On Saturday, August 9, 2009 I had the pleasure of going to my first meet-up with other VA’s in Illinois. I had the pleasure of putting faces to the following names:
Cindy Bruce
Dawn Lawson
Doreen R. Patrick
Kathleen Vargas
Kathy Watkins

If it were not for social networking websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Virtual Assistant Forums, etc., I never would have had the opportunity to meet these amazing women. We are constantly being bombarded with how essential it is to participate on social networking sites that sometimes we forget how important it is to foster these relationships offline (i.e. meetups, phone calls, etc.). This meetup allowed us the chance to accomplish the following:

Share: In life there are various methods one can take in finding a solution to a problem. There are many who are still unfamiliar with the virtual assistant industry (check here if you are one of these people), so it was great to hear stories about how others were able to find clients, handle difficult situations, etc. Life is too short to learn everything through personal experience. Therefore, it helps when you have others willing to share their knowledge in order to prevent you from making unnecessary mistakes... Click here to read the rest of this post at the TargetStars Blog.

The TargetStars Blog is authored by VAF member LaTosha of TargetStars.


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I encourage these events and highly recommend attending one! You will not be disappointed!

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Doreen R. Patrick, MVA, ACS, CIVA
www.virtualbusinesspartners.net

That is so wonderful! I recently met with someone in my area, hi Kim, and it was a great experience to meet and share. I learned so much from her. Since I am so new I felt that I got more from the meeting than maybe she did.

What would really be a great idea (I think so, anyway) would be for meetups all over the country and world for that matter and then share here on the forums what we talked about and learned. I like the blog idea.

Diana

It really sounds like you all came out with a great meet up. Make's me wish there were more VA's in my town.

Let us know if you should have another and tell us all about it. It is so nice to hear about meet ups.

Andrea~

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Action Jackson Virtual Assistant|

I'm an Illinois VA who attended the meetup and I had a fantastic time! As LaTosha said, we were able to share experiences, tools, challenges and quite a few laughs. I am SO glad I went and look forward to going to future meetups. Hopefully our group will grow. I know of other Illinois VAs that I've seen around the boards for quite some time and hope they can make it to the next event.

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Dawn Lawson | At Your Service
http://freelanceadminsupport.com

LaTosha;

You and I have had the opportunity to communicate via Twitter, Skype, etc over the last month preparing for this meet-up but as you state nothing was more inspiring than meeting you and the other ladies that attended our first Illinois Meet-Up.

Meet-ups are a great way to put a face, voice and personality to those 140 characters we are growing accustomed to communicating in these days. The take-away I had from our lunch was: VAs are the greatest most helpful group of colleagues I have had the pleasure of associating with.

VAF has shown this to me during my short time here at the forum but this was re-enforced on Saturday. All of the VAs we met were willing to share their professional and personal experience with each other which not only provides us with information but also inspiration and a sense of belonging.

Thank you Dawn, Doreen, Kathy, Kathy and LaTosha for taking time to meet me and share your experience. I really enjoyed our time and look forward to seeing you and meeting more of our fellow Illinois VAs in the months to come.

If you are considering starting or joining a meet-up group, I suggest to do it and enjoy the experience.

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Cindy
www.eoseasy.comThe Chrysalis Plan

Here it is Ladies:
http://illinoisvirtualassistants.ning.com/

It needs a little dolling up and I'll hopefully complete my profile today , but it is on it's way. Now we can keep everyone up to date on our meetups all in one place.

Oh and by the way...Tess, if you're reading this, none of this would be possible without your wonderful forum! Thank you!!

Dawn

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Dawn Lawson | At Your Service
http://freelanceadminsupport.com