SOUTHFIELD ? Oakland County hosted its first tech248 networking event January 20 at Blue Water Technologies in Southfield, attracting about 100 professionals, far more than organizer Greg Doyle said the nascent technology networking group expected.

Tech248, the brainchild of Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, also kicked off a partnership with MITechNews.Com and its media partners, giving an estimated 4,000 tech companies in Oakland County a great way to generate a buzz.

Tuesday?s event featured an overview of Blue Water Technologies, an audio/video integration and events planning company. The presentation was followed by an update from Jason Raznick, Founder and CEO of Benzinga.

?I think it was really successful,? Doyle said. ?When we set these up thinking 20 people coming to meet up. Over 90 people in the room and it was over flowing.?

Afterwards, Doyle said he heard from a number of people who had attended who told him it was a great networking experience where they met a lot of interesting people.

Doyle said Oakland County is home to about 2,000 tech companies with two or more employees. He said there are 2,000 more single-person tech companies. Tech248 hopes to help them all connect.

?We?ll see a lot of innovative products and partnerships coming of it,? he said.

For starters, Doyle would like all these Oakland County technology companies to provide tech248 with their Twitter handles so all their Tweets can be featured on the tech248 Twitter feed. Tech248 also is hoping to feature 3-minute video backgrounders from these companies that will be included on a UTube channel.

What?s more, MITechNews.Com and its media partners also provide tech248 companies with an outlet for their news. By submitting press releases to at [email protected]

, Oakland County technology companies will reach a dozen Michigan technology news outlets at one time.

Four technology news websites, three technology news podcast channels, two eNewsletters, an Internet radio station, a Clear Channel radio station, and the Michigan Talk Radio network comprise the distribution list. They include Oakland County?s Prosper newsletter, MITechNews.com, News/Talk 760?s (WJR-AM) Internet Advisor show (InternetAdvisor.net), Michipreneur.com, and ITintheD.com. Collectively, they reach more than 133,000 tech news consumers each month.

?We?re looking to cover what?s happening in Oakland County, one of the hot beds for technology activity in Michigan,? said Mike Brennan, editor and publisher of MITechNews.com. ?That not only includes what?s happening with Oakland County?s technology startups, but also any companies developing great technology products.?

A second tech248 is scheduled for Feb. 20 at Rochester Hills Production Company in Auburn Hills. To register, Click on EventBrite.Com