It all started with a conversation with my friend, colleague and mentor Donna:
Donna asked, “so you’re going to the RSA Conference, why aren’t you speaking there?”
“All the people would want to hear me, are all busy with speaking to their customers,” I replied, “We really don’t have a great place to gather.”
“Well, then you create the space,” she replied.
I also had quite a few chats with colleagues; CEOs, Investors and CMOs who expressed how challenging it was to identify and grow the next generation of go to market leadership in their organizations. And the up and comers expressed to me the difficulty of getting either formal or informal mentoring and advice.
That was the really beginning of the Go To Market Dojo. Now, about 6 months later, we’ve had 4 meet-ups, connected with more than 400 Go To Market professionals, and had some of the brightest minds in the Silicon Valley as panelists and guests.
Our mission is simple yet ambitious; “To Create a Community of Practice Dedicated to Go To Market Excellence”. A place to network with like minded leaders and learn and share best practices. We are creating both a physical space in Mountain View where we are holding events like meet-ups, workshops and mentoring sessions, and now we have just opened our free virtual community at www.gotomarketdojo.com , so join today if you please.
We even have a set of 6 founding principles –
- Create a Community Space
- Share and Learn, Don’t Sell
- Be Practitioner Focused
- Recognize Achievement
- Engage Domain Experts
- Excellence, Practice, Collaboration
What’s in the future? We are looking for partners to begin Dojo branches outside of Silicon Valley – email the Dojo Business Manager Maggie if you are interested. We are planning drop in hours at the Dojo too! And in the Spring we are expecting to hold our first ever Go To Market Basho, a whole day event dedicated to networking and learning and sharing. How cool will that be – Details to come in early 2018.
Until then, hope to see you in person or virtually at the Dojo!
Ken