On any given night in New York City, there are 3 to 4 events that seem to be appropriate for me to attend. I can only imagine that for others, the number is either about the same, or even greater. Over the past few years, sites like Meetup and Eventbrite have made it easier than ever before for people to create events. Regardless of the content, the goal for most attendees is to network and meet others that share their interests. The challenge is, with the cost of the events and the time commitment to attend, how do you pick the right event to attend so that you meet the right people.

Advertising is always deceptive, especially when it comes to events. Organizers claim to have groups of 11,000 members or show a list of attendees, many of which they added themselves. While this gives you a feel for the community or event, it doesn’t tell you what you really need to know: how meaningful and relevant is to you. Just like each event has a specific purpose, you should be going in with a specific purpose and a goal to achieve it. These goals can be as broad as meeting the most people to meeting a specific person. They could be focused on hearing a particular speaker or trying to learn about an industry. Based on these goals, which may vary from event to event, you will be able to get an idea of which events you should attend.

I recently posted on Gplus asking people what they look for when searching for an event to attend. A few people commented that it is based upon who is going to be there and recommendations from friends. While I agree with these wholeheartedly, my question is more about how do you evaluate the attendees or recommendations since no two people have the same goals. Unfortunately, you often have to find out the hard way that an event isn’t for you. But even then, making the best of it can turn it into a productive night.

Three of the things I think are essential to picking an event to attend are:

Price – I am always wary of free events for two reasons. The first is that everyone signs up but not everyone attends so you never know who will actually be there. Secondly, it doesn’t create a filter where someone who shouldn’t be attending says that they aren’t going to pay to go since it’s the wrong events. A small charge to get in, usually offset by food or drinks, goes a long way to ensuring a higher quality audience.

Community – Does this event tie back to a community. I am not referring to partners because every group offers to be a media partner for the free press, but rather does this group have a Meeetup page, LinkedIn group or Facebook page that you can look at and see what kind of people are associated with it and what type of discussions and messages the members are sharing. You will learn very quickly if it is a “can I help you” community or a “buy from me” community.

Organizer – Who is the organizer for the event and what is their motivation. Unfortunately, many organizers are motivated by one of two things, money and selling their product. By emailing the event organizer and asking them for more information about the event, who they are trying to attract and getting a sense of the purpose of the event, you will have a much clearer picture of the event than an invite can give you. A good organizer will also ask you about yourself and who they can introduce you to or how they can help you. That alone will make an event meaningful as you will know which people you need to meet. It also lets you know how well the organizer knows their community. Organizers such as Graham Lawlor of Ultra Light Startups, Gary Whitehill of Entrepreneur Week and #ROOTT and Aaron Price of the NJ Tech Meetup all do a great job at this and this is one of the main reasons their communities are growing so quickly.

Obviously, for each person there will be different things to look at and look for when choosing an event but I think these three really will allow you to filter the list of events down to a smaller number of quality events for you to choose from. At the end of the day, a good networker will make the best of each event and turn it into a successful night. I would love to hear your feedback and ideas on what is important to you when you choose an event. Feel free to comment or post it on Gplus.

Note: This is the first of 3 posts on networking. Next week’s post will deal with how to effectively break the ice and approach people at an event and the last post will talk about post event follow ups with new connections. 

Networking is an essential function of any entrepreneur. It is one of the factors that make entrepreneurs not just people with ideas but part of a larger community that is always willing to help each other, make introductions and create partnerships. Investors realize this as well and are very active in the networking space either through attending events, participating by speaking or being on a panel at an event or even by sponsoring events. While networking events have evolved over the years, at the end of the day, most people are there to meet others and build their network.

As more and more groups pop up in a city via Meetup, LinkedIn, Facebook or their own websites, many of these organizers realize that they need to create events to bring their groups together so it is not just another social forum, but rather a real community. Over the last three years, we have seen an abundance of events popping up, to the point where many people stopped attending because they don’t know which events are meaningful for them. In New York City alone, there are probably three events a night seven days a week that would be worth going to.

It doesn’t stop there, even at the event, you find many people are there to meet a specific VC or investor, are service providers or just don’t know how to network. This diminishes the value of the event for other attendees and your time is valuable.

So how can people make their networking experience effective? Over the next few weeks I will be gathering feedback via Gplus.com on the three essential parts of networking and will post my thoughts along with some feedback from others. Below are the 3 items I feel are essential, hyperlinked to the discussion page.

• How do you pick the right networking event to go to?
• How do you break the ice when meeting someone at a networking event?
• How do you follow up with people you met to turn that connection into something of value?

While these items seem rather standard, I have found them to be real pain points for those who love networking. I would love to get feedback and thoughts on these areas so that my post is not just my view, but also the views of those that have these same pain points as they are networking.