Ross Swartzendruber owns Black Sheep Advertising, Inc, a full-service advertising agency and cultural management consultancy based in Salem. After founding Mid-Valley Video Festival in 2005 and developing Cherry City Music Festival and Mix-n-Mash, Ross realized the value of social media for crowd-building in addition to traditional promotional vehicles. This led to initializing Salem Beer and Blog, Ignite Salem and the formation of Salem Creative Network, which provides creative solutions for social innovation.
When's he's not organizing events or spelunking Wordpress for his vast online media empire, he enjoys raising his children, gardening and traveling.

As an undergrad at OSU, I quickly came to the realization that networking increases proportionally to the amount of alcohol and funny hats present at social events.

This lesson was reinforced repeatedly over the past 20 years with my involvement in business, non-profit and technology organizations throughout the Willamette Valley.

Each time I attended various networking groups, like Young Professionals, Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, Business After Hours, Full Moon Society, the Pint, Teleport, SMUG, D3, Art Spark, Ignite, Beer and Blog, Oregon Film Festival Directors and Oregon Media Professionals Association, I meticulously noted the effects of creativity and alcohol availability on network node bonding strength and longevity.

My presentation will describe the methodology used and resulting data from my research conducted during these social networking events.

Also, the data will be extrapolated for use in online environment efforts to increase attendance and network bonding strength for participants planning events in real life.