One day in the middle of 2018, I scrolled through my LinkedIn feed, when something caught my eye. An avid networker, I often kept an eye out for networking events in my neck of the woods, and this one stood out. I went to the Eventbrite page for it and saw that the upcoming event was actually part one of a three-part series. The description of it appealed to me very much, and so I bought a ticket for the first one, fully expecting I would eventually buy one for the two later ones.
That was my introduction to LinkedInLocal. Little did I know at the time that I had come upon a game-changer, something brought to mind recently when I bought and subsequently read How a Hashtag Changed the World: Stories, Lessons and Reflections from the #LinkedInLocal Movement.
In hindsight, I would describe that event as very good, making me look forward to more, but not legendary among the events I have been to. It was, however, the beginning, and the best was (and, chances are, still is) yet to come. I made a number of connections at that event, with some I am still very much in touch with regularly today, but it was the next one I attended a couple of months that was amazing. I remember leaving that event feeling like so much was possible, having made amazing connections through great conversations and a well-done panel discussion. It made me eager to get to future iterations of it.
In between those two events, I signed up to be an event host myself. The Manchester, NH area had a relative dearth of networking events, as I found myself often going to Boston for these. But as I was coming up on two years living just outside of Manchester and not planning to leave anytime soon, I had a new area in which I needed to connect with more people. I had some options, but I felt that getting one of these going – especially having heard that someone subsequently started a series of LinkedInLocal events in Providence, RI not long after the first one I attended – was the best route.
To make a long story short, I got together with a few others who had expressed interest in this to put together LinkedInLocal Manchester in New Hampshire, and while that has been on hiatus due to a few factors, there is every intention to bring that back once this pandemic fully subsides. I continued to attend ones run in Boston when I could, and the grand-daddy of them all was one held right before the INBOUND conference in 2019, the single-best networking event I have ever attended. And not long before the pandemic took over our lives, the first LinkedInLocal Merrimack Valley was a big success, and it had me looking forward to future ones and the great connections that can be made.
I am far from alone in having experienced this as a game-changer, and many of the stories of it are chronicled in this book. Those stories come after a recounting of how this movement came about, from something simple: a desire to get to know the people behind the LinkedIn profile. So many people had game-changing experiences with the people they connected with and in making these events happen, and a number of charities benefited from donations and the attention that these events brought them. Events were run in over 90 countries and over 650 cities and towns, with over 1,000 hosts.
What this book does for those who have been part of the movement is twofold. It shares the stories of others, ones that certainly resonate with us even if we haven’t been privy to them first-hand. The book also shares the challenges of getting this off the ground and growing – and it wasn’t as easy as it might have seemed to the untrained eye. It was a big balancing act for the co-founders with all the demand to lead events, having a web site that was useful to others and lightened the load on the co-founders (who all had day jobs and other life commitments), and ultimately dealing with LinkedIn. While I already knew we should have endless gratitude for what they did, I had no idea of the extent. What they did was incredible.
Ultimately, it is with LinkedIn that the story has a sad climax. In 2019, LinkedIn finally released guidelines, and it was not what was hoped for. There were many things the company could have done in getting behind this and unleashing it and its power even more, but that did not happen. The guidelines were mostly around protecting their brand, no longer requiring events using the name to be not-for-profit and free of pitches – basically, what made LinkedInLocal, well, LinkedInLocal. When that happened, reaction among founders and many hosts on the platform was certainly not one of joy; rather, it was uncertainty at best, although there was some relief from the founders because they had tried to discuss this with LinkedIn, who was benefiting from a great deal of increased engagement as a result of this, and one way or another, the future of this was out of their hands. There was finality, even if it left something to be desired.
How any future events might look was an open question at that point, but events have continued, with the co-founders all moving on from leading the way. Their mission has been accomplished, yet continues as well, because there will always be a need for what this brought. Even in an increasingly online world, much business still gets done in person. When I was in the college basketball media, being able to reach coaches and administrators by phone, text or other options was great, but seeing them in person allowed for things that any medium never could. The conversations were deeper, more wide-ranging, and felt more like they should.
Considering we are still in the midst of a pandemic, with events of any real size still held online if at all and distancing protocols still in place, reading this book is a treat in that it brings one back to something we miss. So many of us who have had to work from home for months miss seeing our co-workers, miss the random conversations we had that were not all about our work, miss the non-verbal ways we communicate. And while we can still go to networking events online with tools like Zoom and Remo, it still feels like something is missing in not seeing people in person and not easily breaking off from the group to have a one-on-one for a while if you really connect with someone while remaining at the event.
In due time, this pandemic will subside. At that point, events like the ones that made LinkedInLocal a big movement are sure to come back to life. Indeed, there has perhaps never been a time where it has been needed – and wanted – more than right now. For just such a comeback, we will be all the better, and I will continue to think back to that first one in Boston I heard about that began modestly enough but was the beginning of many great connections.