Voted Off the Island, er, Townhall
For a moment there I thought it was something I’d said — except I hadn’t said anything yet! When I was kicked out of the “What the Stimulus Package Means to Small Business” Townhall meeting this afternoon, it felt like the Web equivalent of being voted off the island. 
One minute I was adjusting my webcam camera angle. The next minute I was booted out of the Townhall website.
Turns out, there was such HUGE demand to attend the Townhall meeting that it brought down the technology service being used for the meeting. Three hundred participants were expected. Instead, I understand there were over 1,000 attempted connections almost at once.
Consequently, the Townhall I was supposed to speak at today did not happen and will be rescheduled at a later date.
As David Damore (@Admore) pointed out to me, there is obviously large pent-up demand on this topic: “Govt and how it affects small business. Such huge demand for guidance the site crashed.”
Luckily the organizers had set up the “hash-tag” system so we were able to communicate among ourselves as we all tried to figure out what was happening. The hash-tag system simply means that we went to Twitter Search and searched for the tag that had been set up in advance to communicate on Twitter about the Townhall: #sbth. People sent and received Twitter messages with that hash-tag in them. That way we could stay up to date on what was going on. It was a nice communications back-channel.
I really have to tip my hat to the great folks at Intuit who arranged the event – pioneering something cutting edge. They’re very entrepreneurial – willing to take risks and try out a third-party service provider and do something exciting and new. That kind of entrepreneurial spirit is rare in a very large company. I can’t wait until this is rescheduled!
So, two updates for you:
(1) When there is a new date for the Townhall meeting, I will post it again.
(2) As David suggested, there seems to be a lot of interest. So I will get busy and write an article about the Stimulus Plan and how it affects small businesses in the meantime.
Founder of Strategic Sales & Marketing
CEO of Journyx
Intuit is trying to not only engage small business and bring us great information and experts to learn from, they’re also trying to show us how we can use the web to engage folks in new ways.
Give them credit for that, even if it didn’t go quite as planned this time around. They’ll get there, and they’ll take us along for the ride when they do.
Thanks for trying…. and don’t stop trying!
Thanks Anita! We were super bummed that it didn’t work out today but we’re definitely planning to re-schedule. The demand for this info is really tremendous and we’ll continue to bring together resources and people to help folks understand it.
Thank you for the update, Anita.
I was a little bummed out when the Townhall discussion crashed, but will link up when it is rescheduled, for sure!
The Franchise King
Joel Libava
Like I said, I can’t wait to reschedule, Kira. Thanks to Intuit for leading the charge on this.
Anita
Hi Anita
Now with all this description of what happened, I’ll be sure to attend the next attempt!!
I like the stuff I see Intuit doing. Very cool.
On the backchannel comment: I love those hashtags and little codes that organizers/conferences use. If you don’t know the code, you miss all sorts of interesting things. I wonder if there’s any underground site that lists all the cool happenings that get hashcodes?
I was caught Anita. I thought you are really kicked off. Hehehe. Anyway, surprised with the power of hash tags!
Ah, what a shame.
Hopefully it will reschedule and be bigger and better! Will look forward to reading your article Anita, while we wait for a reschedule.
I look forward to hear about the next attempt to have a virtual townhall meeting. It was fun to test out the tech. system.
Have attended any meetings in your town lately?
I was trying to get on and saw lots of crazy things happening all of a sudden. It isn’t all that bad, however, to find out that the reason you weren’t able to proceed – is because triple the expected attendence showed up! I’ll be there next time.
Hi TJ, yes the hashtags are pretty cool. And in this case it really came in handy, as we had no idea what was going on. But discovered the issue in 2 minutes thru hashtags.
Anita
I loved what @Kirasw told me was her quote for that day – after they realized it wasn’t going to work: “sometimes when you’re on the cutting edge, you fall off.”
Too bad about it not going on as planned. Looking forward to the rescheduled event!
Can hardly wait for it to be re-scheduled. I’m also looking forward to Anita’s article.
So many of our readers at Area’s Best Businesses are looking for information about the stimulus package and what it means to their small business. Anita, we look forward to your take.
We’ve got a new date for the Stimulus Plan Small Business Town Hall – Thursday March 12, 12n PT, 3PM ET
Follow along on Twitter with #SBTH
To join this live online event:
Go to
Enter your first name, last name and email address
Enter password “pass”
Click “Join Event”
1practicalgal of Small Business United:
Is the webinar between 3 – 4 PM? I will attend the webinar, The Power of Personal Branding: Bulletproof Your Business & Supercharge Your Career by Becoming a Rock Star Thought Leader in Your Industry by Larry Genkin at 4 PM.