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Recently Mark Pesce spoke at Digital Disrupt here at GridAKL about 'The Planet Of The Apps'. Instead of a casual talk about the power of apps, Mark focussed on the economic ramifications of cell phone ubiquity, application development, market development and digital payments, with a call to action for New Zealand. 

When is the last time you stepped back and seriously questioned your own media consumption and the effect that it has not only on you but on the adults around you? With the changes in technology have come changes in the way that we use media. We no longer need to watch a range of diverse television programmes back to back due to the lack of alternative options. We no longer need to watch advertisements either, which I don’t see a downside to personally…but it has also become clear that when we get to choose easily what we do and don’t want to see, we are consistently leaning towards shallow entertainment based media and sidestepping more in depth educational programming.

Humans are visual creatures, or at least this human is - the folder of images of cute cats on my desktop attests to this. And it is this hunger for the visual (both of cats and of other things) paired with the need to capture people's attention that leads to a lot of folks in marketing and communications spending a lot of their time and their budget on creating the perfect image ...

So we here at Lightning Lab had a pretty good time last Monday night.

The GridAKL team were kind enough to squeeze us in between Agile Auckland and NZ Monopoly Championships for a glorious night of Startup and Investor Tinder.

Ok, that wasn’t the official name, it was called “The Lightning Lab Investment Preparation Evening", but that’s a bit of a mouthful… and let’s be honest… everyone was there just hoping to get a match ...

Our event space is the heart of our external community. It has become a place of collaboration, social interaction, sharing and learning. It is literally booked up almost every single day. We have hosted everything from Business Bootcamp for teenage entrepreneurs to the National Monopoly Championships. In between? Meet ups. So many meet ups. I have watched some grow from a few initial members to consistently pulling in at least 60-70 attendees at the quieter nights. I have also watched more than a couple flounder and fail to get off the ground. Heres a few tips on running a successful meetup that I have picked up along the way - from me to you.