Categories: Articles

Flash Cow – The New Mash-Up Meet-Up

Everything has a cool name. When I leave an audio comment to someone’s Podcast from my car, I call it a Carcast. When I leave a non-standard voice mail message, I call it a VoiceMailCast. If someone creates an online channel for a specific topic, we call it Slivercasting.
Enter the Flash Cow.
What is a Flash Cow?
I’ve been doing them for years. A Flash Cow is simply an ad-hoc event. I took the notion of a Flash Mob and blended it with the Purple Cow. This past Tuesday I ran a Flash Cow event for my Montreal Business Book Club that featured Heath Slawner who spoke about the power of persuasion. We had close to 80 guests (and an additional 30 on a waiting list).
What makes this a Flash Cow?
It’s a spur-of-the-moment and trigger-based on what type of content or speaker falls into my lap. From there the only form of communicating about the event is here on the Blog and one email blast to my personal network. I take all reservations on a first-come, first-serve basis. There is always a charge (usually about $20), with 100% of the money going to charity (Twist Image underwrites the costs – if there are any).
It’s become a lot of fun – there’s no pressure, they’re casual, people network and we all do something good for our community while learning.
Have you done a Flash Cow of you own? I’d love to hear about it.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.