As mentioned in an earlier blog post, the Origin of the MeetingWave Idea was as a client generation tool.  I came up with the idea while an associate at a patent law firm in NYC when I found myself traveling on business and often eating alone in my hotel room or in the hotel restaurant, watching others eating alone. How great it would be if I could have started connecting with some of these people during my downtime to meet new clients or business contacts. As you can see below, we are starting to see attorneys post invites for networking meetings on the site, with a broad range of topics:

If you are involved with a startup or small to mid-sized technology company and are looking to discuss patent and other intellectual property issues you are facing, it would be great to meet. I bring extensive experience in all aspects of intellectual property law and would happily buy lunch so we can discuss your needs and questions.

Fire away all your questions on (BE/EU) intellectual property over lunch

People who are interested in getting analytical support services or seeking vendors for providing Licensing support, IP & Competitive Intelligence support

We lawyers should meet to form a network to better serve consumers in Southern Illinois

Free and open discussion about employment law issues; get free legal advice; there is no obligation to continue with / employ / hire the lecturing attorney

The Pre-Paid Legal Webinar

I also suggest posting general business or social networking invites for client generation and making new business contacts, such as:

Business/Social Networking Coffee

Would like to meet with any Yale grads working in Stamford, CT area

Industry Networking Lunch/Potential Business Deal

Business Networking Over Coffee

In view of some recent law firm layoffs, MeetingWave may also help lawyers find their next job (See, Find the Right Job or Opportunity Using MeetingWave).

Regards, John

Founder, MeetingWave.com

Someone recently reviewed MeetingWave and, not seeing many invites posted yet in his area, he stated “I believe you may have a ’chicken and the egg’ syndrome.”

Yes, we do have a “chicken and egg” problem. This is particularly true because we are a location-based site for the most part (although some users post invites for Skype calls or online chats). We need interesting people posting interesting invites, and interesting members accepting those invites and getting approved, in every location we serve. Not easy being us.

The good news is the “hen house” is finally built and working. Now, we can begin focusing more energy on marketing the site across the US. We are currently testing ad campaigns in cities such as NYC and DC and are seeing the number of invites posted increasing everywhere. However, we have a lot of work to do and we appreciate your patience and support while we gain traction where you are.

While we continue working to draw more people to our site, any member can post one or more recurring invites, so your meeting invite can stay active over time while more people search for opportunities in your area.  In addition, you can set up Meeting Alerts from the Advanced Search page based on your search criteria (e.g., zip code, key words, purpose, etc.) and MeetingWave will notify you of any new invites meeting your search criteria in the future. You can set up multiple Meeting Alerts including alerts near your office and near home.

In addition to posting invites and setting up “Meeting Alerts” you can also help us by notifying your contacts about MeetingWave. Try importing your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo or LinkedIn. This makes it easier for you to invite your contacts to your meetings and you can send a note to them about MeetingWave.

As mentioned above, we have further improvements in our pipeline. You’ll be seeing design improvements in the coming weeks. Let us know if you have any feedback on how to improve MeetingWave. We appreciate your support and patience.

Regards John

Founder, MeetingWave.com