Treat the room as the asset and the conversation inside it as the raw material.

technique — attributed to Brian Feit

Before BMF had a name, Feit gathered thirty people in a bar and went around the room so each person could say what they did, calling it the New Business Network. The gesture assumes something specific: that assembling the right people in one space generates value on its own, independent of any agenda placed on top of it. He still works this way, treating every conversation as a place an idea might be hiding rather than a formality to get through. The room does the work; the follow-up simply harvests what the room already produced.

For anyone building a network or planning an event who defaults to programming over gathering.

networking, room-design, idea-generation, conversation