John Chow is fun to hang out with
John Chow is not just an internet entrepreneur famous for making money online. He is also a savvy investor and fun to hang out with, but I’ll get to that.
So I arrived at Ralphs Grocery & Deli at 6:10 PM, nearly an hour before the Seattle Blogger Meetup was scheduled to begin. I came in so early because I work in Seattle and had a friend drop me off after we went out to eat for dinner. One by one people began to come in until John and his wife Sarah arrived a little after 7:00 PM. There wasn’t enough room for us all to sit at the main table so I sat with John Chow and Chris Bloczynski in a booth off to the side of the main table area.
In the booth we talked about a wide range of topics from trading foreign exchange currency, using life insurance as a tax shelter and we also touched on fun conventions to go to. Some random guy actually came and sat in our booth to talk to John about doing some business with him in the future. John also talked about people that have applied to his TTZ Media network that try getting into the program when the blog still has the Hello World beginning WordPress post. There were even people that used their Agloco referral URL or offered a URL that went to a GoDaddy landing page for a site under construction. It makes you wonder what some people are thinking out there.
One thing that I found surprising however was that of the 19 attendees that I saw at the event I believe that there weren’t too many people that really knew who just how influential John is in the blogging world (Chris Bloczynski was the only other blogger I spoke with that had been reading his blog for a long period of time). It wasn’t until later on in the night when he started talking with some of the other attendees that they heard more about his blogging success.
The background stories for all of these different bloggers were incredibly varied so it was fun to talk with all of people about their careers and what they blog about. There was even a couple there that had met each other for the first time at a Seattle Blogger Meetup, began to date and later got married which I thought was pretty cool. Surprisingly there wasn’t as much talk about blogging as there was about what was going on in people’s lives but I thought that was great to. But to sum the whole experience up, overall I had a blast talking with all of the bloggers that were at the event and am really glad I took the time to make it over there. It makes me want to go to the next blogging convention or try and meet up with more local bloggers. Going to a Blog Meetup is a great way to network with other bloggers and get out from behind your computer screen so go do it!
Subscribe to my RSS feed if you want to read about my successes and failures while trying to manage online communities and blog.
Update: Both John Chow and Chris Bloczynski have blogged about the experience. Read their take on the meetup.
Got something to say? Click here to reply
I had a great time meeting you. If you’re ever up in Vancouver, give me a shout.
[Reply]
Yah I had a blast at the meetup and your convention stories make me want to get out to one soon! I’ll have to see if I can make that happen.
And I’ll definetely message you if I’m in Vancouver sometime.
[Reply]
Sounds like fun – it’s always the “evil” guys that are the best!
[Reply]
Shame there isn’t many things like this in the UK.
[Reply]
That whole thing sounded pretty dam cool. Stuff like that never happens in SA.
[Reply]
I was shocked when I saw you on John’s blog, Chris. Congrats on meetin up with Chow and the link is sure to send you good traffic. I actually thought you had disappeared, never see you on AIM anymore. Take it easy, man.
[Reply]
I was so surprised to see you on John’s site. I was like…what? That sounds like an awesome thing. You are becoming bigger than from what you started. Pretty sick!
[Reply]
It’s always nice to meet these uber successful people as you soon realise they’re human too
We all too easily put these people on a pedestal and think that what they’ve achieved is the impossible.
Nice article – well written.
Thanks, p.
[Reply]
Yah, I was surprised how down to earth John was because of just how successful he is. Either way, if you have an opportunity to get together with local bloggers I suggest you take it.
[Reply]
John is getting old hey, spotting some grays there…
[Reply]