RetroDex Plan D

It seemed like such a simple idea.  Everything Channel decided to bring back Comdex -- but as a virtual event.  I could not imagine Comdex without after hours parties -- even if it was set in a virtual Las Vegas.  Plus I could not wrap my head around a virtual party.  I even joined second life and walked around in there looking for ways to have a party -- my old brain just could not put that together.

So RetroDex was born.  In its current form, RetroDex is two after hours parties in local markets timed to coincide with Comdex Virtual.  

Along the way we had all kinds of ideas and not all kinds of time. We chased our tails a bit.  Built up a team, and today we launched events in Silicon Valley and Seattle.  You can read all about it at the RetroDex site.

If you are one of the many people we talked to while we have been making our plans, thank you.  Your feedback has helped immensely.  If you are one of my amazing team members working tirelessly on this project -- thank you for making this possible.

Here is a list of things that surprised me along the way:

1. Having a party just to socialize after a day of virtual event going is not compelling enough.  So we added great feature speakers (Robert Scoble and Larry Walsh).
2. Bringing together like minded channel partners to collaborate on an event is nearly impossible. So we skipped the collaboration and just hosted the thing ourselves.
3. Riding the media wave created by Comdex did not happen -- because so far there has not been a media wave.  I still think this could change, but I have been very surprised that the media has not picked up on the Comdex big, Comdex explodes, Comdex dormant, Comdex back as virtual, RetroDex as after hours Comdex parties story.  Seems interesting to me.

So here we are on Plan D.  This just would not be fun if we didn't make it to at least plan G before November 16th.

A few months back I wrote a post about how great things happen when they are tied to events -- because events have dates that cannot slide.  How true!