Announcing AVC Meetups Everywhere

This is my 5,000th blog post here at AVC. In celebration of this fact, I am announcing a new feature for this community. We are going to host AVC Meetups everywhere that you would like to do them.

To kick this off, I have created a Meetup Everywhere page for this community and populated it with the 50 most active cities worldwide (38 in the US, 12 outside the US). I have scheduled a Meetup in each city for June 6th at 3pm.

If you want to do a Meetup in your community at anytime or anyplace, you can click on the red button on the left sidebar of the Meetup Everywhere page or just go here. You don't have to do your Meetup on June 6th at 3pm, you can do it anytime you want. I just wanted to get things started with a bunch of Meetups around the world on June 6th.

If you want to organize one of the 50 Meetups I've scheduled, click on the link to that Meetup and then click on the "organize this Meetup" link and go. We need organizers for these Meetups so please think about doing that.

Just to be clear, a Meetup does not have to be a big fancy event. It is often just a few people (three or four) getting together over a cup of coffee to chat. So don't think you have to run a big party to organize a Meetup.

By now, it is probably not lost on you that Meetups Everywhere is a new feature being launched today by our portfolio company Meetup. This community is one of many that are using this new feature to bring all the relationships that are getting built online into the real world. I am very excited about Meetup Everywhere and what it can do to facilitate even more Meetups and real world relationships. As Scott Heiferman, founder of Meetup, is fond of saying, "the internet is a great tool to get people off the internet."

If you are developer and want to build something on top of Meetup Everywhere, here is the api. I'm told it is pretty powerful.

So let's get to it and start creating AVC Meetups.

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#VC & Technology#Web/Tech#Weblogs

Comments (Archived):

  1. aanwar

    That’s awesome. Can’t wait to be part of one of the Meetups. Thanks for this feature!

  2. Boris Wertz

    Hope to see Vancouver on the list in a future second round of meetups ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. fredwilson

      wow. i am surprised vancouver is not in the top 50you can schedule/host one there boris.http://www.meetup.com/AVC/e

      1. Boris Wertz

        Looks like we have to work a bit harder out there in Vancouver – top 10 should be adequate ๐Ÿ™‚

    2. fredwilson

      boris – someone beat you to ithttp://www.meetup.com/AVC/2…

    3. Nick Molnar

      I’m signed up to organize the NV event. I’ll merge it with a Vancouver event if you can help organize.Not sure how North Vancouver wound up ranking ahead of Vancouver. I go on AVC a lot…but not THAT much.

      1. Boris Wertz

        Sounds good – let’s coordinate.

  3. paramendra

    Now we are talking. This will take the AVC community to a whole different level. I have been saying for months now that great as Fred is as a blogger, half the weight at this blog is the comments sections, and all the people who show up. This is great.

  4. Manoj Ranaweera

    Now that I read the article in full, I understand what you are trying to achieve, Fred. Apologies for jumping the gun without reading. This sounds almost like OpenCoffee SaulK launched in 2007I have a theme for Techcelerate Coffee and wonder whether there is an opportunity to collaborate. The idea is to mix tech companies, social media experts and end users over coffee locally. Again, small numbers, but many local events. With Techcelerate Monthly events been the flagship events.

  5. johndodds

    New features. Community activation. Can the first rumours of this blog’s imminent IPO be far off?

    1. paramendra

      AVC.com IPO? Ha ha!

  6. Mike Slagh

    See you at the Destin, FL, Meetup.. right? ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. fredwilson

      the point of these meetups is for you all to meetupi will certainly try to attend those i can but that is not the promise or the plani am sure you knew that but i figured this was a good opportunity to make that clear to everyone

      1. Florent Peyre

        hopefully you might make it to the highline if you’re in town this day… we’ll be in the amphitheater and will try to unlock a super-swarm on foursquare…

        1. fredwilson

          i signed up florentdo we have a rain location?

    2. steveplace

      I was going to be there for bowlegs, but now a no go; would’ve stayed an extra day for drinks on the deck of McGuire’s

  7. awaldstein

    FredSmart feature for Meetup.com. I’m a big Meetup user for events for my clients in the US and Europe.Smart idea for the AVC community. I’m in for June if I’m in town.Will be cool to see pics and videos of AVC folks around the globe on International AVC day in June;)

    1. Tereza

      Do what Lockerz did and create a limited edition t-shirt with Fred’s oil portrait on it, and have us snap and post them from landmarks worldwide.

      1. awaldstein

        Thanks for volunteering to do this Tereza ๐Ÿ™‚

  8. Matt A. Myers

    I have a reason to go NYC a bit earlier now. ๐Ÿ™‚

  9. Florent Peyre

    that’s a very interesting initiative… growing the avc franchise worldwide…

  10. Diego Gomes

    awesome. I’ll join the meetups in brazil.

  11. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

    I see there’s one for Paris. I’m game!

    1. Laurent Boncenne

      me suis ajoutรฉ pour paris, au moins on sera deux !

      1. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

        C’edt dรฉjร  รงa!PEG

  12. Elie Seidman

    Congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. Make sure there is a safe archive of them so they exist for future generations to read. Elie

    1. fredwilson

      you raise a good pointthe only archive is at typepadi should export them to another backup location

      1. andyswan

        backupify them

        1. fredwilson

          too bad backupify doesn’t support typepadany other ideas andyi really need to do this

          1. robmay

            Hey Fred, if you want to pre-empt our next round of fundraising, I’ll make Typepad a priority ๐Ÿ˜‰ Seriously though, it’s on the roadmap for late summer.

      2. Jon Knight

        Speaking from personal experience, don’t put that off. I lost the 1st 3 years of my blog once back in the days I used phpbb and no, the Wayback machine didn’t have much of it stored.Congrats on 5k posts, Fred. Who am I kidding? THANKS for 5k posts.

      3. Donna Brewington White

        Definitely! I know you don’t want to write a book, but actually you already have.I’ve even been tossing around in my head what AVC might look like as a television series or a feature film.

        1. Tereza

          If CBS can pick up a sitcom about a Twitter feed then there’s definitely potential for series (comedy? Drama? Dramedy?) about a Disqus community of people of all walks jousting for Fred’s attention or dropping in the occasional wisdom bomb. A virtual The Office meets You’ve Got Mail meets Swimming With Sharks.It’s a format that’s simple but fungible to allow for lots of fun crazy shit to happen! Maybe not the legs of Law & Order, but it could go pretty far.I’d give my eyeteeth to produce that show.

          1. Douglas Crets

            Absolutely right. While most businesses think about building scale, the world of media thinks about drilling down into the granular to find something universal. That’s an art in and of itself. I’d happily have a docu-drama or a sitcom made of my commenting life. I’m available for bookings at any time!

          2. Donna Brewington White

            Hmmm…

        2. Mark Essel

          I’m hoping to wear Fred down with my friend who does blog-> ebook conversion, editing or layout work. Maybe I’ll just foot the bill and have him put together a few pdfs and email them to Fred. The entire backlog is pretty huge, so it would probably take Aakin (sole guy at ArsVox.com) a few hundred hours to finish the complete conversion with editing/organization. For him that’s $2500-5k range

          1. fredwilson

            how does each post i do get into that ebook in real time?

          2. Donna Brewington White

            Correction: I don’t KNOW that you don’t want to write a book but read this somewhere recently — not firsthand.

          3. Mark Essel

            It would be a segment (ed) and be stand alone work/pdfs/kindle format. Like AVC by year or topic depending on how you warned to slice it

          4. Donna Brewington White

            Hmmm…

      4. ShanaC

        How have you changed from 5k? (and thanks for the 5k)

        1. fredwilson

          i used to post about everything here; tech, VC, NYC, politics, my family, music, movies, theater, etcnow i just post about VC, tech, and politics

          1. awaldstein

            Fred…5,000 is really an inspiring number.Persistence. Endurance. And perpetual inquisitiveness.

          2. Tereza

            …and fast typing.

      5. Elie Seidman

        Good thoughts today in your panel with Horowitz. One nitpick that I think both you and Ben left out is that you need to normalize by product category. There are “lean” startups that require 10M to get to product/market fit and there are those that require 1M or 2M. If you bring 2M to a product area that requires 10M to get in the game and get over the “activation energy hump”, you’ll likely become one of the many who launched lean and nothing came of it. As for dilution, I agree that while doubling capital does not double likelihood of success but obviously doubles dilution, I think that Mark Pincus said it very well when he said that as entrepreneurs, we tend to overoptimize for valuation and percentage dilution whereas we should be focused on the qualitative things that drive success, namely insuring that the right people (entrepreneurs and management) control product vision. 50% of 0 is still 0. Lastly, I very much agree with two of Ben’s stronger points 1) product/market fit is not signaled by a gong ringing in the office – rather, it’s on a continuum where some amount of vision is always needed to extrapolate from current data to future results and 2) your competitive landscape is not standing still. If you’ve got some measure of product/market fit – but it’s by no means a certainty – competitors who are better funded might realize what you realize and fast follow out-execute you.

        1. Mark Essel

          I couldn’t find the conversation, just the live stream. Maybe Fred will post his talk with Ben here?

          1. Elie Seidman

            I heard it at the conference. Hopefully they will publish a transcript.

      6. Mark Essel

        I got a great one captain, Ars Vox, my buddy Aakin’s blog to ebook of any format service. He can convert them all for a reasonable fee for the world the sink their teeth into.

      7. awaldstein

        Someone just recommended this for my backup.http://www.rackspacecloud.c…In the cloud. Cheap. They answer the phone.

    2. Tereza

      I also see a Disqus product opportunity for users to re-package and curate their comments for downstream publication.There is real art to some comments!Also better searching within our own past comments. I know I have blog material in there; would love to search on them in a variety of ways. Now I’m hitting about 1000 comments and that’s turned into a slog.Also I’m curious. Who owns one’s comments? If I got hit by a bus could my kids find, search, repackage, monetize my comments? Could they access my comments for their own sentimental purposes?Not that mine are that scintillating….not that I have plans to get hit by a bus any time soon.Is this stuff part of Disqus’ plan to take over the world?

      1. Mark Essel

        I see JLM’s comments as his blog. To me many of the comments I come across are blog+ in length or quality of thought and expression.I see comments as everyones and no ones, much like the sort of social web stuff that flows through the pipes.

        1. Tereza

          JLM was exactly who I was thinking of. His comments are treasures. I was thinking in large part about his kids who probably don’t read AVC but sooner or later should be able to access and enjoy them, possibly package them, whether for themselves or the public.

  13. andyidsinga

    This is a cool idea – and the meetup app looks pretty sweet after a quick look.

    1. andyidsinga

      Okay – after looking at meetup.com for a few more minutes I like it even more. The list of suggestions is quite interesting.See Fred – I didn’t find meetup through a leader board ๐Ÿ˜‰

  14. Tereza

    Hmmmm…I feel like I’ve read something remarkably like this today… http://bit.ly/a5544UBut I’ll leave it to Kid to call out the play-by-play on this Fredland vs. Godin smackdown. Hahaha.Congrats on 5000 posts. That’s crazy!

    1. kidmercury

      fredland is clearly MUCH better positioned for this than godin nation, and thus, fred is the indisputable winner in this smackdown. reasons:1. seth has comments off. we’ve discussed blogs stars and comments off before on AVC; i’m a big believer that comments off kills the community. the fredland community is strong because we all talk to each other here, in fredland. seth is comments off so the readers are not so much a part of seth’s community, but rather a part of whatever community where they are discussing seth.2. fred participates in the comments. a small thing, but as competition amongst blog stars heats up, this will be a nice bonus to have, and will separate those who are truly committed to building their own civilization vs those who are just in it for the sex, drugs, and blogging life style of a modern day blog star.

      1. fredwilson

        well here is the leaderboardhttp://www.meetup.com/every…seth is in first by an order of magnitudethen etsythen all of us here at AVC

        1. kidmercury

          IMHO Meetup is first, as they own seth’s graph. Seth gave his graph away. He can probably always get it back though. IMHO graphs cannot be stolen.

        2. Tereza

          Wow TechCrunch is sucking wind.BTW, how ’bout that Carol Bartz vs. Arrington face-off? What fun!

      2. Tereza

        Wow kid you make me want to blog more for my own stardom.And you raise a great point. I guess I’d feel more compelled to do a Linchpin meetup if I’d interacted with them before. Instead it’s an isolated experience.If I come to AVC-NYC I’d absolutely be looking for the specific voices I’ve been getting to know.It also feels like Disqus should co-sponsor/co-host this. Aren’t these Meetups prime locations for Disqus advocates…..there’s got to be sone value for them to capture there.

    2. Donna Brewington White

      I like Fred’s positioning much better. Seth fan? Not sure I’d attend as a “Fred fan” as much as that might actually be an accurate description. (Maybe living in Southern California has made me wary of the “fan” concept. Or maybe I’m just a renegade.) Plus part of Fred’s charm is the community he’s fostered and the AVC meetup seems to celebrate this.

      1. Tereza

        Yes i agree.I think Seth is great but when it comes to calendar acrobatics I was inclined to do give it a shot for Fred & AVC people.

  15. Tereza

    Awwwww man, a Sunday afternoon?Only way is if I bring along my little kiddies and skootch us all into the car for 4pm hightail up the Westside Highway. Daughter’s piano recital is 5:30 in N. Westchester.To do this would be heroic if not borderline insane.Bummer.

    1. fredwilson

      terezacreate your own meetup and i will try to attend it

      1. Tereza

        Well I’ve been very busy planning a meetup for the day before.It’s called a “Birthday Party” and it’s at Family Dragon Karate Center in Pound Ridge. Only thing is, you have to be 7 to attend. My daughter is co-teaching the class.Headcount is limited to 16 but if I have any extra slots I will let you know.However I accept your challenge….time for a Mashups Markets and Motherhood Meetup? I’ll come up with something and we’ll see if anyone else from AVC wants to show.

    2. ShanaC

      I’d attend to…

    3. Donna Brewington White

      It would actually be worth coming to New York to attend YOUR meetup even if Fred wasn’t going to be there!

      1. Tereza

        Eventually Donna we will meet in person. And I greatly look forward to it!

        1. Donna Brewington White

          Definitely and likewise!

  16. John Clemons

    Great idea! I’ve decided to organize the Albuquerque meetup.

  17. Pablo Estrada

    5k posts – well certainly congrats are in order here, and Fred, THANK YOU, for your dedication and sharing your wisdom.

  18. William Carleton

    Fred, what a cool idea! I just volunteered to host/organize in Seattle.

  19. Mircea Goia

    Very good initiative. I signed up for Phoenix.

  20. kidmercury

    who owns the fredland social graph (fredgraph)? disqus? meetup? alas, it seems as though it is anyone but fred…..yes, i know fred is an investor in all these things. i’ve commented before how the USV portfolio was secretly a conspiracy to boost fred’s status as a blog star. yet another piece of evidence emerges.though ultimately, all the apps will need to pull from the same social graph. easiest way to do that is through using a open source CMS as the platform and incorporating apps made in those open source ecosystems. and thus, blog stars will come to rule the world through the open source content management systems that allow them to create the strongest social graph, into which they will insert their virtual currency…..in any event, congrats to fred for this bold step in expanding fredland. to be such a prolific blog star, the cal ripken jr of blogging, is an accomplishment worth being proud of. congrats boss!

    1. fredwilson

      good pointi suspect all of these social graphs will be available to me as the host of them

    2. Tereza

      What are the Top Ten read posts of all time?

    3. Mark Essel

      Are you not as thrilled at the physical manifestation of mini Fredlands globally as myself?I’m freaking psyched.

      1. kidmercury

        It’s cool, but IMHO, fredland won’t really get that interesting until fredbucks and commerce are thrown in. Right now, fredland is like a lamborghini with a full tank of gas — but the virtual currency is the key that starts the ignition. Or should I say, starts the revolution!

  21. Steven Kane

    5,000 blog posts.Wow!Nice accomplishment.And still going strong.

    1. fredwilson

      thanks steve. i don’t know any other way. i just keep going.

  22. ShanaC

    Two notes:So NY is thinking of meeting outside: If you do this, make sure you have a raincheck location.Since we have a running twitter list already, if you are organizing, after friday can you contact me so that I can put together some sort crosscheckable database thingy via soemthing like google docs for the same purpose?Might as well keep people organized…

  23. David Semeria

    Why are some of the meetups on the 7th?

    1. fredwilson

      anyone can add or modify a meetup if they are the organizer of it

  24. David Ashwood

    Barcelona arranged and looking good. Combined it also with another startup group in Barcelona that have a good crowd of 30+ bright & engaging individuals.We’ll be celebrating 5k posts on AVC with sangria on the beach! ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. fredwilson

      oh man, that is sweet

  25. Create a New Lab

    .these are two [very] innovative projects seeking VC fundshttp://www.newspaceagency.com/http://www.olpcdesign.com/.

  26. Donna Brewington White

    Fred, major congrats on 5000 posts and a heartfelt thank you. The AVC Meetup is a stunning initiative!Unfortunately, I’ll be on a plane from O’Hare to LAX.

  27. Oo Nwoye - @OoTheNigerian

    Meetup anywhere is perfect for alumni activities.5000 blog posts? More than once a day for 10 years? That is consistency! What/when was your first post? Who was your first commenter? Going down memory lane will be quite nice.

      1. Evan

        i found your blog the first time about a month later or so while researching VCs. i don’t remember why, but i remember thinking “no way this blog lasts very long.”

    1. Dave Pinsen

      Are you going to host a Meet-up in Nigeria? If so, Fred would get on the board in Africa, and then he’d have at least one Meet-up on all six of the inhabited continents.

      1. Oo Nwoye - @OoTheNigerian

        I am actually based in UK. I should be going home in August, if there is a meetup then, period, I will organise one.

  28. Dave Pinsen

    D-Day.

  29. Nicholas Barone

    Was Buffalo, NY in the top 50?

  30. Douglas Crets

    This is great, Fred. I enjoyed meeting Albert Wenger the other day, and I look forward to joining one of these Meetups.

  31. Yule Heibel

    What a great idea, Fred – so innovative!Now, I have to tell you that I got a shock when I clicked through to the meetup page and saw Victoria Canada (??!!) …is that just because meetup detected my location through my isp? Or did someone put Victoria there? Crazy! Who?I actually get to travel in June, and I’ll be in two cities (Boston and Seattle) whose meetup pages are already starting to populate nicely. Alas my timing is off: I leave both just before their scheduled times! #fail ;-)Congratulations on the 5,000 post mark – and good lord, all those comments and all that conversation: thank you! I second what others have said re. backing up your content. It’s a no-brainer, right? But that’s why we “forget” to do it.

    1. fredwilson

      i don’t know where to backup typepadi’m looking for a solution

      1. Fernando Gutierrez

        Maybe it’s time to switch to wordpress. If you google export typad to wordpress there are a few detailed guides by people who have already done it. I’ve only scanned a couple of them, but the biggest issue seems to be not breaking internal links and one says there is a plugin for that in wordpress.If someone has the reach to get to someone who can help you with this, that’s you. Even if you need someone to work on this for a few days I think it’s a no brainer. Your content is really valuable and you would regain control.

        1. fredwilson

          backupify is going to support typepad soontypepad is not as good as wordpress but it’s not bad and i don’t want todeal with a port

      2. Yule Heibel

        Truth be told, I’m not sure how to back up my blog either (not Typepad).However… I have wondered whether something like blurb.com (“Your blog. Automatically slurped into a real book.”) would work to create a defacto backup. Not sure how it deals with comments, but you’d have a file representing your blog.There must be a backup procedure for Typepad, though…?

  32. Ric

    Have taken up the Adelaide meetup … was that one of the original 50? I was the first one interested, so I’m guessing it wasn’t added later …I’ve also changed the date/time to the 6th at 3pm – which is a bit earlier than NYC![update: I’m now guessing that Meetup created an Adelaide event based on MY location?]

  33. jer979

    Obviously, I’m a big fan of this, since it’s DC 1, rest of world: 0http://jer979.com/igniting-…Sundays are family days for me, but hopefully, we can do another day

    1. fredwilson

      i totally get the family day thing Jeremyyou could set up one of your ownit’s really easy to do that

  34. Evan

    if this wasn’t the day after the CFA, i’d probably hit it up.

  35. Farhan Lalji

    Here’s to 5K more! Keep up the great writing Fred. Looking forward to the London meetup.

  36. akharris

    Fred, it’s too bad that neither iPad nor iPhone have video chat yet, or we could stream you to all the meetups at once.

  37. Tereza

    I just created an “Alterna-Meetup” for AVC New Yorkers who can’t make it Sunday afternoon because they’re schlepping their kids around to Little League games and birthday parties.That’s THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 6PM at SHAKE SHACK, MADISON SQUARE PARK (23/Mad).Even if you’re showing up on Sunday….COME on Thursday too!My goal is to create a 50/50 gender ratio, so this is a BYOE-only event (“bring your own estrogen”). If you don’t have any estrogen yourself, bring someone who does!

    1. Yule Heibel

      Ha, BYOE – two thumbs up, Tereza! (Wish I could be there!)

    2. Matt A. Myers

      Ohh.. Wrong week for me to make it. :(Edit: Maybe I’ll spend a week in NYC.. Thursday to Thursday? There are a few things to do in NYC right? ๐Ÿ˜‰

    3. awaldstein

      Which one?@ Madison Sq. Park?

      1. Tereza

        Yes! Madison Square Park!

  38. Dvasefi

    Just added a meetup in Aliso Viejo for Orange County, CA at http://www.meetup.com/AVC/3392 on Tuesday, June 8, 2010, 3:00 PM. Will decide on the location as people signup.

  39. Mark Essel

    Holy hand grenades Batman, I missed this post (super busy week).AVC meetups. Is this the beginning of Fredland goes local. Love the idea, will definitely attempt a meetup from Maui (my honeymoon will go through June 6th).Dude!

    1. Fernando Gutierrez

      Mark, no! You are not gonna try it on your honeymoon! I’m not an expert in the field, but I’m sure that any of the ladies here will explain you that leaving her at the hotel, in your honeymoon, to meet some of us, can only bring you a quick and painful divorce! Enjoy with her and attend the next one! And big congrats!

      1. fredwilson

        i second fernando’s advicedon’t even think about it

      2. Tereza

        Possibly not quick and painful divorce. But perhaps a forced choice between rash purchase of precious jewels, vs. a long life of hearing about it again in arguments during inopportune moments.But hey, maybe that’s just me.I think you two will be so googly-eyed you’ll forget about the Meetup anyway. We’ll plan another when you get back.

  40. Mark Essel

    awesome.

  41. daveschappell

    You know that I’m a long-time reader, and a huge Fan of Fred and AVC. I’m also a huge fan of Meetup. But, Meetups Everywhere is confusing to me. I can understand why I might want to Meetup with people to talk about my love for Etsy. But, why would I want to meet with people to talk about AVC? or Seth Godin? or TechCrunch?I feel like all of the local startup and tech events are basically the superset of people who love AVC/TechCrunch/PaulGraham/MarkSuster/etc.I feel like there’s something still not quite right about Everywhere concept — or, maybe seeing all the enthusiasm from people, I’m missing something.Of course, if YOU were going to attend each of the events, I could see that as a bit more appealing.Am I the only one asking these questions? I did a quick scan of the comments, and didn’t see anyone else wondering about it (on here, that is — the question also came up on an entrepreneur/startup list I’m on)…

  42. RWK: disruptive tech/guerrilla

    Whoa. I dont know about the 5,000 blog posts… but i sure coudn’t stop reading all 130 comments! Mine is 131. o_O

  43. Mike O'Horo

    I love this idea, and enthusiastically visited the Meetups Everywhere page. I even volunteered to be the Organizer. Then, the posted date belatedly registered in my brain and my energy dropped a number of notches. Who thought that Saturday of the 4th of July weekend would be a good day to get anyone to pay attention to business stuff? It’s hard to imagine a day less likely to compete for anyone’s attention.

  44. Donna Brewington White

    Strictly by definition, Lancaster has both these. (I’ve got a thing for the Amish.)

  45. Carl Rahn Griffith

    Have to disagree, Charlie.Surely you are thinking of Sheffield, Yorkshire, England!Fred?;-)

  46. fredwilson

    good questions charliei can’t answer it right now

  47. Tereza

    Hey Charlie how come with your 18 comments a day you couldn’t shimmy Lancaster onto the list?;-)

  48. Donna Brewington White

    Thanks for the enlightenment, Charlie.Painted public pianos — what a happy thought. (Found an article on Google after reading your comment.)Several years back, drove through Lancaster on a whim (long story) hoping to catch a glimpse of an Amish community — but arrived too late in the evening. Found a convenience store and a pretty good cross-section of the population described above. But, alas, no Amish folk.I did hear of an Amish entrepreneur just outside of Lancaster — an organic farmer — whose only concessions to “technology” are a telephone for order-taking and a generator to refrigerate a few items — also uses FedEx. Generates revenue close to $2 million. Pretty fascinating. http://bit.ly/9at19GWonder if he’s game for a meetup.