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!