Note: With this year’s first Big Series event, Big Kansas City, just around the corner, we invited Big Series ticket holder John Jackovin of Des Moines to share why he’ll be joining us at each of our major events this year.
About the author: John Jackovin has been a technology entrepreneur since the age of 24 when he developed technology for hardware distributors. Ever since, Jackovin and his partner Tom Love have been developing new technology startups. He is currently focused solely on the development of their new company, Bawte.
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Big Omaha 2011 speaker Gary Vaynerchuk (left) answers attendee Brian Ardinger’s question onstage.
If you are like me when you read something or talk to someone you immediately add a phrase or word to a song, title, proper noun or really anything. Things pop into my head that are loosely correlated to what I am reading or hearing. For example when I first met Ben Milne and he said the name of his company was called Dwolla I immediately thought of the city Kuala Lumpur the capital of Malaysia simply because Dwolla and Kuala rhyme. Dwolla Lumpur has a ring to it, don’t you think? I end up inserting what people say into poems, songs, city names (of course), and much more. It is as much of a talent as it is a curse.
The same sort of thing happened when I was asked to write a piece that answers the question, “Why do you keep attending The Big Series events?” My mind immediately went to a joke I heard once. I am certain I will butcher it, but here goes…
This guy is absolutely down on his luck. He has no money and is waaaay in debt. So he turns to God and asks, “God, please let me win the lottery.” The next day the lottery comes and goes and this guy doesn’t win. His situation is getting worse with every passing day. So each day leading up to the next lottery drawing the man prays to God asking to win the lottery. And when that day finally comes, nothing. He does not win the lottery. This guy is now absolutely distraught and gets angry. He gets down on his knees and says to God, “God, why do you hate me?!” Suddenly, God appears over the man and His voice booms down upon the man and says, “Hey buddy, ya gotta help and at least buy a freakin’ ticket!” So back to my loose correlations. The moral of that joke/story is that you can’t win if you don’t play.
How does this relate to The Big Series? I consider the most valuable component of these events to be the networking. The unexpected meetings, random discussions, unplanned beer drinking moments, these are the things that can make the most impact to an entrepreneur. These casual encounters simply can’t happen if you don’t attend. You can stream the presentations sitting in your underwear in your basement, but you can’t stream the network of people that will be at these events. This is why The Big Series is well worth my time and my money. So, I hope to see you at Big Kansas City in a couple weeks. And if we are talking and I suddenly space off, it’s not that I’m not interested. Rather, I have probably created a wicked cool song out of something you have said and I am currently singing it in my head.
Credits: John Jackovin photo by Anna Jones | Art of Photography and Phillip Harder. Photo by Malone & Company / Big Omaha.
