Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
How I See It
Networking for 20-somethings requires lesson in introductions
Breaking down the MIT $100K
MHT managing editor Rodney Brown on NECN: 22 tech companies give back to community
MHT Editor Doug Banks on NECN: Decoding the Gen Y workforce
There has been a lot of talk recently about how to encourage the Boston-area community of young and student entrepreneurs to get more involved with the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem.
While the discussion continues to drag on, we at DartBoston have had great success with this demographic by focusing on one thing: introductions.
About a year ago I started going to a networking event every night in Boston. As a kid who had just graduated from school, trying to get a startup off the ground, I wanted to learn as much as I could from as many people as I could. If I walked away from an evening with one intimate connection, I considered the event a success and would not only end up going back to the next one but would evangelize it to my friends.
The reason young people don’t get involved in Boston’s meetups and networking events is because they don’t believe they will be able to make a close connection with experienced and connected members of the business community. Let’s face it, as kids without much experience or credibility, we are looking for mentors and advisers who can help us make our projects a success.
The problem, however, is that in order to make any connection at a meetup, we have to approach a group of people who are already talking, stand on the outside for about 10 seconds until someone acknowledges us, and then proceed to impress our value upon the group in under 30 seconds.
Rather than create a venue where connections “might be” made, we developed DartBoston as a venue where we guaranteed the making of quality connections. We made sure to break down the barriers for the young community by getting rid of that 10 seconds of awkwardness and also made sure people could jump right into a substantial conversation rather than have to talk about the weather for five minutes.
This has proven to work well as we have not only seen consistent growth of our Pokin’ Holes event each Thursday night but also the number of people beginning to work together as a result of meeting through DartBoston has increased steadily.
I would encourage everyone who has a networking or meetup event to focus on helping their community members make connections with one another. This can be done in two easy steps.
First, when someone new comes to your event, introduce yourself to them as fast as possible. Make the person feel welcome at the event and get to know what that person is working on. Rather than ask people what they do, we always ask, “What are you working on?” People are typically more excited talking about that than their day job.
Second, listen to what your new community member is working on and create an instant connection for them. For example, if I meet someone working on a new iPhone application, I’m going to introduce that person to someone at the event who has either already created an iPhone app or who is currently working on an application. We will create that introduction instantly, make sure the conversation heads in a good direction and then move on to the next person.
Young people want to get connected. The fact is, it requires a skill that most haven’t yet cultivated, so let’s give them a hand by being proactive at our events. Let’s make them feel important and introduce them to those people who will provide that essential guidance. The result will be that you will see more and more of Boston’s young talent participating in your events.
Cortlandt Johnson is an entrepreneur and one of the organizers of DartBoston. His blog can be found at www.cortlandtjohnson.com.
RSS Feeds
Comments (1)
Please Login/Register to post comments.