A Piece of the P.I.E. - Introduction

I am suddenly surprisingly social. Sure I go to the occasional meetup here and there, but it's rare that I go to two meetups in four days.

On Saturday, I went to Five Guys Burgers and Fries in Cerritos in connection with a Los Angeles area FriendFeed meetup.

Earlier this evening, I went (as planned) to Omaha Jack's in Rancho Cucamonga in connection with a Professionals of the Inland Empire meetup. This meetup was arranged via the LinkedIn group Professionals of the Inland Empire - specifically by Joe Mabry of Inland Empire Consultants, and Theresa Godinez of Amtec Communications.

I didn't count the room, but I'd guess that there were well over 20 people in attendance - some (like me) from big companies, some from small. But some of us, if not all of us, agreed that one of the potential benefits of the group would be to counter the negative impression of the Inland Empire.

Unfortunately, I had another commitment (more on that in a later post), so I was only able to stay for an hour and only really had a chance to talk with two people in any great detail. However, there was a table of handouts from various people/companies, and I did get a chance to grab those before I left.

In fact, what I'd like to do is to feature some of the companies from the handouts on my blog. I've previously featured a P.I.E. member (Executive VIP Airport Shuttle) in this blog, and I'm happy to do it for the firms that I learned about tonight. And I even came up with a handy-dandy name for the post series - "A Piece of the P.I.E." (You may groan now.)

I'll try to start sharing those companies within the next few days, but now I have to write about the other meeting that I attended tonight.