http://www.alainguillot.com/anna-mcafee/

I have been part of the Montreal Local LinkedIn community for about two years. Naturally, I was curious about how it got started. My curiosity led to Anna McAfee.

Anna is from Coffs Harbour, a coastal city of New South Wale, Australia. A small city with an estimated population of over 75,000 people. 

At that time, Anna used to work in the recruitment industry and that's why she joined LinkedIn.

With a thirst to create communities, back in May 2017 she decided to ask her LinkedIn connection if they wanted to meet offline. The response was positive, so she created the hashtag #LinkedInLocal. On the day of the event, at a local coffee shop, early in the morning, 16 people showed up.

What caught Anna by surprise was that individuals in other international communities showed some interest in doing something similar. Alexandra Galviz in London, Erik Eklund in Brussels, Swish Goswami in NYC, and Ryan Troll in Washington were some of the first organizers who took the LinkedIn Local hashtag and started creating events in their own communities.

Today, #LinkedInLocal touches the lives of over 300,000 humans, in 650+ cities, in 92 countries. Impressive, especially for a community of volunteers.