Recently I decided I wanted to do a little networking; meet some interesting people within the industry that I am interested in, with is Technical Startups.
Creating a startup for someone that hasnt done it before could be a little scary, but I will let you in on a secret, all you have to be is a nice guy and make an attempt to connect with the type of people that you are interested in.
Some people worry about all sorts of things, some worry about the idea of an event, but worry it wont work; but hopefully this post will take it away.
The first event I have run is my http://www.meetup.com/Silicon-St-Peters-Street-St-Albans/ I had 30 people turn up (including me) it was great. My intention was to meet others in the tech startup digital space and others that are related to it.
How did I achieve this?
1) Decide who you want to be there and whether the mix of people will find the other people interesting
2) Decide where you will find the people
3) Ask the question why would the other people would want to meet with each other?
4) Publish the event somewhere, get those people to it and make sure they find a good time
5) Get feedback, good and bad feedback is feedback. If you dont get feedback how will you know what you did right or wrong and why they thought it was good or bad?
All good said and done, but in practise how did this work
1) create a group, get a couple of friends to it with the same interest, ask them to bring a friend
2) use linkedin, meetup, event brite and others with simular interests, yes finding people on a one by one basis
3) consider the people you are inviting, for people to enjoy an event people need to learn something and or socialise. Are people somehow complimentary and interesting?
4) keep looking for those interesting people, give yourself enough time to find those people in the industry and or interests you are looking for, its as simple as that.
Finally as part of the feedback process you need to figure out if the night has been a success so you need to ask questions The numbers of people providing feedback the better, normally people dont like filling in surveys, so surveys need to be short and punchy and take less then a minute to fill in.
Taking those results you then need to decide a course of action, you cant please all the people at the same time, but at the same time you need to try and fulfill peoples needs as best as possible.
Feedback should be anonymous to encourage honesty.
Using Meetup.com and EventBrite as two additional bonuses
1) People turning up you have not invited directly yourself
2) has functionality to achieve it
However the downside is if you wish to move these people to another service that will be more difficult.
Any questions?
Heck of a job there, it abosuletly helps me out.