, Video Games, Demos

Churchhill Club
Startup, leadership, executive, technology, entrepreneurship, life sciences, business leadership, innovation

Business Association of the Stanford Engineering Student
Startup, Engineering, Entrepreneur

Fountain Blue
clean energy, high tech,, life science, entrepreneurs, executives, women leaders.

WebGrrls
Women, professional, business, careers, web

Social Media Club
Social Media, brands, usergroups

Finding Future events: I recommend that all group organizers put their events on upcoming, zvents, and meetup, so we can find out what events are coming up, and more importantly, who’s attending. (And if you’re not doing this as an internet marketing group, shame on you!)

To any of the organizers of these events: Please include me on your ‘media’ list, I’d love to come cover the event, record it, do interviews, moderate a panel, or even speak on social media (see my profile to learn more).

In case you can’t tell, I write posts that are intended to be resources for the community, feel free to leave comments and suggestions to add.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at 6:49 am and is filed under Events, Web Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments

Bess

Silicon Valley Web Builder (SVWB)http://www.svwebbuilder.com
Web 2.0, Web Development, Web Design, Web Analytics, User Experience & Usability, Information Architecture, Search Engines, Web Audio & Video Production, Web Tools, Web Hosting

We focus on listing our events on upcoming.org, sometime zvents, and other listings.

We welcome press member(s) to register and attend our meetings. We didn't add our past speaking press members to any list.

I like your idea. I will create a media list and start inviting press members.

Anything else I should do? How do I gather a list of press members to invite to the media list? Please advise.

jeremiah_owyang

Bess

I had you on the list already! But I did add those additional keywords.

Another thing to consider is to adding media (audio and video) to every event.

Make sure someone is recording the event and uploading. whether it's usreaming, podcasting, or blogging.

Lastly, make sure you let the community sometimes dictate the topics that happen in future events, successful companies and events know how to listen.

Steve Gehlen

Jeremiah,

A quick update...

The Internet Strategy Forum recently decided to split our Bay area activity up into separate chapters for both San Francisco and Silicon Valley to make it more convenient for members.

Since our monthly meetings are members-only we don't post location details to the Web, so those who are interested should check out our site and apply for membership at http://www.internetstrategyforum.org/members.

jeremiah_owyang

Steve, I've updated the text to list both Silicon Valley and San Francisco

Bess

Thanks for the info. I am gathering input from our members and users on future speakers and possible interests. However, we don't have luck sometimes on inviting certain speakers and companies. I get rejections all the times. At least I tried. Speakers we invited are the speakers accepted our invitation and available to us without charging us speaker fee and asking for travel expenses.

Please advise us on how to get press members on a media list. Do I go to organization to get a press member list? Or I have to make contact to press member on one-on-one basis?

jeremiah_owyang

Bess

you may already be covering that group of 'press'. by inviting bloggers, podcasts and video bloggers

francine hardaway

What about the SF NewTech MeetUp? Dealmaker? Churchill Club?

jeremiah_owyang

Thanks Francine, you're a big help, I've added those two.

David Scott Lewis

How about the SDForum, the Stanford/MIT Venture Lab, and (some) various chapters of the IEEE and ACM (besides SIGCHI)?

Also, each Monday the business section of the Merc publishes a listing of business meetings scheduled for that week. Not a perfect listing, but not bad, either.

BTW, the Churchill Club publishes (or published) a list of related events held each month. Since I've been living in China for the past 3 1/2 years, my info might be a bit dated, but I was a member through the 2003-2004 "season" and they published it back then. (BTW, my Merc might be outdated, too.)

jeremiah_owyang

David

Could you provide some URLs to help me out here?

Victoria

Hi Jeremiah,

Here are the Meetup links for the SF New Tech Meetup and the SV New Tech Meetup:

http://newtech.meetup.com/15/

http://newtech.meetup.com/14/ (newtechmeetup.org)

jeremiah_owyang

Victoria

How is this different to the other group I've listed with the same name?

This is very confusing.

The SiliconValley NewTech Meetup Group

Nicole Simon

The reason why those chapters should have their information on a site like upcoming is simple:

Somebody like myself does plan their travel accordingly and when I have another trip to the US, the listing of events in upcoming determines how much longer I stay or earlier I arrive.

As do many other travellers. While we may not be as interesting as local companies, we are very often individuals who are not working as a company, but working for other publications or blogs (to answer @bess questions about how to get better media attention - make use of other peoples reach).

To Steve: It does not matter that they are members-only - or don't you want to have more members? :) Sites like upcoming are about discovering as well.

And thanks Jeremiah, now I have some more things I can check out for my next trip in April. :)

susan mernit

great useful list! thanks

Nancy Tubbs

Here are a few more local calendars for business and technical events, each with a slightly different spin.

WorkIt.com - this was the 'it list' from the last boom and continues to be probably the biggest list of business events locally. Has 3 sections: business, technical and social. Weekly email for each section.
http://www.workit.com/events/cityevents.cfm

SocialDomain and TechDomain is a curated list of events, making it easier to process. Weekly email for social, biz/tech & singles.
http://socialdomain.com/

The BASES group at Stanford puts out a weekly email of entrepreneurial events; no website listing. Sign up here:
http://bases.stanford.edu/site/digest/index.jsp

Sign up for a FountainBlue community to receive their weekly list of biz/tech events; no website listing.
http://fountainblue.biz/aboutus/communities.html

The Churchill Club does still send a monthly listing of local events, to members only.

Looking for more? Huge list here:
http://sfbayarea.fullcalendar.com/ec/list_cal.cfm

Nancy

Victoria

Hey Jeremiah,

I'm just now noticing your response.

I suggested the other SF New Tech link since their site hasn't been updated in a while and doesn't reflect any current events that they've had.

Victoria