IT Martini was created three years ago when the opportunities for IT professionals to connect in central Ohio were few and far between, says John Bishop.
Today, thanks to Bishop and co-founder Aladin Gohar, IT Martini -- a social and professional gathering for the tech-oriented -- not only has helped build a more robust network around the Columbus area, but has caught on in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Indianapolis, with more cities on the way.
"If you go back to 2008, it was a different kind of environment for professionals and for technology professionals beyond that," Bishop says. "And what I noticed in conjunction with Aladin Gohar was that there weren't a lot of opportunities for technology professionals to meet each other and engage one another as an industry."
That summer, Bishop and Gohar held the very first IT Martini. Two hundred people showed up to hear a speaker, socialize and connect. This month, IT Martini is celebrating its third year with a
May 26 event expected to draw 1,000.
The format for an IT Martini event is straightforward, Bishop says.
"We try to stay as interactive as possible," he explains. "So we put on panel discussions and we tend to have panel discussions run concurrently with the social aspect of the event in a separate, segregated space. That way, people who want to be social can participate in the social aspect of the event, and if they want to participate in a little bit more of a discussion, presentation, industry-best-practice type of activity we have that for our attendees as well."
As IT Martini began to catch on locally, a sponsor in 2009 asked that an event be held in Cincinnati, Bishop says.
"And then last year we started to do not just Columbus and Cincinnati, but Cleveland and Indianapolis."
An IT Martini in Nashville is in the works, and there also seems to be interest in West Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin, Bishop says.
Source: John Bishop, IT Martini
Writer: Gene Monteith