Last night we held our first ever Rent an Expert event. Despite some initial logistical confusion since so many people had come to offer their expertise, things worked out pretty well. We are going to take August off so we can focus on building the Social Media Club, but will be doing this again in the middle of September, so pay attention and look for the announcement.

All in all, everyone seemd to come away with some value and everyone had a fun time with our experiment. Thanks again to Joel Sacks and CNET for providing us with the venue, Rate It All for buying the beers, MindJet for donating the copy of MindManager, Stormhoek for the wine with limited edition Hugh Macleod signed prints and most importantly, my wonderful fiance Kristie Wells. Not only did she take care of all of the logistical details, she also did all the shopping, prepped the venue and kicked in some of her own cash so we could have extra munchies.

A few highlights:

• We raised $140 which was split by an open ballott between the 2 highest vote getters, Interplast and the Human Rights Campaign. Next time we are going to a little extra work and select a few related charities such as EFF, Creative Commons and the Internet Archive.
• A few lucky folks got their name’s drawn and won one of the limited edition Hugh Macleod Stormhoek prints
• Neil Drumm won a Social Media Club T-Shirt
• Cathryn Hudricka won the copy of Mind Manager!
• Special thanks to Rod Seddigh for picking the winners.

We hosted 3 rounds of 30 minute expert sessions, including

• Shel Holtz on podcating
• Eugene Eric Kim on how to do great BBQ
• Lawrence Coburn on Search Engine Optimization
• Nick O’Neil on blogging with Vox
• Rod Seddigh (age 4 11/12) on using Celestia to explore the galaxy
• Tom Blosson on working with MindMaps
• Cathryn Hudricka on multiple creativity, marketing and PR topics
• Neil Drumm on getting the most from Drupal

All in all, it was a great event, we learned a lot, we had some fun and we are really looking forward to the next one in September.