Networking Another Way
Meeting people without swipes or fear, and sharing my reading list
The Teardown
Tuesday :: January 8th, 2019
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Resolve To Be “Better” During 2019
Happy New Year!
BuzzFeed unleashed its annual article highlighting numerous activities and items that will make us better humans during the year. Some of those items involve downloading and using apps to catalyze ordinary tasks such as getting out of bed. Let me give you one easy suggestion: just get the hell out of bed! Everything will work out, I promise. But, don’t believe recent hype — you don’t need to wake up at 4 am. Find your rhythm and stick to it.
My goal for the year: write this newsletter regularly. With that in mind, the next one is on track for January 15th delivery.
Today’s short newsletter is about organizing social events using a decidedly analog solution.
Curating Conversation
Many of us encounter a typical situation: we attend an industry-relevant event and don’t know most people. We’re forced to crawl out of our shells and nervously attempt small-talk. We smile at jokes we don’t like and ask questions about topics we probably don’t care much about. If all goes well, one or two stimulating conversations come out of this type of event.
Sound familiar?
I wrote recently about Greet because the interaction model fascinated me. We often prefer smaller gatherings, but smaller groups are usually composed of friends. New people aren’t ordinary, and sometimes ignored when they tag along with your friends. By contrast, genuinely fresh collections of people don’t materialize out of thin air — they need a catalyst. It’s also already challenging to catch up with people you already know.
Late last year I decided to stake the middle ground. I wanted the cake, and I wanted to stick my face in it as well. The idea was simple: curate a group of people I know, pencil them into a date and location and let them mingle. Many of them wouldn’t know each other, but all of them were directly or tangentially connected to me through my industry — chasing tornadoes with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in Twister — so conversational common-ground was likely.
To start, I pinged a few of the future invitees to gauge interest. All of them liked the idea. Next, I developed the list of lucky souls I wanted to invite. I focused on two key characteristics:
Deep or broad understanding of the industry
Above-average propensity to talk
After some final polishing, I delivered the email and crossed my fingers hoping the message wouldn’t drop like a rock (or spam) in the twenty or so inboxes.
People were intrigued.
Fast-forwarding, the evening of my gathering was fascinating. Various attendees asked me why I was hosting, or if the purpose was driven by corporate overlords. My answer was simple: I wanted to coalesce the really smart people I knew to catch up, and more importantly, socialize their intelligence to each other. With the exception of a few drop-outs, the evening couldn’t have been better. More than one attendee asked me when I plan to schedule another and the answer is: soon.
What I’m Reading
I launched a Slack channel in my last newsletter to further engage with all of you. Following the launch, I’ve created another feature focused on sharing what I read on a day-to-day basis. The relevant channel is called What I’m Reading (#whatimreading). Have a look and join using this link. You’ll notice news articles and other tidbits posted and my goal is to discuss those items with you. Conversations we have will help me generate material for newsletters.
For those curious, the various [free] applications involved in the process are below:
Set up an account on Pocket, a service for link management and consumption.
Set up an account on IFTTT, a platform for automating, well, other platforms. Examples include saving starred Spotify songs to Google sheets, and my use, sending specific Pocket links to Slack.
Finally, you’ll need some extra knowledge about Slack’s underbelly. I won’t dive into the details here. Knowing how to sign up and create a Slack team is the bare minimum.
Finally, create a IFTTT recipe that sends a message link to Slack when a Pocket article is tagged with a specific hashtag (e.g. #fashionmodelkittens).