Southern California is the home for thousands of technology companies such as MySpace in Los Angeles, Linksys in Orange County, and Qualcomm in San Diego.

And what do you find in a high-tech community -- in addition to technology? Events. Lots of Events.

It's been difficult to keep up on the technology events in Southern California. Several Web sites have calendars of events in SoCal communities. However, not every event organizer lists their gathering on those sites

The Technology Council of Southern California and TechEmpower have created Southern California Tech Central, a new Web site that makes it much easier to keep up with the whole technology sector in Southern California.

Here's a page with posts about SoCal events http://cc.tcosc.org/event/.

Check out the Southern California Tech Central -- and keep up with the tech events Southern California.

Business cards have been part of business forever. But, the Internet finally has applications that reduce the need for business cards.

Laurie Percival mentioned that while at the SXSW conference she used Contxts, a new SMS-based service that shares business card information with someone by just sending their mobile phone number to an SMS "short code."

There are many times when you don't have business cards to give to a new acquaintance. You might be at a conference and run out. Or, you might be at such a casual location that your business cards aren't handy. Both seemed to occur a lot at SXSW!

There are two ways to use Contxts. One way is to send your contact's mobile phone number to Contxts and they will send your business card information to your contact's mobile phone. Or, your contact can text your user ID to Contxts at 50500 and retrieve your business card data via SMS.

One of the extra benefits of Contxts is that you can list all of your favorite social media addresses in your profile, which you couldn't include on a paper business card.

Contxts won't replace paper business cards, but as they add features it should reduce the keying of new contacts into a contact manager.

I'm sure Contxts will be used a lot at our next LINC networking event.

Organizations and groups face a big challenge today putting on events for their members. While the cost of events is rising, members are becoming more cost conscious.
 
This means organizations need to not only manage their costs for events, but also ensure that registration fees will cover their costs.
 
For organizations that have been collecting registration fees at their events, the number of "no shows" can result in costs exceeding revenues.
 
Event organizers know that the number of people who RSVP to an event can be very different from the number who actually attend the event. This is especially true for events that don't require a registration fee to be paid online prior to the event.

For the business networking events I help organize we found that a significant number of the "Yes" RSVPs don't attend. Fortunately, our events are free, which means we don't have a financial obligation to meet.

However, most organizations have significant costs to host their events. So, many organizations are moving to online event registration to:

• Motivate members to pre-pay by discounting online registration prices
• Ensure a minimum number of attendees by the people who paid for event registration online
• Reduce the staff needed at the event's registration area

• Sell any number of registrations
• Accept credit cards for payment

• Display event description pages within the organization's existing Web site.
• Send e-mail invitations to a mailing list on predetermined schedule.
• Obtain the name of every attendee and the registration type (e.g., member, guest, student) that was purchased for them.
• Offer "early bird" price discounts that reward attendees for paying their event registration online.
• Offer certain types of registrations to specific groups of people (i.e., member discounts only to members, etc.),
• Limit the number of each type of registration that can be sold online to encourage early purchase.
• Customize the online registration form to ask questions specific to the event.
• Accept attendee referrals of new people, which are added to the organization's mailing list.
• Create an online community of attendees prior to an event so people know who will attend.
• Download online registrations for printing nametags prior to the event.
• Automatically update online content with links to the organization's upcoming events.
• Sell organization memberships online.
• Receive online registration payments without the cost of bank credit card merchant account fees.

This gives attendees a greater sense of quality for both the event and the organization. And, the online event registration system helps manage revenue to ensure that the event will be beneficial to the organization, too.
 

Networking is a big part of how business gets done. But sometimes we forget that it's not just the networking that we do -- it's also important how our network of contacts does their networking that can affect us, too

Jeff Cohn, who is with the angle investor group Tech Coast Angles, has a list a ten attributes of successful angle investments. For networkers, one stood out clearly:

All investors contributed contacts, industry knowledge or competitive intelligence

The takeaway for entrepreneurs is that it's important to network with potential investors who bring more to the table than money. Investors who understand your industry can make introductions to prospective customers and potential business partners are worth a great deal.

The same holds true for everyone else, too. Strive to develop contacts with people who understand your industry and have connections who might be interested in what you offer.

If you're looking for a job, look for contacts who know managers who have made hiring decisions and are willing to make introductions for you.

If you're in sales, look for contacts who know purchasers of your type of products and are willing to make referrals.

If you're an investor, actively network with people who associate with entrepreneurs in the industry where you invest.

It takes time to research "who knows who," but it increases the value of your networking efforts tremendously.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I come across someone's Top Ten Networking Tips list that includes tips I hadn't seen before. Richard Mueller, a Minneapolis-based graphic designer, posted his networking tips list recently. Here's a quick summary:

1. Big groups are always better
2. Drag singles along
3. Don't dance with the one you brung
4. Nicotine Networking for nonsmokers
5. Plan fast, eat slowly
6. Use other peoples' business cards for notes
7. Organize your business card collection
8. How to remember names
9. How to remember faces
10. Don't drop the ball - use your new contacts

Check out Richard's detailed list of networking tips, then include ones that are right for you in your networking techniques.

In a post about getting attention, Nathan Burke, MarketingStartups.com, reminds readers of the benefits to startup entrepreneurs of getting away from computers and attending networking events:

Go To Events - Another easy one. Go to tweetups, conferences, podcamps, etc. You’ll meet people, you’ll get to talk about your startup, and you’ll get the chance to hone your message each time you meet someone new.

With all the ways we network online, much of it deals with arranging face-to-face networking.

Here's a networking tip you've probably not seen before. Sloane Berrent from CauseCast was recently interviewed by Andrew Warner of Mixergy about her networking techniques. Here's one of the many good networking tips from Sloane's interview:

Keep a free hand - Events aren’t about the food & drink. If you have food in one hand and a drink in the other, you won’t be able to shake hands with new people.

Sloane is the type of networker who returns from a conference with a 6" stack of business cards, so listen to the whole interview for more of Sloane's networking tips.

Keith Johnston of OnSite Events posted a reminder that every attendee needs to benefit from spending time and money to attend meetings and events.

Events are no longer simply a conference, tradeshow, meeting or party. They are an investment with return expectations.

There are many ways to determine the return on investment, but eventually the cost of attending business meetings and events needs to translate into a financial benefit to the organizations that paid for their employees to attend.

One challenging part of estimating the ROI of sending people to big events is the time delay between expenditure and return. It can take months or years for new contacts to become customers. And, it's hard to determine the benefit what was learned from the speakers.

One approach is to have employees write a "trip report" that details the contacts they saw and the things they learned. Over time, these trip reports can be compared to the benefits from building relationships with those contacts and implementing what was learned.

Here in Los Angeles many people on the business side of technology companies have attended our LINC Face-to-Face business networking events over the past few years. These stand-up mixers have helped entrepreneurs and executives at technology companies meet people like themselves, which helps grow the community.

In September we'll be expanding LINC with small breakfast and lunch networking meetings for business development people at local technology companies. LINC BizDev meetings are designed to help bizdev people tell their company's story to their peers so everyone can work together in growing our community.

If your bizdev person is looking for more business networking opportunities, have them request an invitation to LINC BizDev meetings.

An event organizer has many jobs, but the one that probably causes the most anxiety is event promotion. I know I feel it every time we put on an event. While your own e-mail list is the best source of registrations, it's great to get registrations from people who have never attended one of your events.

One technique is to use search engine optimization (SEO) to attract searchers to your event description page. The challenge that most organizations face is their Web site can't get ranked high enough in search engines to matter.

There are two main components to successful SEO: page content and incoming links. It's relatively easy to optimize the content of an event page, but it's very hard to get enough links to the organization's Web site to rank high in the search engines.

A solution is to add your event to the SureToMeet event calendar because our whole site is search engine optimized. For example, SureToMeet automatically creates up to five links to your event that are fed to search engines within hours. In several recent tests every event we tested showed up on the first page of search engines, while the organization's own site ranked much further down.

For organizations that use SureToMeet's online event registration this SEO promotion is done automatically for public events. For other organizations that that use their own online event registration process, they can add their events to the SureToMeet event calendar for free and have the same SEO advantage in the search engines.

Like our slogan says, we want to help organizations bring people together face-to-face at events, seminars, and meetings.