I used to think local meetups were a waste of time, but one at the Atlanta Tech Village changed my mind

Honestly, I went to a Wednesday morning coffee networking thing at the Atlanta Tech Village back in March, figured it'd be full of sales pitches. But I met three people who actually helped me with a project I was stuck on, no strings attached. Ngl, that one meetup got me more leads than six months of LinkedIn messages. Has anyone else had a surprise like that from a local event?

3 comments

3 Comments

ray5623d ago

Man, that's a great story. So when you say the people helped with no strings attached, was it like they just gave you honest feedback on the spot, or did they actually sit down with you later to work through the problem? I'm curious because I've been to a few of those coffee meetups and mostly got people trying to sell me their own thing, so I'm wondering what made those three different. Like, did you start the conversation by talking about your project first, or did they just overhear you and jump in?

kelly_rivera3d ago

Oh man, that's such a good point... I've been to those meetups too where everyone's just trying to push their own thing. What made those three different is they actually overheard me talking to someone else about a problem I was stuck on, like I wasn't even asking for help directly. One guy just walked up and said "hey I saw that same issue at my old job, here's what we did" and then he sat down and drew stuff on a napkin for like twenty minutes without once mentioning his own business. The other two were similar where I was just venting to a friend and they chimed in because they genuinely had experience with that exact problem. I think the key is you can't go in expecting anything, you just have to be open and let those conversations happen naturally instead of forcing it. Once people sense you're just there to learn and not to sell, they drop their guard way more.

angelamurphy3d agoTop Commenter

Yeah that napkin drawing part is the real tell. Nobody who's just trying to sell you something will sit down and draw on a napkin for twenty minutes.