#blimelight

As the gathering of our three minds (sometimes more when friends get involved) during the early months of our startup, the LiveUmbrella team is always pondering "what is LiveUmbrella?" What defines us?  Who are we?  What is our mission?

Though we're trying to put our best foot forward at all times, since we are in the early stages, we are still playing around with what is best for our team.  So, here's more information to inform you on what is quintessentially LiveUmbrella.

Most of you know, LiveUmbrella is about bringing people together... and so our slogan goes, "One App at a Time".  It might be a modest-sounding goal, but nothing is more important to our team than building strong relationships, whether online or offline.  We understand the importance of connections.

Some are familiar with our LiveUmbrella Monthly Entrepreneurs Lounge.  The events, in essence, are our way of being fully LiveUmbrella and help us achieve our mission of "bringing people together" in an open space of collaboration and networking with a little touch of education and relaxation in the cool, dimly-lit setting of a lounge.  Whether you're a startup or want to start a company, this is the place for you to meet like-minded entrepreneurs.

Sure, our application (soon to be applications) are created to bring people together via engaging friends and family on facebook and soon to be other platforms, but why not take it to the next level?

As I become more engrained into the social media space, I have high hopes, as such lofty dreams of "bringing people together" has been dreamt before.  Just stumbling upon today's goodies and reads, I read of the culmination of Web2Open, of course, Startup2Startup, BarCamp, and so many other exciting events, now huge, and how they began with just an idea.

Well, here at LiveUmbrella, we're all about taking action, and action did we take.  Our first LiveUmbrella event kicked off last month, and our next is coming up June 5.  Though we consider our first event a success, our team only sees room for improvement.  We want to make our events even more engaging to benefit the community better.  These ideas are to be implemented in the coming months, including:

* The Networking Mix Game (10 minute rounds of networking)

* 2 speakers instead of 1

* Interviewing startups at the event (promote yourselves!) via our media sponsor, Blimelight

* Creating a social network using CrowdVine for before and after event engagement

After the overwhelmingly positive feedback from our first event, I can't wait to see our team and the startups in our community blossom.  Already, I see collaborative minds gathering in smaller groups and becoming friends, business contacts, making contacts, and more after the event.  It's a beautiful thing to think that our team facilitated some of this.

I believe that, as we blossom, the world blossoms.  And that is exactly what we want to accomplish.  This, in itself- the journey to "success"... is success.

We hope y'all can join us for the next round... and the next... and the next.

Invite friends if they need to meet new startups.

Invite investors (limited) who are open to engaging with startups.

Collaborate.

Become a part of what LiveUmbrella is- and in doing so, grow yourself personally by reaching out to others who need you, and professionally, by becoming an enabler in the community.

And I might add, some have questions about our "revenue model" around these events.  Well, to be quite frank, there is none.  We collect just barely enough for the next event.  And we don't really care.  We're doing what we're passionate about.  The money, I'm sure will follow somewhere along the line.  And damned if you think that's naive, because that is what's going to make us successful in the end.

We love startups.  We love you.  Come join us under the Umbrella.  We'd love to hear what you're all about.

Registration has filled up pretty quickly, but here is the link to our June 5 event. (http://ad.vu/bx2q)