Networking in real life

As you know I value real life networking a lot. Recently I have received many invitations to connect on the on-line networks such as Ecademy, XING and LinkedIn.
Yesterday I had the great opportunity to actually meet many of my Ecademy and XING contacts at a special networking evening in Hoogland, a nice town in the center of The Netherlands.

It is surprising how people with whom you feel connected on the internet prove to be the persons with whom you would feel the same "click" if you would first meet them in real life! I am wondering how this can happen. Is it the way they describe themselves, their keywords, their slogans, their pictures? Anyway it was a wonderful surprise to meet 50-60? persons (I actually spoke to 10-12 of them yesterday evening) who share the same drive and passion for business as you do yourself. Of course there is not always the same amount of "click" but in many case it's there. Gives you a lot of positive energy, I can assure you.

Thanks to Jan Mulder and Cornelis de Maijer who had organized a very nice network event (with a professional singer! What a great voice!) and the nice restaurant (De Faam) and not in the least the people who attended the meeting I had a great evening and I am still writing e-mails to the people I connected with. New appointments are filling my calender!

This morning I had another networking meeting, this time a bilateral one with the owner (F.) of a company in Baarn. This meeting was a direct result from another meeting I had a couple of weeks ago with T. whom I have known for about 12 years now. He knows both F. and me and thought it would be useful for both of us to get to know each other. He introduced me to F. and I took the initiative by sending F. an e-mail.

Result; a good & constructive first meeting. During the conversation it became quite clear we could have mutual interests and we will certainly investigate how to follow up on that.

I think it is really important to meet people in real life, to follow up on contacts you make either by internet on during network events. It gives both parties extra positive energy, possibilities for alliances,exchange of information and last but certainly not least a lot of fun!

Relationships matter

Since a while I have been member of several on-line network groups such as LinkedIn, XING, PLAXO, Ecademy and others. These groups help me to maintain my existing relationships as well as meeting new contacts.

When I write "meeting" I actually try to meet them in person after having made contact through internet. Of course, in case of international contacts, this is more difficult and until now those new contacts are still on-line only. In that case SKYPE can be of help because we could at least talk to each other (we could do it by phone too, but that would cost us a fortune!).

This week I had a couple of very nice meetings with persons I met through internet. One of them is CEO of a fast growing IT consultancy company and our conversation was inspriring. It is quite interesting to meet people who have the same kind of drive as yourself and it seems to add extra energy. Among many topics we discussed the above mentioned networks.

We agreed that there seems to be a devaluation of quality in some cases because due to strict rules one can not send a personalized invitation to connect anymore and are therefore restricted to a standard invitation text. This of course is destroying the whole idea in itself.
Personally I dislike standard invitations and are inclined to refuse them. Networking is NOT just collecting names & profiles.

One of the other persons I met is an industrial designer but has grown to be a designer of environments as he himself calls it. We do not only share interest in mechanics, design, systems, human behaviour but also in...Ducati motorbikes. We were very pleased with this first contact and have already scheduled our next meeting.

Both of these meetings were good examples of making new relationships.

Yet another person, who by the way also drives a motorbike, is more involved in telecommunications, outsourcing. We have known each other for more than 12 years now and meet once or twice a year just to exchange latest news and possible business opportunities. Our motto is "you never know what may come of it". We mention persons of interest to each other and talk about what might be possible. This is a good example of maintaining a relationship.

Would be interesting to introduce all of them to each other as well....

That, in my opinion, is real networking.