I moved to Berkeley 3 months ago, and my social network is still crystallizing. I went to a large ACX meetup yesterday and got the individual contacts of people I’m interested in seeing again. Those contacts are sitting at the top of my chat app, stressing me out a little. Halfway into the meetup, I realized what I should have done to improve my networking process significantly:
Plan a smaller (10-20 people?) event at my house for ~10 days out. Have the invite ready when I go to the big meetup. Hand out the invite link profligately.
I got the contact info of 4 people, but in fact I met closer to 10 that I would have been happy to invite to an event at my house. Having someone at my house over once is less costly than having their contact info, because having someone’s contact info is a todo, which requires me to consider and talk to them individually.
If I had given them a Partiful invite link, these two things would have happened:
- They would show up in the future as a potential invitee for me on Partiful (which I’ve accepted is my contacts list for now – keeping my own document did not work)
- They would probably show up to my house in a group event where I could semi-passively explore our interpersonal chemistry, without my putting mental effort into how and whether to see them.
Going with a smaller event invite in hand should be my default plan every time I go to a large event near me. Saying so in a blog post is likelier to make me remember this in the future.