Every evening event that I’ve attended over the past few months has led to meeting one or two great people.  Each of these people has already proven to be a great source of ideas or other business value.  So I love events and dinners.  I have always found them highly valuable as a source of ideas, deals, talent, and friendships.  And I intend to keep doing 2-3 evening tech events per week.

However, these events are typically too long.    You meet the great people at the beginning during the unstructured portion and then the panel is highly repetitive or the dinner service slow.

Could you imagine an event where: everyone shows up on time, you informally chat with attendees for 30 minutes, and then the panel is 30 minutes?  You’re home in time to: maybe see your kids before they go to bed (depending on age), or you get to do all your emails, or you get to finish some code, or you get to create deal review deck.  And you get to watch The Office and be asleep by 10pm.

What about a conference that only lasts 2 hours and has 30 minutes of informal chatting, followed by three 30 minute speakers.  You need not miss a whole day of work and fall helplessly behind!

I like the old chestnut about Bloomberg removing all the chairs from conference rooms so meetings would be more efficient; maybe that’s why his company is killing it.