Why IRL, Why Now?

When Dawn and I had this grand plan of Support for Special Needs.com we talked about what we liked about communities online. We talked about how we loved to make connections, share information and resources and how we like to expand our friendship base.

We are certainly making that happen here. We’ve both been able to get to know people here, build friendships and give and get support and we hope that everyone here that is engaged feels the same! Our little Support for Special Needs is growing up. Way back when (a year ago) when we were brainstorming what we wanted to do to make the site unique we talked about turning what is happening online to offline. That was the day we dreamt up some kind of official function we could replicate in cities offline. At the time we didn’t really know what they would look like but we did know that we wanted people to meet, to learn, to connect. We wanted people to enjoy what we’ve enjoyed with people we’ve met online – to connect in real life.

The timing is right and we’re set.

The IRL Connect events were official. We had a logo, a timeline and we had a date! We’re thrilled to announce (again) that our very first IRL Connect event is March 5th in Atlanta. It’s focus is Navigating Relationships in the special needs world relating to personal, healthcare and educational needs. It’s a casual setting with lunch, time for connecting. Here’s specific information on the Atlanta, March 5 event. We welcome our Presenting Sponsor of the event and site contributor, Kirk Martin with Celebrate Calm.

We’re also in the throes of planning an IRL Connect event pre-BlogHer (for August 3) for the Comma Bloggers (my term because I introduce myself as a “Blogger, Special Needs.”). We hope that if you are going to BlogHer you will sign up on our list to make it easier to identify each other (we’ll provide a list electronically before BlogHer). We’re working on a couple of topics for that event with speakers just for us and we’ll let you know when we iron everything out.

I just wanted to thank all of you community members. Thank you for sharing here, for helping each other (and me) and for allowing us to serve the special needs community in a different way through our IRL Connect events.