On the December 6th the Boston Event Guide had their annual Holiday Networking Cocktail Party, hosted by the Boston Networking Club. The event was held Splash lounge in the leather district, right next to the South St. Dinner. Prior to this date I had never been to one of these events. When I first walked in I immediately caught on that this was going to be very informal. There was music playing and everyone was dressed very nice, short dresses, no ties; I on the other hand was wearing my money suit (its dark Forrest green with a subtle yet noticeable gold thread woven through the material) money!
I checked in with the door ladies and they handed me a 3x5 card with 5 numbered questions on it and a pencil; there was an organized icebreaker this evening, a people survey. Some of the questions were: went to grad school? Ran marathon? Has been to Europe? Has worked for more than 3 companies? The objective to go around asking people questions and filling out the cards with names, the person with the most cards wins a prize. Being the fierce competitor that I am, I was determined to win the competition, I talked to many people and filled out 4 cards, I was in the zone. After a while I realized that I wasn’t really networking or even talking to anyone, I was getting my answers and running to the next person.
I slowed down and stated to chit chat, at this point everyone had 1 or 2 drinks in them so people were chatty, I met a child custody lawyer, the director of the electronic medical records program for partner’s health, a senior accountant for fidelity, a Iraq veteran, and a director of bio-detection program at GE. I exchanged business cards with a few people; I don’t think any of my new contacts have any current usefulness in my network. I kept thinking about my business plan project, if Networking.com was around, I could check into this event and be matched up to people in the energy distribution industry or perhaps at Siemens, my target company. Oh I met some professional pretty ladies, which is never a bad thing.
