LA Times Article About Industry Moms

Megan Underwood sent this in:

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-ig-moms7-2008dec07,0,1362581.story

Mommy hood as Networking - only in LA...

Getting Bigger & Stronger

Hey Industry Mamas,

Our group is already 100 strong!

We held our inaugural planning meeting on Nov 16th and started to define what specific needs this group will address.

Our apologies if you wanted attend. We tried to get the word out as best we could via e-mail and postings on this blog.

Eleven great women attended the meeting at Lisa Cole's house in Glassel Park.
We were all very excited to be a part of the launch of this great venture and agreed that we like the name Industry Mamas for our new group.
Lisa has purchased the domain name and we're on our way to figuring out how best to serve our new community both online and up close & personal.
We also agreed that we wanted to keep the group exclusive to "The Industry" and, like Booby Brigade, membership should be by invitation only.

Some of the things we want to see the group provide:
- Nurturing community within the industry.
- Place to post job needs and leads (on the blog or website, NOT as a mass e-mail blitz or personal request)
-Great online resource that's easily searchable by topic/category (essentially a place to organize all the great advice & online resources that get shared on places like Booby Brigade every day).
- "Members" section that introduces people and includes photos and an "About Me" (maybe even what you want to bring to or get out of the group). This can have a link to your professional website, personal blog etc…
- Babysitting co-op / Pool childcare resources
- Social – Networking for moms and socializing for babies. Ie, Moms Nights Out
- Events - We talked about having a charitable or event based focus for a mixer (IE Blood drive at Children's Hospital, $2 Clothing Swap for Charity, to support DEC – Drug Endangered Children. Maybe 4 times a year??
- Resource for weekend Mommy & Me events.

We are also knocking around the idea for a standing monthly Stuff Swap. It would be fantastic to be able to bring everything we no longer need and do a big Yard Sale / Swap with the remainders going to a charity. If it were once a month, nobody would feel pressured to go every time and we wouldn't have crap (I mean awesome baby stuff) sitting around our homes.

We still have things to iron out and much more planning to do including the day-to-day of operation responsibilities and expenses. As it may be impossible to answer everyone's emails individually at this point, we ask that you visit the blog site for updates, etc.

If you have other mommy friends in the industry who would be interested in joining this community – please have them send an e-mail to Lisa Cole: lisa@jerkswithunderwoods.com with the subject line : NEW MEMBER and the following details: Name, job description, age of children.

We hope to go live with a website in late January and will send another e-mail to all members with further updates. We appreciate your patience as we continue to formulate the game plan. We're working moms, but committed to having this thing fly.

We're so glad to have connected with all 100 of you!

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to you and yours.

Warmly,

Aliyah Silverstein & Lisa Cole