Networking is so much more than leads and referrals. It's also an opportunity to advance your knowledge and understanding without all of the painful trial and error experiences that come with trying to do it all yourself. Why reinvent the wheel when you can talk with the team that invented it in the first place to understand what went right, what went wrong and what they would have done differently if they could do it over again.

 

There is tons of information out there these days. You can learn just about anything from books and blogs and various forums online. These are all incredible resources that you should absolutely be using to further your business or career. However, you can often accelerate your learning if you can have a conversation with someone who's "been there, done that." Books are great, but there's nothing like real world experience. Sitting down with someone to get specific advice about your strategy can be absolutely amazing.

 

Ordinarily I would now write about finding mentors and tapping this incredible resource. But if you're in Austin a huge amount of this work has already been done for you. Next week many venues around town will be hosting RISE 2011. RISE is the Relationship and Information Series for Entrepreneurs. Created originally in 2007 by Roy and Bertrand Sosa as a week-long, free “un-conference” for- and by- entrepreneurs in Austin. There are literally hundreds of sessions available where you can learn about just about any business topic imaginable: HR, PR, Funding, Bootstrapping, Marketing, Social Media, Social Entrepreneurship, Management, Finance, Accounting, Branding, Technology... I could go on, but you get the idea.

 

The coolest part of all of these sessions is their presenters and their size. All of the sessions are presented by local entrepreneurs, most of whom have plenty of their own real world experience in the topics they'll be presenting. Even better, each session can have a maximum of just 25 participants. Oh, and I almost forgot... They're all FREE!

 

These intimate sessions will allow you the opportunity to ask your own questions of the presenters and get to know them in a way that a large conference rarely affords. The downside is that there is only limited space. So if you're reading this now (hopefully it's early the week of 2/28) then you're going to want to start registering for appropriate sessions NOW!

 

Take a look at the session schedule and start registering for those that interest you the most today.

 

If you want to network with Austin Entrepreneurs you'd be hard pressed to come up with a better opportunity all year long.