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O so cranky right now.
Due to my whack shcedule, sleep wasn't an option if I wanted to go to the 7:30 Cambridge Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast at the Radisson. (Tried to sleep a little anyways. It wasn't happening.) So stayed up all night to go to an event which I learned, about a quarter of the way through, was embarrassingly off-topic; all the attendees represented mature businesses who wished to sell services to other businesses; the goal of the networking was specifically seeking customers. And here I was, from a pre-production startup seeking funding so that we can provide anti-work services!
I figured this out sometime after a guy at the first table looked at me and disgustedly said "So... you're looking for money. Not customers." (The event was set up like speed dating, with people pitching at a tableful of local businessfolk, then everyone changed tables and did it again. It's actually a good idea, but the topic was just totally wrong for me.) I can't blame myself for this; the CCC website didn't name any topic beyond "business networking". I guess that chambers of commerce are just assumed to focus on business-to-business assistance? I did not know this. Oh well.
At the second table I explained that I was there due to a misunderstanding, and gave my pitch anyway. Not wondering what the hell I was doing there, this table was far more receptive than the first, and I received many smiles wishes for good luck, many from people who had done the scary startup thing themselves years earlier. An ad-space seller from the Herald was especially excited about the Volity idea, because I was describing something so very different from Grand Theft Auto, which is all he knows about modern digital games.
Other bright sides, vaguely: I was expecting to pay the full $70 non-member, walk-in attendance fee, but I guess they either thought I was a member or were feeling generous, and asked for only $35. Also, I am saving a couple hundred bucks on a CCC membership I won't be buying.
So collected some slight burn-experience, and a little good karma, but that's about it. Then I came home, played some Mario DS (this game is so good) and slept from 10:30 to 4:30, making me officially the most vampiric I have ever been. And now I have to find my script so I can go to rehearsal for this radio play thing, which I half-regret volunteering for now... I really didn't think it through as to all the time it'd take in rehearsal. Aaargh. Oh well.
I won't be sleeping tonight, though I'll likely be sleepy and half-dead anyway. Probably I'll just keep myself awake through the Gameshelf shoot in a possibly vain attempt to have a "normal" schedule again. Wish me luck.
Due to my whack shcedule, sleep wasn't an option if I wanted to go to the 7:30 Cambridge Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast at the Radisson. (Tried to sleep a little anyways. It wasn't happening.) So stayed up all night to go to an event which I learned, about a quarter of the way through, was embarrassingly off-topic; all the attendees represented mature businesses who wished to sell services to other businesses; the goal of the networking was specifically seeking customers. And here I was, from a pre-production startup seeking funding so that we can provide anti-work services!
I figured this out sometime after a guy at the first table looked at me and disgustedly said "So... you're looking for money. Not customers." (The event was set up like speed dating, with people pitching at a tableful of local businessfolk, then everyone changed tables and did it again. It's actually a good idea, but the topic was just totally wrong for me.) I can't blame myself for this; the CCC website didn't name any topic beyond "business networking". I guess that chambers of commerce are just assumed to focus on business-to-business assistance? I did not know this. Oh well.
At the second table I explained that I was there due to a misunderstanding, and gave my pitch anyway. Not wondering what the hell I was doing there, this table was far more receptive than the first, and I received many smiles wishes for good luck, many from people who had done the scary startup thing themselves years earlier. An ad-space seller from the Herald was especially excited about the Volity idea, because I was describing something so very different from Grand Theft Auto, which is all he knows about modern digital games.
Other bright sides, vaguely: I was expecting to pay the full $70 non-member, walk-in attendance fee, but I guess they either thought I was a member or were feeling generous, and asked for only $35. Also, I am saving a couple hundred bucks on a CCC membership I won't be buying.
So collected some slight burn-experience, and a little good karma, but that's about it. Then I came home, played some Mario DS (this game is so good) and slept from 10:30 to 4:30, making me officially the most vampiric I have ever been. And now I have to find my script so I can go to rehearsal for this radio play thing, which I half-regret volunteering for now... I really didn't think it through as to all the time it'd take in rehearsal. Aaargh. Oh well.
I won't be sleeping tonight, though I'll likely be sleepy and half-dead anyway. Probably I'll just keep myself awake through the Gameshelf shoot in a possibly vain attempt to have a "normal" schedule again. Wish me luck.
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In my experience 100% of networking events are like this. They are not "networking" events as a native english-speaker might understand the term, but are rather marketing events. The difference between networking and marketing in this regard is that networking involves a level of mutuallity, whereas marketing is strictly push.
There is an entire industry out there selling marketing opportunities as networking opportunities. I get e-mail every few days from "conference organizers" who are doing nothing but trying to line up naive people who think the event might be for something other than marketing. The events themselves are depressing as hell, as everyone is trying to sell to everyone else, and no one is interested in buying.
I'm in bio-tech/bio-medical work, where this kind of thing seems particularly bad, but you may find the same kind of thing in your own area (Anti-work? Sounds cool.)
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All that said, there was still card-swapping aplenty and I did get into people's heads, at least at the second table (where, having caught on, I introduced myself sheepishly, so they didn't think I had snuck into a sales even to beg for money) Someone from that table has already mailed me with a friend's kid's resume, which is kind of funny.
Anti-work = games. Volity (http://volity.org) is the technology. And I just fled from a bioinformatics programming job to kick this into motion...