Nothin But Networking — How It Went

By noon on March 19 the Taproom had the particular hum of a room where everyone has a bracket and nobody is admitting how badly it is going. Nothin But Networking, our second annual March Madness networking day, had moved from the quiet part of the schedule to the loud part, and the building was better for it.

This is what a networking event looks like when nobody has to pretend to be networking.

How the Day Was Built

The format was simple. The morning was a free trial day: anyone who wanted to see what working from Revelance feels like could come in, find a seat, plug in and get real work done on the members’ floor. No pitch, no tour script, just the building doing its job on an ordinary Thursday.

Then the tournament tipped off and the day changed gears. The Taproom screens carried the games, Sonder Brewing was on tap with no event markup, the food came out, and the games and contests ran through the afternoon with prizes along the way. People who had spent the morning heads-down at a desk spent the afternoon arguing about a twelve seed with someone they had never met.

The Revel Room and the boardrooms stayed in regular service upstairs, which is worth noting. The building did not shut down for the party. Members who had a client call at two o’clock took it in a boardroom and came back down for the second half. That is the difference between an event venue and a business club that happens to be hosting an event.

Why It Works

Most networking events fail for the same reason: the networking is the whole point, so everyone feels the weight of it. Name tags, a lanyard, a drink you hold but do not finish, a conversation you are both trying to exit. The tournament fixes that. There is something on the screen worth reacting to, a reason to lean over and talk to the next table, and a natural rhythm of timeouts and halftimes that breaks the room up and puts it back together.

It also happens to be the best possible demonstration of what Revelance is. A building where you can do a focused morning of work and then walk downstairs to a private bar full of people you would actually want to know is the whole proposition. March Madness just makes the case louder.

The prizes helped too. A contest with something at stake gives strangers permission to talk to each other, and the afternoon had enough of them that nobody was left standing alone with a plate. Several people who came for the free trial in the morning were still in the Taproom when the late games started.

Why Revelance Hosts Events Like This

Revelance is a private business club. The workspace, boardrooms and private offices are the reason people join, but the community is the reason they stay. Community does not form in a hallway. It forms when the building gives people a reason to be in the same room with their guard down, and a tournament afternoon does that better than almost anything else on the calendar.

If you missed it, the events calendar is where next March’s edition will appear. If you want the free trial morning without waiting for basketball, the memberships page has the details on how to work a day on us.

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