Nexus Maine - April 1

Deals, Events, Meetups, and Moose!

Hi everyone, welcome to the third installment of the Nexus Maine newsletter.

What a great last two weeks it has been. We saw a lot of Nexus Maine firsts including our first community sourced deal opportunities, our first ‘unofficial’ meetup in Kennebunk, and the launch of our first official event!

More on all of that below… but as always, if you know anyone great for this group, please make sure you send them this invite link.

Baxter the moose having coffee with his friends in a coffee shop

What’s in this newsletter

• Upcoming Events

• Member Spotlight

• Slack Spotlight

Events

• April 19 - How to grow your consulting business via referrals (without publicly marketing yourself)

  • Register Here

• April 22 - Hussey Leadership Institute: AI Keynote

  • Register Here

• April 24 - 26 - Agents of Change Digital Marketing Summit

  • Event Registration - Organized by Nexus Maine member Rich Brooks

• 5/14 - 17 - Maine Startup Week. Save the date!

  • StartupMaine.org

  • We are hosting a Nexus Maine coffee meetup, stay tuned!

• 5/14 - Maine Technology Users Group Annual IT Summit and Trade Show

  • Event Registration: Reserve Your Spot!

  • Become a Sponsor: Join as a Sponsor!

  • Reach out to our very own Nick Sawchuck for more!

• 5/17- Untangling Technology: Examining Your Personal Relationship To Your Device

  • Register Here

• 5/22 - Blockchain Maine Q2 Meetup

  • Bitcoin Pizza Day! Location (Portland TBD)

    • Meetup.com | LinkedIn Group

• 5/23 - Blue w(AI)ve Venture Showcase

  • Register Here

Member Spotlight: Josh Frank

We love showcasing our members, so please enjoy learning more about one of our incredible community members.

I’m happy to help with questions about all things Product (Product Management, Product Development Processes, Product Strategy, etc.). I currently have an unexpected gap in my client schedule, so please reach out if you or a company you know needs an experienced Product leader to fill a part-time, interim gap. Find out more at Mythic Insight. I’ve created some free office hours specifically for our Nexus Maine community, so please feel free to grab a spot and pick my brain! https://savvycal.com/iamjoshfrank/nexus-office-hours

• Background: Started my career in the late 90s via formal training in Design + being self-taught in web development. Remember Geocities? <crickets> I taught myself HTML and CSS by looking at source code of early sites around the web and hand-coding my own. Spent ~1 decade freelancing as a design and web generalist before specializing in UX and Product. Have spent the last 14 years building and leading Product and Design teams within small companies.
  

• Currently: Co-owner and Chief Product Officer at Mythic Insight, a two-person Fractional consultancy. I offer Fractional Product Leadership for companies typically going through a change or growth event; that need to level-up the existing Product team; have to fill an interim leadership gap; or want to hire a less-than-full-time Product leader. My partner Robert Prehn does the same on the Engineering side.
  

• Life: In August 2021, bought and moved into an extremely old, Cape-style farm house in Dayton after 13 amazing years in Chicago. Married, with 2 kids (nearly-17, a total game nerd; and nearly-13, an aspiring professional soccer player), a dog and a cat (each named after favorite fiction characters: Roland, as in the Gunslinger; and Mogget, servant of the Abhorsen, respectively).
  

• Fun & Fitness: I grew up a highly competitive swimmer in land-locked Illinois, dreaming of learning to surf. I’ve only taken two lessons the past two seasons but I’m hoping to become proficient over the next two summers. Water is a peaceful, calming presence in my life – the draw of the ocean was always there, and it’s no wonder we bought a house that sits alongside an old mill pond. I also train in Olympic Weightlifting (I’m very mediocre!), and I’m always looking for partners to lift with me in our garage gym or at nearby York County Barbell in North Berwick.

Our First Official Nexus Maine Event

Calling all freelancers!

We have organized a virtual session that is free to attend. The session is “How to grow your consulting business via referrals (without publicly marketing yourself)” and will be presented by a mutual friend who we know delivers amazing content.

This is a new experiment for us, so please let us know any feedback or ideas you have for other events.

Register Here (and please share with any of your freelancer friends too!)

Slack Spotlight

The Nexus Maine Slack group is where the action is. We now have over 166 members! Want to meet like minded professionals? Looking for business advice? Need a referral for a free-lancer to help your biz? We’ve got a slack channel for that…If you aren’t there, we’d love you to join. Just follow this link.

This week some of the top discussions revolved around:

• Our first community sourced deal opportunities (2 of them!) bubbled up in our #investors channel. Take a look here

• A request for EV charging experts to help with market research. (followed by a discussion on the future of EVs coming soon). Chime in here

• Offering product management, leadership, and consulting services. View here

• A request to interview platform engineers for user/buyer research. View here

Thank you for making this community special, everyone! See you on Slack.

George & Jimmy