Speed networking for business professionals seems to be all the rage these days. I attend quite a few speed networking events and have always found a few quality contacts from an event. Plus, a lot of them are free to attend, and that translates to a cosportunity of zero! But it always frustrates me in the way a lot of them are run and how sensitive the organizers are to feedback. So I mostly just keep my mouth shut and go along with the flow, but I have to tell you, this last one that I went to alienated a lot of people because it came across as the old bait and switch.
Luring people to your event with the promise of one thing and delivering something else is a really quick way to get them not to come back! And that’s exactly what happened at this event. It was heavily promoted, mostly through e-mails, and kept hitting on the fact that space was limited and you had to hurry to sign up, etc. Well, the organizer needed 88 attendees, and it became quickly apparent the morning of the event that they were no where near the magic, perfect, ideal, supreme number of 88. There were about 50 attendees, a great number for speed networking, but the organizer didn’t seem prepared to handle any rotation schedule for any other number than 88.
Plan B for this event was to have each speed networker stand at the front of the room and give their 60 second commercial. And as your commercial was airing there were some helpers who were passing out business cards and promotional items. Needless to say, as everyone was busy passing promo items it was harder to pay attention to the commercials. I was just annoyed because Plan B would have occurred if there were 87 or 89 participants, and let’s face it, it’s really difficult to get an exact number to show up and participate. There are other methods besides the supreme number of 88 with 11 tables of 8 participants that would have worked, so what if there was one or two empty seats or a couple of people had to repeat a rotation. I even posted a method months ago on slide share that doesn’t matter how many people you have. Even though I’ve pointed speed networking organizers to it, well, let’s just say that since it wasn’t their idea it has gone nowhere.
The slide share presentation can be found here:
http://www.slideshare.net/MarkRodeffer/easy-speed-networking-method-2814054
Amen Sir! Waking up at 7am was difficult enough…but then not getting what I came for?! Worse than standing in line for 5 hours at a Jimmy Choo sample sale only to get inside and realize they don’t have your size!
This “supreme” number of 88 is not something that we came up with overnight–this is a formula that has been used quite successfully in other areas and we wanted to give it a try. We cannot help that over half of the RSVP’s did not show up. I agree that another alternative would have been to do the same rotation that is found in every other speed networking event, but we were just looking to do something different. God forbid someone try something different around here!!
A bait and switch–really? We were offering no product with the intention of asking people to purchase a more expensive product once they got there. That was not the case at all as there were, obviously, no products being offered. So, bait and switch, no. Our only motive was to sponsor an event, albeit different from the normal format, that people could come and network. Nothing more, nothing less.
Feedback is a constructive thing and ALWAYS welcome and necessary for growth, but when you don’t go directly to the source for grievances that is wrong. How would I have known your stance had I not happened upon your public blog? We knew this event failed and felt terrible about it, but there was nothing we could do about it but learn and move on.
If your speed networking method is so great, why haven’t you sponsored an event yourself instead of just sharing a slide show??? Then, you would have noone to blame. Just a thought . . .