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.