What I Thought About Last Night’s Meetup with Sam Parr and Sahil Bloom

I am both fascinated by networking events and deathly allergic to them. I’ll explain the allergy later.

Last night, Sam Parr and Sahil Bloom rallied their audience in New York to the rooftop at the DL for one of the greatest meetups of this summer.

Why was this one of the greatest meetups this summer?

The curation of attendees.

I left the venue feeling more full of energy than when I walked in. Last night’s conversations all had real depth - we covered controversial topics like lifestyles in SF vs NYC, raw stories of how people met their SOs, projects people are working on or failing on, stories about ghosts, and tons more. The crowd that Sam and Sahil drew in was special. The audience wasn’t niche but there was a common thread that tied us all together. We were all readers of Sam’s and Sahil’s tweets or listeners of the podcast. The crowd I met consisted of entrepreneurs, food supply chain leaders, software developers, community builders, restauranteurs, and product managers.

But first let me level set. This is my idea of a good time: (noun) an experience that's thoroughly enjoyed whether learning something new, meeting someone awesome, or having fun just being who you are.

Antonyms: showing up to a swarm of strangers with name tags on their chest and a drink in their hand standing around and chatting away about the weather or whatever other boring news topic. I’m allergic to these environments and will die of boredom if around them too long.

Good time synonyms: interesting conversation, "ah-ha" moments, good storytelling, laughing about something, realizing you share things in common, connection, connection, connection.

What else made this meetup a good time?

Had a memorable conversation with every. single. person. I got to meet
When I show up to an event not knowing anyone there, my little strategy is to take half a lap around the place and then grab a drink and then continue. I spent 2 and half hours at the meetup and met about 20-25 people. By “met” I mean I got to actually know them beyond their name and what they do for work. Everyone had an interesting background, was working on cool side projects, and shared it all so passionately.
Got to be a part of breakout groups for the attendees, led by the attendees
Nick Gray did an awesome job of leveraging the people to volunteer as leaders for breakouts. All the right types of personalities signed up for it and knew exactly how to facilitate that kind of high energy circle. There were about 10 people wearing bright highlighter colored caps who would round up a couple people around them and kickoff "name, work, and fun hobby” convo starters.
I ran into people I knew <33333333
The balance of being in a new crowd at this event for the first time combined the familiarity of seeing friends from other walks of life brought me deep comfort. I love running into friends in the city or airports, etc. I also got to meet people I’ve only met on Twitter so far so that was a big moment for me, too.

Getting to meet Shaurya in person was a personal highlight!

One thing that would’ve made it flawless though is if we got to hear more from Sam and Sahil themselves. A lot of people thought they were going to do a fireside chat q&a thing. I don’t know if that ever happened. I know the crowd loved talking to each other though. It was nearly impossible to shush us to even get a stage conversation started.

Some nuances about me in this point of view:

I am a capital E extrovert, I’m on the end, barely even on the spectrum of it
I chose not to drink alcohol this night and had an even better time I think than if I had
I am based out of NYC and honestly attend too many of these things, like 3-5 “tech” meetups or dinners a week because I love them. I like curated ones way more.

Look I love this city so much and grateful I got to be there last night and meet some interesting people.

See you guys again soon. :)