Tag: events

Round Tables

One of the “features” of being in a job is that you get invited to conferences and “industry events”. I’ve written extensively about one of them in the past – the primary purpose of these events is for people to be able to sell their companies’ products, their services and even themselves (job-hunting) to other attendees.

Now, everyone knows that this is the purpose of these events, but it is one of those things that is hard to admit. “I’m going to this hotel to get pitched to by 20 vendors” is not usually a good enough reason to bunk work. So there is always a “front” – an agenda that makes it seemingly worthy for people to attend these events.

The most common one is to have talks. This can help attract people at two levels. There are some people who won’t attend talks unless they have also been asked to talk, and so they get invited to talk. And then there are others who are happy to just attend and try to get “gyaan”, and they get invited as the audience. The other side of the market soon appears, paying generous dollars to hold the event at a nice venue, and to be able to sell to all the speakers and the audience.

Similarly, you have panel discussions. Organisers in general think this is one level better than talks – instead of the audience being bored by ONE person for half an hour, they are bored by about 4-5 people (and one moderator) for an hour. Again there is the hierarchy here – some people won’t want to attend unless they have been put on the panel. And who gets to be on the panel is a function of how desperate one or more sponsors is to sell to the potential panelists.

The one thing most of these events get right is to have sufficient lunch and tea breaks for people to talk to each other. Then again, these are brilliant times for sponsors to be able to sell their wares to the attendees. And it has the positive externality that people can meet and “network” and talk among themselves – which is the best value you can get out of an event like this one.

However, there is one kind of event that I’ve attended a few times, but I can’t understand how they work. This is the “round table”. It is basically a closed room discussion with a large number of invited “panellists”, where everyone just talks past each other.

Now, at one level I understand this – this is a good way to get a large number of people to sell to without necessarily putting a hierarchy in terms of “speakers” / “panellists” and “audience”. The problem is that what they do with these people is beyond my imagination.

I’ve attended two of these events – one online and one offline. The format is the same. There is a moderator who goes around the table (not necessarily in any particular order), with one question to each participant (the better moderators would have prepared well for this). And then the participant gives a long-winded answer to that question, and the answer is not necessarily addressed at any of the other participants.

The average length of each answer and the number of participants means that each participant gets to speak exactly once. And then it is over.

The online version of this was the most underwhelming event I ever attended – I didn’t remember anything from what anyone spoke, and assumed that the feeling was mutual. I didn’t even bother checking out these people on LinkedIn after the event was over.

The offline version I attended was better in the way that at least we could get to talk to each other after the event. But the event itself was rather boring – I’m pretty sure I bored everyone with my monologue when it was my turn, and I don’t remember anything that anyone else said in this event. The funny thing was – the event wasn’t recorded, and there was hardly anyone from the organising team at the discussion. There existed just no point of all of us talking for so long. It was like people who organise Satyanarayana Poojes to get an excuse to have a party at home.

I’m wondering how this kind of event can be structured better. I fully appreciate the sponsors and their need to sell to the lot of us. And I fully appreciate that it gives  them more bang for the buck to have 20 people of roughly equal standing to sell to – with talks or panels, the “potential high value customers” can be fewer.

However – wouldn’t it be far more profitable to them to be able to spend more time actually talking to the lot of us and selling, rather than getting all of us to waste time talking nonsense to each other? Like – maybe just a party or a “lunch” would be better?

Then again – if you want people to travel inter-city to attend this, a party is not a good enough excuse for people to get their employers to sponsor their time and travel. And so something inane like the “round table” has to be invented.

PS: There is this school of thought that temperatures in offices and events are set at a level that is comfortable for men but not for women. After one recent conference I attended I have a theory on why this is the case. It is because of what is “acceptable formal wear” for men and women.

Western formal wear for men is mostly the suit, which means dressing up in lots of layers, and maybe even constraining your neck with a tie. And when you are wearing so many clothes, the environment better be cool else you’ll be sweating.

For women, however, formal wear need not be so constraining – it is perfectly acceptable to wear sleeveless tops, or dresses, for formal events. And the temperatures required to “air” the suit-wearers can be too cold for women.

At a recent conference I was wearing a thin cotton shirt and could thus empathise with the women.

 

RSVP

I’m reminded of this anecdote from class 11. A girl in my class had invited me to her birthday party. Knowing that there was a clash, I had immediately responded to her saying that I was sorry but I wouldn’t be able to make it. She immediately got offended – that I had told her directly that I wouldn’t come. She would possibly have been less offended had I told her I would come and then not showed up.

A lot of people in India don’t get the concept of how to reply to invitations. Like my old friend, these people think it’s a sort of insult to tell someone that they can’t make it for an event or a function. And so they end up giving false responses or non-responses which doesn’t leave the host any wiser. That leads to massively messed up planning, and possible wastage of food and gifts.

I must say I’ve been guilty of this in the past as well – maybe affected by that 11th standard incident, I have started giving non-committal responses to events that I know I won’t go to. And messed up my hosts’ planning. Having been on the other side multiple times in the last one month, however, I hereby undertake that I will give accurate responses to any invite I get, as far as things are under my control.

Over the last ten days, the wife had kept a massive doll display at home on the occasion of Dasara. We had made an elaborate plan of calling people from different “sides” on different days – in the interest of not mixing groups, which can have a massive negative effect on conversation.

And then some people threatened to destroy these carefully made plans by asking if they could come at a time when they were not invited! Some people were nice enough to tell us that the time when we had invited them was not convenient for them, and requested us right there to give them an alternate slot which we did. Others, however, responded in the affirmative, failed to show up and then wanted to come on a day when we weren’t prepared to receive guests (or worse, on days when were expected other guests from other “sides”).

The other side is also a bit painful here – when people give you an open invitation and tell you to “come any time”. While this gives you greater optionality than a specific slot, this also creates greater pressure on you to accept the invitation. And I’m guilty of responding vaguely to some of these invitations as well. Next time someone gives me an open invite, I will either say no, or try to tell them as soon as possible a specific date and time when I’ll be there.

PS: Of late I’ve started becoming actively (but subconsciously) rude to people who show up at my door unannounced. It throws me off massively. Sometimes my wife wonders why I bothered coming back from England at all!

 

Foxes and Cranes

One of my favourite childhood stories is the one about the fox and the crane, which is basically about home ground advantage.

First, the fox invites the crane for lunch and serves him paayasa in a large plate. The large plate is easy for the fox to lick off the paayasa, but the crane is unable to eat it at all. To take revenge, the crane invites the fox back for lunch, and proceeds to serve him paayasa in a tall jug.

I’ve seen this play out in several situations in recent times, especially when it comes to planning kids’ activities.

Our daughter doesn’t nap in the afternoons – instead she goes to bed early (7 pm). Based on this single data point, when we were planning her birthday party last week, we thought 330 to 6 was a “reasonable time” for the party. “It would get over by her bed time”, we had reasoned.

As it turned out, two little guests came late as they had napped off in the afternoon, and another promptly crashed on his way to the party. On our side, the party finished at 630, and the daughter was nicely tucked into bed by 730. I don’t know if I should consider it a “success”.

It was a similar case at the Dasara doll party we hosted for her school friends yesterday. We had sent out the invites to that well before the birthday, and had again given out a 330 to 6 window during which they could come and see our doll display. Two children had napped off and ended up coming at 545!

We’ve been “foxed” on some occasions as well, being invited for parties and occasions that take place late in the evening which is simply inconvenient for us because our daughter sleeps off early.

On a more general note, I wonder what a good time is for a party where the hosts aren’t expected to serve meals. Morning parties inevitably creep up into lunch time. The reason we’ve hit upon our 330 to 6 window is that it is clearly “tea time” and nobody will expect to have a “big meal” at that time. Clearly, it seems like a lot of kids nap in that time, especially on weekends.

5 to 7 might be a more accommodating window, especially to accommodate the afternoon nappers but the problem is it ends at a time that is too late for tea and too early (for most people, if not for us) for dinner! And if you serve meals at non-standard times that can end up screwing up with the guests’ “systems”, and they may not look upon the event nicely in hindsight.

Speaking of events that have messed with my “system” in hindsight, what is it about functions that don’t serve lunch until 2 pm or dinner until 9 pm? We’ve come across so many of these in the last few months (and in one case, the 9 pm dinner consisted of rice and spiced hot water that went by the name of rasam), that we’re seriously considering a policy decision to eat before we go out for large, especially religious, events.

PS: In terms of timing, in large events it might be the guests who are “foxed” since they end up arriving at the “edge” of the event. For small events the hosts get “foxed”. Twice in two weeks this year we invited people home for dinner at 7 pm. And both times they turned up at 9. And that messed with our systems so much that we haven’t called too many people for dinner after that!

 

Networking events and positions of strength

This replicates some of the stuff I wrote in a recent blog post, but I put this on LinkedIn and wanted a copy here for posterity 

Having moved my consulting business to London earlier this year, I’ve had a problem with marketing. The basic problem is that while my network and brand is fairly strong in India, I’ve had to start from scratch in the UK.

The lack of branding has meant that I have often had to talk or negotiate from a position of weakness (check out my recent blog post on branding as creating a position of strength). The lack of network has meant that I try to go to networking events where I can meet people and try to improve my network. Except that the lack of branding means that I have to network from a position of weakness and hence not make an impact.

A few months back I came across this set of tweets by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant, in which he talked about productivity hacks.

One that caught my eye, which I try to practice but have not always been able to practice, is on not going to conferences if you are not speaking. However, now that I think about it from the point of view of branding and positions of strength, what he says makes total sense.

In conferences and networking events, there is usually a sort of unspoken hierarchy, where speakers are generally “superior” to those in the audience. This flows from the assumption that the audience has come to gather pearls of wisdom from the speakers. And this has an impact on the networking around the event – if you are speaking, people will start with the prior of your being a superior being, compared to you going as an audience member (especially if it is a paid event).

This is not a strict rule – when there are other people at the event who you know, it is possible that their introductions can elevate you even if you are not speaking. However, if you are at an event where you don’t know anyone else, you surely start on higher ground (no pun intended) in case you are speaking.

There is another advantage that speaking offers – you can use your speech itself to build your brand, which will be fresh in your counterparties’s minds in the networking immediately afterward. Audience members have no such brand-building ability, apart from the possibility of tarnishing their own brands through inappropriate or rambling questions.

So unless you see value in what the speaker(s) say, don’t go to conferences. Putting it another way, don’t go to conferences for networking alone, unless you are speaking. Extending this, don’t go to networking events unless you either know some of the other people who are coming there (whose links you can then tap) or if there is an opportunity for you to elevate your brand at the event (by speaking, for example).

PS: Some of Naval’s other points such as having “meeting days” and scheduling meetings for later in the day are pertinent as well, and I’ve found them to be incredibly useful.

Not-working events – IIMB alumni edition

So yet another event that was supposedly for networking purposes turned out to be so badly designed that little networking was possible. The culprit in this case was the IIM Bangalore Alumni Association which organised the London edition of Anusmaran, the annual meet-up of IIMB Alumni which is held in different cities across the world.

Now, I must mention that I had been warned. Several friends from IIMB who have lived in London for a while told me that they had stopped going to this event since the events were generally badly organised. I myself hadn’t gone to one of these events since 2006 (when I’d just graduated, and found a lot of just-graduated classmates at the Mumbai edition).

So while I didn’t have particularly high expectations, I went with the hope that it “couldn’t be that bad”, and that I might get to meet some interesting people there. At the end of the event, I wasn’t sure if anyone interesting attended, because the format didn’t allow me to discover the other attendees.

Soon after I entered, and chatted briefly with the two professors there, and one guy from the batch before mine, one of the organisers requested everyone present to “form a huddle”. And then the talks started.

For some reason, the IIMB Alumni Association seems to have suddenly started to take itself too seriously in the last few years. The last few editions of the Bangalore edition of Anusmaran, for example, have featured panel discussions, and that has been a major reason for my not attending. The idea of an alumni event, after all, is to meet other alumni, and when most of you are forced to turn in one direction and listen to a small number of people, little networking can happen.

And that is exactly what happened at the London event today – the talks started, unannounced (there had been no prior communication that such talks would be there – I’d assumed it would be like the 2005 event in London that I’d helped organise where people just got together and talked). Some two or three alumni spoke, mostly to promote their businesses. And they were long talks, full of the kind of gyaan and globe that people with long careers in management can be expected to give.

So it went on, for an hour and half, with people speaking one after other and everyone else being expected to listen to the person speaking, rather than talk to one another. The class participation reminded me of the worst of the class participation from my business school days – people trying to sound self-important and noble rather than asking “real” questions.

When the organiser asked everyone to introduce themselves in a “few seconds each” (name, graduating batch, company), most people elected to give speeches. I exited soon after.

Based on the last data point (of people giving long speeches while introducing themselves), it is possible that even if I had the opportunity to network I may not have met too many interesting people. Yet, the format of the event, with lots of speeches by people mainly trying to promote themselves, was rather jarring.

This is not the first time I’ve attended a networking event where little networking is possible. I remember this “get together” organised by a distant relative a few years back where everyone was expected to listen to the music they’d arranged for rather than talking. There was this public policy conference some years ago which got together plenty of interesting people, but gave such short tea breaks that people could hardly meet each other (and organisers ushering people who overstayed their tea breaks into the sessions didn’t help matters).

Sometimes it might be necessary to have an anchor, to give people a reason apart from networking to attend the event. But when the anchor ends up being the entirety of the event, the event is unlikely to serve its purpose.

I’d written about Anusmaran once before. Thankfully the organisers of today’s event had got the pricing bit right – the event was at a pub, and you had to get your own drinks from the bar, and pay for them.

I’d also written about the importance of giving an opportunity for networking at random events.

 

Idea types and person-event types

Last night GP, the wife and I were drinking at Brewsky, a nice microbrewery in JP Nagar, Bangalore. We were seated at the bar, and were checking out some other people who were seated elsewhere at the bar. The wife pointed to two of them and independently asked GP and me to assess which of them was potentially more interesting (the independence was achieved thanks to a timely bio break I took). Most of GP and my assessment of these people tallied, but then GP popped up with this really interesting funda that I have to blog about!

So GP said “the woman sitting across from us looks more of the ‘ideas type’ while the woman seated to the right looks more of the ‘events and people type’ “. And in that one stroke, he had introduced this rather profound method of classifying people. He had created one other dimension of putting people into two categories (and in that instant doubling the number of two by twos along which people can be plotted!). And he had brought back to memory something I had seen in Bishop Cotton’s Boys’ School back in 1996.

The board near the administrative building at Cotton’s said “great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people”. Profound in itself but a three-way classification. Now, three way classifications are not as intuitive as two-way classifications. People generally prefer the latter. And in one shot last evening, GP had reduced this cumbersome three-way classification into a rather interesting two-way classification! To use the Cotton’s framework, he had clubbed the average and small minds!

In the past I’ve blogged about the concept of “who else have you been in touch with“. This is a phrase that pops up, I’ve argued, when you have met after a long time and have nothing else to talk about. A related concept is perhaps “what movie did you see recently?” (though that can occasionally lead to fairly profound discussion on ideas). Now, analysing life from GP’s framework, you will notice that when one of the persons involved in the conversation is an events-people types, it is but obvious that the conversation will quickly devolve to discussing people or events, and the best anchor for devolving into such is to seek stories of common acquaintances!

So are you an “ideas types” or an “events-person types”? Would you think such a classification is context-sensitive (depending on who you are talking to) or context free? Would you get offended if someone were to classify you as a “events-persons types”? What happens when an I-types meets and EP-types – what do they talk about? Is is even possible to talk ideas with EP-types? And what are the odds that a largish group can sustain I-types conversation?

I’ll end this post with an anecdote. Not so long ago I met a few old friends. It was a largish group, and the entire contents of the two-hours-or-so conversation can be classified into two types – discussions on mutual friends and acquaintances and “who else you are in touch with” (standard EP-type stuff), and discussion of concepts discussed on one of my blogs! Maybe I should take credit for pulling conversation in that group to I-type stuff!

 

Guarantees in meetings

There are some events/meetings which involve strong network effects. People want to attend such events if and only if a certain number of other people are going to attend it. But then they don’t know before hand as to who else is coming, and hence are not sure whether to accept the invitation. These are events such as school reunions, for example, where if only a few people come, there isn’t much value. And it’s hard to coordinate.

In such events it’s always useful to provide a guarantee. For example, a friend from (B) school was in town last week and expressed an interest in meeting other batchmates in Bangalore. A mail thread was promptly started but until the morning of the event, people remained mostly noncommittal. Not many of us knew this guy particularly well, though he is generally well-liked. So none of us really wanted to land up and be among only one or two people along with this guy.

And then there was a guarantee. One other guy sent a mail saying he’d booked a table at a bar, and this sent a strong signal that this guy was going to be there too. Then there were a couple of other very positive replies and the guarantee having been set, some seven or eight people turned up and the meeting can be called a “success”.

Sometimes when you’re trying to organise an event, it makes sense to get unconditional attendance guarantees from a couple of people before you send out the invite to the wider world. So you tell people that “X and Y” (the early guarantors) are definitely coming, and that will pull in more people, and that can be the trigger in making the event a success! In certain circles, X and Y need to be celebrities. In smaller circles, they can be common men (or women), but people whose guarantees of attendance are generally trusted (i.e. people who don’t have a history of standing up people)!

Another small reunion of my B-school batch happened last month and in the run-up to that I realised another thing about RSVPs – yeses should be public and noes private. One guy took initiative and mailed a bunch of us proposing we meet. I hit reply all on purpose to say that it was a great idea and confirm my attendance. Soon there was another public reply confirming attendance and this snowballed to give us a successful event. There were a few invitees we didn’t hear from, who didn’t attend, and I assume they had replied privately to the invite in the negative.

The problem with events on Facebook is that your RSVP is public irrespective of your reply – so even if you say no, everyone knows you’ve said “no”. And so you think it’s rude to say “no”, and say “yes” just out of politeness, even though you have no intentions of attending.

I’ve attended a few events where the hosts estimated attendance based on a Facebook invite and grossly overestimated attendance – too many people had hit “yes” out of sheer politeness.

So the ideal protocol should be “public yes, private no”. Facebook should consider giving this as an option to event creators so that people reveal their true preferences in the RSVP rather than saying “yes” out of sheer politeness.

In that sense it’s like a Vickery auction whose basic design principle is that people reveal their true willingness to pay and not underbid to avoid the winner’s curse!