Side Hustle
“Side Hustle” – a cartoon that illustrates how the large tech conference venue is losing value and how ‘side events’ are often the better place to spend time networking.
According to the Meetings & Incentive Travel (M&IT) report over 60% of conference attendees cite networking as their top reason for attending, surpassing other factors like educational content or keynote speakers.
But, according to Derek Coburn, in his Harvard Business Review article, traditional networking events often lead to shallow conversations that rarely result in meaningful business relationships.
He notes that attendees frequently engage in brief exchanges without establishing genuine connections, rendering the networking experience ineffective.
To overcome this, many conferences have an equal number of side events that are self-organized by companies outside the official event structure that have small group sessions and more time for networking.
For example, Cryptonomads.org compiled a list documenting 668 unofficial side events during the week-long ETHDenver conference this March. Side events during this conference included poker nights, mini-golf tournaments, scavenger hunts and even a ski networking day.
Also, taking advantage of a common destination, companies often organize week long developer hackathons or company offsites around tent pole industry conferences. Companies find there is more value in highly curated networking events rather than sponsoring a booth.
For example the SFO Alliance, a private family office organization, now organizes smaller events that “resemble a wedding, well a good wedding at that —people having fun, socializing, reconnecting with old friends, and sharing experiences, with some valuable content included,” according to Lex van Dam.
