Deliberately Methodical

SF is a networker’s wet dream. There are events every day. You can find them on: Plancast, Eventbrite, Meetup and Workit.

Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to best take advantage of these events. Many walk around the room or stand in a corner hoping someone will notice their clever t-shirt and strike up a conversation.

After a few events, I realized that it’s not possible to go to all of them and it’s definitely not a productive activity if you don’t have clear, concise goals for each event. If you’re in gaming, go to gaming events. If you’re in mobile, go to mobile events. You’ll run out of gas quickly if you try to hit them all.

There are many tips on “working the room” and making yourself stand out, but I’ll go into just one tactic I use to make the event work for me:

Do your research.

1-2 days before an event, I visit the site and lookup the attendee list. These are usually made public on Eventbrite and Meetup, but you can also leverage Plancast to see if anyone’s marked their attendance. Browse through the list and jot down 10-20 people that you’re interested in meeting and then track them down online. Most people in SF have some social presence – email, twitter, facebook, etc. Send them a message introducing yourself, letting them know you’ll be at the event, and that you’d like a moment to introduce yourself in person. Ask where you can find them and let them know how they can identify you (red shirt, jeans, black-rimmed glasses, etc).

I average about a 50% response rate on these notes and I walk in with 5-10 people that I’m ready to chat with. This is a huge advantage at a busy event – it both helps you break the ice, giving you more confidence in general, and gives you something to work towards while you’re there.

If you don’t get a chance to meet everyone you planned to, don’t worry – you now have a reason to follow up with them afterwards with notes.