Gary Vaynerchuk @ Tech Cocktail Chicago

TECH cocktail, a community building startup founded in May 2006 by Frank Gruber and Eric Olson, offers events and community-powered projects open to bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs & professionals interested in technology in under served technology communities.

Today, Loyola University hosted a bunch of speakers the one I was most interested in hearing was Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV.

I found a short summary of the talk from Tim Courtney:

Gary Vaynerchuk said definitively on community, “It’s irrelevant whether you’re a traditional business or a new media business, it’s all about the community. The community is the entire thing you should care about 24/7/365. What you need to become is a rat. Real, Authentic, and Transparent. Because you can’t hide anymore, everything you do is documented.” The core of his message is that people, marketers, companies, everyone — needs to be real with their audience or they will be exposed and leave open a vulnerability for smaller players who are authentic to come up and usurp your leadership position. My thoughts: Your character is who you are when no one is watching. Gary observes that the times when “no one is watching” are getting fewer and fewer as people adopt social tools. This doesn’t make character any more important, but your actions are becoming far more public so character flaws and inauthenticity is now more exposed.

But more importantly qik user bryanthatcher streamed it for us.  The sound quality is poor but you can still make out most of what he is saying.



(image from twitpic user timcourtney)