As you may know, toward the end of last year, we started thinking about what Innovation Breakfast was and could become.

A little history — Innovation Breakfast is the little cousin of Mass Innovation Nights.  Innovation Nights are a network of free monthly product launch parties and networking events that leverage social media to help promote new products.  Mass Innovation Nights, the Boston region Innovation Nights event series, attracts several hundred attendees every month and generate hundreds of tweets, blog posts, Likes, LinkedIn posts, online pictures and videos.

Innovation Breakfast also started as a monthly event – a breakfast event at IBM featuring a great speaker and time to network.  We kicked off the series with Ron Croen, founder of Nuance Communications and ended the series with Bill Warner, founder of Avid Technology.  Pretty big shoes to fill.

Then we started a weekly, open coffee style drop in.  Sometimes there would be a dozen people, sometimes four.  It varied — some regulars and some new friends.  Some people wanted guidance on inserting themselves into the Boston innovation scene, others were job hunting and others were looking for companies to invest in.  We had what seemed to be medical device and life sciences meetings, and others were focused on architecture.  Pretty diverse.

But really, it ended up being Bobbie’s office hours.  People brought marketing plans to get critiqued.  Or asked about the best way to make a splash at Mass Innovation Nights.  Or just picked her brain to avoid paying her.  (Only semi tongue-in-cheek.  It is a constant problem for consultants — how much do you give away?)

And, as Carlton PR & Marketing heats up, free time has been harder and harder to come by.  Good friends and Innovation Breakfast regulars like local entrepreneur Adam Gent and Dave Cutler (Hire Dave Cutler!) have stepped in, often at the last minute, to guest host.

So what’s next?

Well, we’ve got an idea.  (Never in short supply but time for implementation is always an issue.)

Have you ever noticed that if you spend some time on the events circuit in any given area, how you tend to hear from the same speakers.  As an events coordinator, you tend to draw from the pool of people you’ve seen speak elsewhere.  Those who did a good job or were a known quantity.  You and everyone else who is booking speakers.

Or, do you have a story to tell?  An exciting idea to spread around?  How hard is it to get that story out there?  Pretty hard.  When you see the perfect panel for your story — it’s already full.  Or, you too see the same people speaking at local events.

We want to see if we can open up Innovation Breakfast to some new voices.  Now, it won’t happen right away.  Give us some time to work out the details but if you have a new story to tell or want to nominate a new voice, submit that info through our website and we’ll work on arranging that.  Meanwhile, we’ll keep up the weekly meetings as best we can.  Watch our tweets for updates.

For the second year we held our Innovation Potluck event at the Venture Cafe in the Cambridge Innovation Center with the help of the Venture Cafe team and sponsored by McCarter & English LLP who sprang for the main dish — giant 6 foot subs.  (We brought the meatballs in our signature crock pot — every Potluck needs a crock pot.)

Innovation Nights are business and networking oriented but we try to make the annual potluck a fun, low key event.  While last year we raced MINnows, this year we kept things safer for the animal kingdom and held a chocolate eating contest.  (You’ll have to see the video for details — coming soon.)

Notable contributions:

• Kevin Wiant, entrepreneur, brought the classic salmon ball
• Dave (”I cooked”) Cutler — a dozen handpicked from Dunkies
• Jean Terranova — chocolate covered pretzels
• Jane Mason, Cambridge Trust — chocolate covered strawberries (with pecans)
• The team from Boston SEO Experts – a lovely decorated cake with excellent branding
• Galen Moore and Kyle Alspach from MHT/BBJ came to scope out the start-ups.  (Galen is also looking for entrepreneurs to answer a survey — if you have a few minutes…)

We met some new folks and reconnected with old friends.  And, introduced some people to the Venture Cafe — every Thursday afternoon from 3-8:00 pm, entrepreneurs gather in Kendall Square for plenty of networking and…well, Marsh said it best.

As we all know, December is a tough month for events — lots going on!  (Check out our Innovation Potluck and this month’s Mass Innovation Nights event.)  So, not that we can stop you from swinging by Cafe on the Common and hanging with the other Java-heads but we’ll be at the Social Good 2.0 and the Minute to Win it events.

We’re retooling Innovation Breakfast for 2012 — so far suggestions range from:

• Move it around
• Don’t move it around
• Bi-weekly
• Daily
• Go back to monthly speaker
• Turn this into a calendar for breakfast events everywhere

What do you think?  Ideas?

Every week, Bobbie Carlton, one of the founders of Mass Innovation Nights, hosts Innovation Breakfast.  On October 14, 2011 she’ll be hosting a special Innovation Breakfast at Studio Crossings where she’ll talk about what you can do to make your Mass Innovation Nights product launch more effective.

Making the Most of Mass Innovation Nights

Thinking about launching with Mass Innovation Nights?  In the queue for a future event? Come learn what works and what doesn’t.  Not planning on a Mass Innovation Nights launch?  Come anyway and hear how you can use a combination of social media marketing, traditional marketing and public relations to make your product launch even better.

Studio Crossings, 14 Spring Street, Waltham, MA, is right around the corner from our usual hangout at Cafe on the Common.

Earlier this week I attended the inaugural “Building a Better Commonwealth” event at the beautifully refurbished Paramount theater downtown – search for items tagged #BetterMA for more details.  The event focused on getting Gen Y to stick around and contribute to the state’s economic momentum. 

However, as Chuck Tanowitz from It’s Fresh Ground observed, few of the questions or even speeches made were from native speakers – everyone from the Governor to the guy from Belgium to the woman from California is a transplant.  (Except my Carlton PR & Marketing partner, Christine, who started here but had to go off to NY for awhile.)  For all the hair pulling and breast beating, we seem to have done pretty well in the “making people stay here” department.  (We’ve been promised other events over the summer so stay tuned.)

There was the usual Gen Y/Gen X/Boomer banter and back and forth.  A video with interview snippets seemed to unfairly characterize the Gen Y folks as being unduly focused on the time the bars and MBTA shuts down but aren’t we all interested in quality of life issues?  My quality of life issues are more focused on schools for the kids and family events due simply to my years on earth.  Yes, yes, I remember moving to Boston 25 years ago and being put out when I had to take a cab home after a late night clubbing.

One of the questions I get asked regularly is “Where do you go to meet people?”  “What are the good events?”  So I created a blog post, a list, The Best Networking in Boston.  I point people to Greenhorn Connect, VentureFizz or MassHighTech’s calendars.  And still the question keeps coming.  But the question changes, “Where should I go to meet people, to grow my business, to hire the best people, to launch my product?”  That’s a different question.  One that requires I learn about you.  Then I can make recommendations.  And my recommendations may be different than someone else’s recommendations.

At the event, there was talk about mentoring the younger people, getting them internships, finding them jobs.  MassTLC has a great website for posting internships and there are others as well.  Good technology solutions exist but I still get the resumes and the requests from friends who know I know companies who are looking for the right intern.

Last summer, Turnstone, a division of Steelcase (full disclosure, a national sponsor for Innovation Nights), contacted me about the local innovation economy.  They wanted to put down roots here, contribute here.  Not to be an invading force but a force for change and a real contributor.  After several hours of input, back and forth and “get-to-know-you”, I made a handful of choice introductions, and am glad I did.  Turnstone has become an important partner for organizations like MassChallenge and TechStars (and not all through my introductions but I like to think I played a small part.)  Turnstone could have Googled Boston innovation-oriented organizations (and they did) but getting personal introductions surely aided the process.

Many years ago, a local industry trade publisher created a “map” of the region showing the local industry players — a cartoony map but a map nonetheless.  But in those paper-oriented days there was no in-depth information available to help interpret the map.  You needed someone with the inside knowledge to help put it in context.  And it needed to be put in context based on your needs.

This kind of information need is a personal thing.  And often even Google can’t help you parse through all the information out there.  You need a guided tour.  There are times when you can find out things on your own and times when having someone to point things out makes the process much more efficient.  It’s like the social media students I have who could read all the documentation but prefer an ultra-efficient hour or two of personal instruction.

The Boston World Partnerships has created a program with ambassadors called connectors.  The state has people tasked with being the welcome wagon for out-of-town visitors who might turn into potential local businesses. There are people deeply immersed in the local innovator culture who are happy to serve as tour guides.  Maybe we’d have a #BetterMA if we all committed ourselves to being tour guides for the Commonwealth’s wonderful wealth of resources, whatever our understanding of them are.

This is the second year of the MassChallenge competition and the second year the Innovation Nights team has been an official endorser.  (Full disclosure:  we’re also entered into the competition for the same reasons we suggested other startups check it out — no strings attached money, free office space for several months if you get to be a finalist, and wonderful access to mentors and resources.  Since Bobbie held office hours last year and worked with several of the finalists on their marketing programs, it seemed fitting we should give it a try.  Hey, it would be nice to have a designated desk.)

If you are unaware of MassChallenge and the endorser system, here are the most basic details:

1. MassChallenge is a big competition for startups — one of, if not, the largest.  There’s prize money involved.
2. There is a complicated system of diamond and platinum endorsement points.  The Diamond ones get added up to refund your entry fee and both give you points toward the first round of judging.  The system is designed to get people talking to people in the community and telling their startups’ story.  The endorsers are a diverse bunch and you get invited to be an endorser.  Anyone who registers on the site can vote.  (Note:  I’ve heard complaints about the registration requirement and after dealing with two years of voting on our sites, I’m on the side of  registering.  Public voting is hard to control and easy to game.)

You’re right.  If we entered, we shouldn’t be endorsing.  In our (and MassChallenge’s) defense, we never intended to enter.  It was a last minute thing and with more than 700 entries, MassChallenge can’t be expected to be able to police the associations of all the endorsers, contestants and judges.  (We have withdrawn from judging.)  That said, we like to think that we can be fair and do our part even if we are competing ourselves.  There will be many winners and the finalist group alone will be huge.

So, all that aside, we have placed our bets and made our endorsements.  With almost 100 requests, you’ll all have to forgive me if I don’t send personal notes to everyone we did and did not endorse.  We will say that there were some biases:

• Mass Innovation Nights companies — This one might seem obvious but our reasoning is that companies who have (or are planning to participate in) Mass Innovation Nights have a product.  They are a little further along the continuum.
• Experienced founders — Not saying you have to be a gray-hair, or a serial entrepreneur but there has to be some understanding of how to run a business, some experience in the marketplace you have chosen to enter, some foundation in what you are trying to do.  Or, at least you were able to convince someone with those qualifications to believe in you and your concept, and join you as a co-founder.
• A business model –You are creating a product people are willing to pay something for.  Bonus points for multiple revenue streams.
• We know you — that’s right.  We know you.  You’ve introduced yourself and we know you aren’t crazy.  (Or we know what your particular brand of crazy is.)  People do business with people they know.  VCs and angels invest in people.  And, people endorse people.
• We think you will do well, for one reason or another, and we want to point back and say, “We endorsed that.”

The anti-endorsement bias:

• Built to flip — “Gonna get me millions of users and then get purchased by Facebook.”  Nope, not interested.
• The request phrased as an order — you must endorse my company.  If you aren’t polite with us, how are you ever going to deal with customers and partners?
• The folks who addressed their request “Dear Mr. Carlton…” While it is easy to dismiss this one based entirely on ego — I mean, come on, my picture is sprayed all over the Internet, it actually gave me pause for a different reason.  These are people going down the list and sending a note to everyone.   No careful consideration of what is relevant and why.  There were lots of strangers who approached us with their pitches but some of the pitches were based on a decent level of understanding of what we do and our backgrounds.  (For example, Bobbie, a mother of two, has both enterprise software and consumer product marketing experience. Dan is a developer who has previous experience with event companies and runs his own website development company.)  I do have a certain level of sympathy for people trying to hit anything that moves, and we are easy to find but do the research to make it relevant.  (And, in the course of that research, take note of whether the contact is a Mr. or Ms.)

Or, we didn’t endorse you simply because we ran out of endorsements.  There were companies we want to give diamonds to that we gave platinum (and one case of vice-versa…there’s no correction feature on the website) and companies who got nothing because they came to us too late.  We went and voted on their concept.

Additional note:  A massive thanks to everyone who voted for us, endorsed us or gave us a push to enter.  While we aren’t one of the finalists, we got awesome feedback on what we are doing (and admittedly some head scratching feedback/advice too) and we’ll still be there, mentoring and supporting MassChallenge companies.  We’re looking forward to a whole new crop of new products to introduce too as part of Mass Innovation Nights.

I always say that if no one else shows up for Innovation Breakfast, I’ll at least be able to get some work done.  Hasn’t happened yet. 

Meanwhile, on most blogs, when you see no blogging, you know that nothing’s happening, so you “move along.”  The opposite is true of Innovation Breakfast.  When you see no blog post, it means the joint was hopping and I didn’t get to write anything.   Sometimes we have a dozen people dropping in, sometimes people come in groups of 1 or 2.

You’ll notice the time of this blog post is after Breakfast hours.  We had another good conversation this morning, with someone we’ve been wanting to meet.  We learned new stuff and shared ideas and everyone went forth with their day secure in the knowledge that they gained something from the interaction.

Last week, at Innovation Breakfast, we had an excellent discussion on the pros and cons of the Lean Startup concept.  One issue I am very aware of is the balancing act companies must deal with — rapid iteration and testing on your customer base versus giving the customer a positive experience.  I have seen many companies using Lean Startup concepts alienate a whole class of customers with poor user experiences.

This week I learned about a great program at Rutgers, an accelerated social media MBA, from CutlerDave.  I can’t help it — but his name and the “first name last name” architecture of the Twitter ID make me envision him as an odd mashup of Jeff Cutler and SchneiderMike (two social media gurus I know and enjoy.)  Since I have been toying with the idea of a social media house party in Vermont (at Red Clover Inn and Restaurant in Vermont), I was very interested in hearing about this program.  Social Media House Party fits in really nicely with the Innovation Dinner concept we’ve been discussing at Carlton PR & Marketing, as a way to help more startups and entrepreneurs get the marketing help they need to succeed.

This past week we had the first Innovation Dinner and we assembled ten entrepreneurs to give their input on a project designed to help everyone — not a stealth project just nothing to talk about…yet.  We want to do more of these.  Ideas?  Concepts?  We seem to be able to get entrepreneurs together.  If you had 10 or 12 entrepreneurs in a room, what would you want to ask them, show them, find out about them?  Let us know.

Every week, the Innovation Nights newsletter comes out with our 3-5 picks for the top events (not always the biggest) of the coming week or  events coming up that you may need to register for in advance.  This listing is one of our contributions to the area’s innovation economy.  Two of the most common questions we get are “Where do you get event information?” and “What are the best networking events in Boston?”  While we often get emails directly from event organizers, here’s how you can find out what’s happening in the Boston market on your own.

Start off by checking out these website calendars and event aggregators:

• Boston.com
• Bostontweetup
• Eventbrite
• GreenhornConnect
• MassHighTech
• Meetup
• VentureFizz

Visit these organizations and check out their events for topics, speakers and panels that interest you:

• 128 Innovation Capital Group
• Angel Capital Association
• Boston World Partnerships
• DARTBoston
• Mass Challenge
• Mass Innovation Nights
• MASS TLC
• MIT Enterprise Forum
• MITX
• New England Venture Capital Association
• SBANE
• The Capital Network
• TIE Boston
• Venture Cafe
• Web Innovators Group
• WPI Venture Forum
• Xconomy

Make it your practice to regularly visit the websites of the vertical industry organizations and groups you belong to and look at the newsletters they issue.  Figure out whom in your circle regularly tweets or blogs about upcoming events.  Haunt the LinkedIn groups and review the events posted there.

Where else do you go for event information?  Care to share?

Even though we had a nice little convivial group at Innovation Breakfast this morning, I think we spent more time talking about the previous evening’s Innovation Potluck, held at the Venture Cafe in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. 

Our latest Innovation event was designed as a purely social event for entrepreneurs and innovators who work in small groups or out of their homes often feel the lack of a large group of co-workers at the holidays when seemingly everyone else is out celebrating the season.  Sometimes your brain needs a little fun so you can come up with your next innovative idea.  It was also a “thank you” to the terrific community who have been so generous with their time and energy, helping out each other.

And, admittedly, a little crazy fun…

Thank-yous!  First to Carrie and the whole Venture Cafe team!  Thanks for welcoming us into your space, and not asking too many questions about what we had planned.  Big thanks to McCarter & English who bought BBQ (Blue Ribbon BBQ no less) for everyone. HUGE thanks to my sidekick for the night, Corey Turner.  (Corey, without you, it would have been a tough night!)   Thanks to MemoryOnHand for their help (and some cool prizes!)  To Sidi and ParellelCity for helping to connect everyone.  To Reed who supplied awesome Ginger Cookies (labeled NO NUTS, safe for Bobbie, who is deathly allergic to nuts).  To all the folks who brought goodies to share.  To BookBlunder and friends who help drag everything down to the car, and Greg who helped drag it upstairs and showed us how to operate the service elevator.  To Arlington Bait who supplied the entertainment.  (Yeah, you read that right…bait shop — the entertainment.)  If you missed it, enjoy! (A shout-out here to my friends at Tyler Place Family Resort who regularly hold “more professional” minnow races.  For you winter sports sorts, also check out their year-round Vermont inn and restaurant, Red Clover.)

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A coffee bar that is…

The weekly Friday Innovation Breakfasts have been continuing at the Cafe on the Common in Waltham.  Last week we had about a dozen people, including some folks from SCVNGR, a Twitter friend from the UK and a couple of entrepreneurs and marketing folks.  The SCVNGR team made an instant impression by handing out sunglasses.  (Our chosen coffee house really needs shades at certain times of the day.)

This week was a smaller group and proved that even the most diverse crew can make connections.  A web-based entrepreneur, a project manager, a developer (of housing, not websites) and a marketer.  Good conversations ensued with cards and information/knowledge exchanged all around.  What is it about these casual conversations that are so fruitful when the participants have so little in common?