A Night of Firsts and What Did You Just Call Me?

Wednesday night was a red letter day for me, and a fun one for CHEN PR. Chris Carleton and I attended our first Mass Innovation Night at the very cool Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation and had the distinct pleasure of buying everyone a drink at Biagio afterward.

It’s a fun and interesting venue for many people to get a first look at some local innovations – with huge thanks to the event founders Bobbie Carlton, Carlton PR & Marketing, and Dan Englander, High Rock Media. The MassInno site has a great recap with video, which also includes some great links to other recaps of the night.

Another first was that the MassInno folks introduced a new feature, the “Expert’s Corner.” When I first heard of it, I thought what a great idea. They set aside a corner of the venue for one-on-one conversations with a group of volunteer experts on a range of topics of interest to both exhibiting entrepreneurs and hopefully soon-to-be exhibiting entrepreneurs. The experts included Accounting, Law, Entrepreneurism, Funding, and PR/Strategic Comms.

Then I thought, cool, wonder who the generous, brave and hardy soul was who they got on the PR front. Yeeaaaa, THAT’s where the last first of the night emerged…

As you’ll see from the pic (taken and Tweeted by Chris Carleton) someone failed to look behind the curtain and decided that I would be the PR Wizard du jour. Chris got the easier role -- chatting up the presenting companies, checking out their products and hanging out with the other Mass Inno-ites.

All kidding aside, it was a really great night with a lot of energy and active discussion. And while I may not feel worthy to wear an Expert badge, I got an extra opportunity to chat with some very interesting people, making some very interesting things in the areas of enterprise software and social networking, and whom I hope to see rocking the Massachusetts, US and ultimately global innovation scene soon. Until next time…