A birthday party can be an excellent ground for networking. For example, you might be a colleague of the birthday boy (or girl), and other guests can be relatives, college friends, co-workers from another place or from a totally different background.

These people from different backgrounds get to know each other at the birthday, and this offers networking opportunities.  There might be a business opportunity with another attendant of this event. You already have some basic common ground – you know the birthday boy.

This common acquaintance is the first possible topic of conversation, that can lead to other topics, and perhaps some business opportunities. The conversation may lead to talking about further meetings and the exchange of business cards.

At such event, the mingling continues, and you might miss out on exchanging business cards. Well, if you’re interested in connecting, you can still reach out via your mutual friend. This mutual friend can also supply more information about the person you talked to. It naturally goes both ways…

After being friends with someone for a long time, you already get to know his friends which you meet at his birthday, or his other events. Sometimes the guest list repeats itself. While seeing familiar faces is nice, the networking opportunities decrease.

Shared Events

Your birthday is coming up, and you feel like throwing a party for your friends. You’ll feel very comfortable with your close friends. That’s great! But maybe you don’t wish to repeat the same ritual year after year. Sometimes you’ll prefer to skip the party. How about a party with a wider set of people?

I have a friend who was born a week after me. Last year we had the idea of making one party for the both of us. The first advantage is that the burden of organizing the party was shared between the both of us. This made things easier.

And what we’re here to talk about is networking. My friend and myself have common friends. I also have friends that aren’t his friends or acquaintances, and the other way around.

The party that we threw together last year was and opportunity for many people to get to know new people. I’m glad to say that it was also very fun, so we hope to repeat the success this year. We already know each other’s close friends, but we aren’t familiar with all the acquaintances.

So, also this year’s party is a chance for our guests and also for ourselves to meet new people and to network, apart from having fun of course…