Mike Stopforth

In January last year Dave Duarte and I kicked off the 27dinner social networking movement. From the start my idea was to create a space and a culture that encouraged people from diverse sectors - business people, advertising people, geeks, techies, entrepreneurs, investors, artists, etc. - to come together once a month to share ideas and innovations around the ever-changing Web.

Starting off in Johannesburg and Cape Town, the dinners quickly spread to Durban, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth. Generally, people enjoyed them and I considered them a success. Some wonderful stories of relationships and collaborations were born out of them and I’m pretty proud of that.

However, recently my personal enthusiasm (and I think I speak for Dave too) for organising the events has wavered a bit. This is primarily because although they are pretty open, informal dinners they require a certain amount of organisation, personal and financial investment. We have never asked for any money from participants, choosing rather to support the event out of a pure and unbridled passion for the community we are a part of. Sure, it has also been good for building our respective personal profiles, but never the primary motivation.

If they are going to continue growing, spreading and being something worth attending, they need to change hands. Just like a company that is stagnating needs new management, the 27dinners need a fresh vision. I need your help defining that evolution as I think it’s time Dave and I took less of a ‘ownership’ position on our respective iterations of the dinners.

So what is to become of the 27dinner movement? Time to speak up!