(and my first ‘rant’ post)

NOTE: This post is partially inspired by Blagica’s article

http://www.blagica.com/2009/03/nightlife-promoters-club-owners-and-lounge-hosts-there-is-no-velvet-rope-in-social-media-get-over-it.html

NOTE 2: I am ranting here.   I will not name names, but I would like your input and comments.  Someone rubbed me the wrong way so I’m trying to bring constructive action to it.

To preface my post, let me start by what my current dilemma is.

I recently delved into Keith Ferrazzi’s “Never Eat Alone” book, and one of the chapters is dedicated to courting Public Relations members and Journalists.  I felt a cringe as I realized that eventually I would run into this.  The most successful connectors that I know, and love, all host their own events and clubs.  Keith suggested putting together bi-weekly dinner parties.   I was instantly reminded of my disdain for the majority of the Nightlife/Event Planner types that I meet.

I put most Old Guard Nightlife types in the same vein as Old School Salesmen.   If you’re not buying from those sales guys, they want NOTHING to do with you.  With the Nightlife types, if you’re perceived as a value taker without giving them something first (bottle service, hordes of cute girls, or flaming their collective ego’s), then they want nothing to do with you.

My experience stems from being a part of both industries, Event Planning and Nightlife.  I was a DJ for a few years and moving up the ranks to be part of the scene.   However, what I ran into is what I felt was the ‘old guard’ of the industry.   For some reason, I’m not ‘cool’ enough to be part of the scene, and thusly my rise stopped wherever it was determined.  It’s kind of sad to me, considering it’s like the revenge of the nerds.  Even worse, in the long run IT DOES NOT MATTER.  And most of those people (mostly the IT girl of the moment, and most aren’t even THAT cute) are a dime a dozen.  To quote Blagica “we can easily find another party to attend, or better yet, create our own.”

I get invites from 4 or 5 people on Facebook for EVERY weekly event they throw, regardless of what I replied to on the previous event.  In addition, the past and present email blast lists I get for events are filtered to a folder from my inbox and marked read.  What I feel is that these blasts are a bit disingenuous.   Not to mention that on Facebook, I didn’ t OPT-IN to be invited to every event. (Worse still, my blackberry synced with Facebook does reminders for all of these events whether I said yes or no).   One particular planner scheduled an event for 2 months that was only for a few days out of that span.   I was not a fan of having the event being listed first on every scheduled calendar I saw.

There are a few event planners that have wrote personal emails to me about their events, and I focus more on trying to attend those than the ones that get blasted.  Not to mention, there are events that I do get blasts from because the general vibe and scene is that everyone gets value from it and is looking forward to the next event.   For the aforementioned old guard nightlife types, they may have 5-10k people on their lists, but only 5-10 people show up.

I’ve tried at various points in my career to be an Event Planner on my own accord.  I’ve done it for other companies and entities, but I’ve had very little success on my own name and presence alone.  I want my event invites to be less disingenuous and more value oriented.  In addition, my perception is that I don’t want to be the old guard nightlife type.  I want to be all encompassing and welcoming.  My goal is to get to the super-connector status that we all love and dream of.   Having the biggest numbers seems to be irrelevant.

I hope to gleam from other people in the industry and throw really good parties.  An age old challenge with a recurring theme appears before me.

To your Success in 2009!