Are Web-based Groups Replacing Chambers of Commerce?

btrax has been excited to see the rapid growth of BizTechDay, which emerged out of our friend Edith Yeung’s work building the SFEntrepeneur meetup. We were there at the beginning when the group was just a few dozen people.

Edith has grown that small seed into a full-fledged movement with several hundred people attending her monthly events. Success come from bringing clarity on emerging technology to hungry entrepreneurs, so they can choose which is appropriate for their business.

Beyond tech tips and top notch speakers, BizTechDay offers something invaluable in this tough economy: a vibrant community for growing ideas into successful businesses.

Traditional organizations such as the Chambers of Commerce and BNI have been glacially slow to experiment with new networking formats and communication tools. Or worse they’ve taken top-down approaches for tools built to be bottom-up.

The result is many young professionals and entrepreneurs are bypassing them in favor of grassroots “meet online, get together offline” groups.

BizTechDay participants tend to be tech-savvy, but not always tech aware. This is not an usual situation even in tech heavy Bay Area – just keeping up with all the new options is tough. Open source, APIs and better standards have sped up the time it takes developers to build new tools.

Edith hasn’t stopped to rest on her laurels – forming BigSuccess , a small business competition sponsored by Comcast. The most recent round focused on businesses with a social profit bent.

Five finalists were picked by online voting from a pool of Bay Area entrepreneurs who had submitted 90 second pitches:
* Daniel Porras (Planetwize)
* Meghan Connolly Haupt (Sulusso)
* Ben Lewis (Engage As You Age)
* Hilary DeCesare (Girl Ambition)
* Bill Brobeck (Brobeck Solar Energy)

Photos by Tim Wagner © 2009