Weird People (From Meetup)

Posted on | July 13, 2008 | No Comments

From time to time, I do hear of the comment that some of the local Meetups have weird people in attendance. I never disagreed with this observation. In a big city like DC, you are bound to get a little of everything. You’ll get the ones with little social grace. You’ll get the stalkers. You’ll get the girl who partied just a wee bit too much. You’ll get the person who can’t hold a conversation. And the list goes on and on. In essence, you may not always find the sort of sophistication that you may want in your social network.

Having managed a couple of groups over the past couple years, I have seen a bit of everything. And sometimes it can be a turnoff and discourage you to not go back again. At the least, it forces most of us to establish standards as to whom we wish to associate ourselves with. I can probably show more tolerance than most as I’ve developed the temperament for this. But even I’m continually amazed as to the lack of sophistication of some. Although, to be fair, I wonder if the caliber of sophistication is any different at any other social networking organization?

But I try to look on the bright side. And I would encourage others to do the same. I look at how many people I’ve actually befriended and would actually want to hang out with outside of the group. People like Chris, Christa, Mo, Chrissy, Dawn, Jennifer, Alison, Marinel, Mary. And the list just goes on and on.

I always said this about any business networking function I attended, but I believe it to be true of a social networking function too- You only need one valuable connection to make the event worthwhile.