About Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs

Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs
Empowering Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs to Succeed, Together

Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs is a business-focused membership organization dedicated to developing a robust ecosystem supporting professionals and entrepreneurs in the greater metro Atlanta area who want to leverage the web for their businesses.

Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs is a peer-mentoring and relationship building group for bright and enthusiastic people with a shared interest in using the web for business. In addition to building relationships, members learn about business strategies as well as the technologies required to launch and operate business on the web.

A critical aspect of our group is that, while members benefit significantly, they also contribute periodically participating in events and helping other members in a one-on-one basis. These interaction results in a cohesive group where members share valuable experience and develop strong relationships based on mutual respect and esteem.

2007 is not 1997
Back in the dotcom days, it took millions of dollars investment to build a world-class website, and we all know what happened to most of those investments! Today is different. Today, with entry-level hosting available for $10/month and open-source applications and frameworks like Drupal and Ruby on Rails available for use with absolutely no license fees, it is now possible for someone with only passion, a reasonable level of intelligence, a day job initially to pay their personal bills, and access to information to launch a successful web business, or to augment their existing web business. Sure, investment helps but is no longer required to get started.

An ecosystem makes it easier
Although it is possible for one person to create a world-class web-business in a vacuum, it's a lot easier when with help from others. Help such as inexpensive workshops designed to bring you up to speed as fast as possible. Events designed for you to get to know a group of peers who all want to help rise the tide to float all boats, a group that you can call your friends. That's what Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs strives to catalyze for the greater Metro Atlanta area and especially for its members.

Member benefits: meetings, workshops, and more
One of the main benefits for members is to get to know and build relationships with other members. Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs is all about events to empower these relationships as well as events designed for learning. Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs will host general interest monthly meetings for the membership at large, specialty workshops for small groups of members designed to bring people up to speed in some technical or business area, and conferences designed to bring everyone in the community together for one or more days, Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs plans, produces, facilitates and/or supports these kind of events and more. Many events will be open to non-members at a higher fee than members, but some events will be limited to active paying members.

In addition to events, Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs plans to offer shared services that are beyond the reach of individuals. For example we are exploring group health insurance for an additional monthly fee and to facilitate deployment workshops, and a full year of web hosting.

Member contributions create the most value
Just as in college when one of best ways to build lasting relationships was to work together on projects, members who contribute their time and expertise are the ones who get the most out of Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs. Whether they lead a workshop, collaborate on an open-source project, hold a position on a committee, or participate in a panel discussion, they will benefit most and they will help great that ecosystem which we speak of.

Focus: entrepreneurs & small-to-medium business
Although Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs doesn't limit membership by any specific profile, it does favor entrepreneurs as well as people in small-to-medium sized businesses vs. employees of Fortune 1000-sized businesses. Atlanta has always been very supportive of large business with significant financial resources; Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs is focused on helping the little guy. That said, interested employees of Fortune 1000 businesses are more than welcome to attend meetings and become a member if they desire.

The atlanta-web.org website
One goal of Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs is for members to create a world class website that provides benefits to its members. From helping members find employees to outside events, and everything in between, the goal is for the atlanta-web.org website to provide members both with a resource and opportunities to work together on a shared web project. Today the website is not much but our goals are to change that over time.

Soliciting our group's members
One of the more common reasons people choose to join business networking groups is they have products and/or services they want to sell to its members. However, our participating members don't want to be put in the uncomfortable position of being "sold" as it makes it much harder to form strong positive relationship. As such, we have taken great pains to ensure that we have a NO-SOLICITATION policy. That means our members join to contribute for the benefit of all, not to sell products and services to our memebers for own exclusive benefit.

Our members can certainly do business with one another but only when the buyer approaches the seller. But we are not sticklers for this, you don't have to worry about any "solicitation police", it's only a problem when our members feel pressure or our events and web sites starts to feel commercial. If you are a member and feel like you someone is violating this policy please email organizer(at)atlanta-web(dot)org with your concerns.

'Friends'
Of course, there are other groups that exist with parallel missons and since the first priority of Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs is to support and grow the Atlanta web-business ecosystem that means supporting other groups having similar goals whenever possible. These other groups are clearly independent of Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs and are simply associated in the guise of "friend" status and occassional joint events. At this time Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs has several groups we consider to be "friends" such as Atlanta PHP, Atlanta Drupal, Atlanta Python, Atlanta Ruby on Rails, and NetSquared. (If you are a member or an organizer of such a group and you see synergy between your group and Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs, email organizer@atlanta-web.org with your ideas.)

An ever evolving, learning group
Although we explain the group, its activities, and member benefits here, one thing we don't plan to do is stagnate. We are constantly evolving and growing, based on organizer's observations and member feedback. If you have feedback or ideas, please send to organizer@atlanta-web.org.

Our Mission
The Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs's mission is to be the leading peer-support and development organization for owners, managers and developers of entrepreneurs and small to medium sized businesses in the greater metro Atlanta area.

Our Vision
The Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs envisions a group of smart, supportive, and high achieving business and technology leaders with significant knowledge and experience to share with their fellow members and where all members use internal and external resources to help each other build successful businesses onlin.

Our Values
The Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs Group values members of integrity who along with their mental capability share a passion for building successful businesses online that contribute to society. Our greatest enrichment will come from helping other members to succeed.

Join today!
If you are already convinced that our vision is great for both you and for the greater Metro Atlanta area, please support us my joining the group today.