“Lean” Eric Ries In Vancouver

I love the power of Twitter. Yesterday, Ubertor co-founder Mike Stephenson noticed that Eric Ries was tweeting about his arrival at Whistler’s Four Seasons. Mike mentioned it to me and I messaged Eric through Twitter to say hi and see if Mike and I could meet him for a drink if he had a few free moments. Eric graciously responded and agreed to meet up in the lounge of the Four Seasons Whistler before his dinner meeting. So, I jumped in my car and drove straight to Whistler, picked up Mike and went to find Eric.

It was a great opportunity to meet up with Eric and have a chat one on one (well, two on one) about what he was up to as well as what we were working on. (Side Note: Eric is coming to speak in Vancouver next month at the Sutton Place Hotel)

For those that don’t know, Eric Ries:

Eric Ries is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology and the author of the popular entrepreneurship blog Startup Lessons Learned. He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. In 2010, he became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School.

He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content.

I think this is a great example of how you can use Twitter, to engage in a conversation online and to meet up in real life. Sometimes all you have to do is reach out and ask. Mike and I have had some great success with this as that is how we met Gary Vaynerchuk back before he wrote Crush It, and David Heinemeier Hansson before he joined 37Signals. The internet is a fantastic tool to connect with people and meet up in real life.

(L – R) Michael Stephenson, Stephen Jagger and Eric Ries @ Four Seasons Whistler

(Interesting note; Eric and 5 other blogger/social media experts were flown in to the Four Seasons Whistler from various locations in the US as part of the Four Seasons effort to raise awareness of the hotel and the Whistler area. Great idea by the Four Seasons!)