[Kopipaste] 10 Reasons Why I Can't Have Coffee With You

[kopipaste at machineaecrire.com]

  10 Reasons Why I Can't Have Coffee With You

March 4, 2013 10:32pm PST

*I get at least 5 E-mails for coffee a day (coffee also being a stand-in
for lunch, dinner, breakfast, coffee, drinks, Skype, speaking at a
conference or chatting on the phone).* I call this the *Let's have
coffee problem*. An invidual is only one person, and one can't meet with
everyone. This is an attempt at examining the core issues involved in
this problem.


      The 'Let's Have Coffee' Problem


        Calculating the Hidden Costs of a Coffee Appointment

One coffee appointment is not actually 30-60 minutes long. The coffee
appointment is actually made up of a number of hidden timesinks,
outlined as follows:

  * 45 min to 1 hour for the actual duration of the coffeetime
  * 15-30 minutes of transport time (assuming an average meeting is 15
    minutes away from your default location.
  * 30 minutes to an hour over 1 day to 2 months to actually nail down
    the coffee appointment time between two people.
  * 15-30 minutes of uncertainty per appointment. Someone may arrive
    early or late. Someone may need to cancel.
  * 15-30 minutes writing up information gathered during the coffee
    meeting, writing intros or following up with the new contact.
  * The entire process over again if someone is late or cancels.


        1 coffee meeting: 2 hours 30 min over an average of 1-2 weeks

Muliply this by 5 and you can begin to see that merley scheduling and
transporting oneself to coffee appointments alone would result in an
average of over 10 hours per day.

That's *70 hours a week* if I took all coffee requests. I would have no
time for anything else, especially digesting and writing up any
information I received during said coffee appointments.

If a coffee meeting is successful, the parties might request an
additional meeting. This would add a multiplier onto the initial coffee
appointment with each person. Assuming 3/5ths of coffee appointments
warranted future meetings and additional social maintenance, the demands
on me for future appointments would outweigh the span of my lifetime.

The problem is that I feel rude to decline coffee requests. I'd like to
have the time. There's nothing more enjoyable for me than to meet new
and interesting people and help them work on what they need help with.
It's not susutainable. A single individual is not scalable.


      What Do Coffee Meetings Accomplish?

If this is a business-related coffee meeting, the person requesting the
coffee meeting is usually looking for advice, introductions/connections,
picking one's brain (although this always sounds to be like picking
one's nose), or just getting to know someone.

The most successful meetings have resulted in me introducing the coffee
requester to the person they *actually* wanted to meet in the first
place. Why not bring all of those people together in the same room? Why
not invite them all to dinner or a private/public networking event? Why
not collide communities together?

I realized my most successful networking with people was when I rented a
studio in Chinatown, Portland. I had events every few weeks at the tiny
studio and invited people in my network. Dozens of people met each other
through having a place to meet, and I didn't have to do much but
introduce them! A lot of them went on to build interesting and
successful projects.


      Coffee Appointments Don't Scale

The one-to-many (maybe one-too-many) social situation is a curious one
to optimize. As a simple human, I don't scale very well. An event allows
people to scale socially, so having many people meet in one place for an
hour or two vs. one meeting at a time allows for a feasible meeting
opportunity. I'm also just one person. I have limited knowledge that's
easily used up. The more people involved in a social setting, the more
easily I can connect people to each other, not myself.


      Conferences and Networking Events Do

My general solution to all of this is simply to visit conferences or
hold networking events where I can meet many people at once, and then
give a speech at the conference. Giving a speech is the easiest way to
meet everyone in a room.

In essence, I never have free time until I am at a social tech event. At
social events my purpose is clearly defined as one of socialization. I
often conserve a lot of energy for these events because they're a more
efficient use of energy.


      Ways to Politely Decline a Coffee Appointment


        1. Invite the individual to a group dinner

You can collect interest people over time and invite them to smaller
dinners that happen every few weeks. Brewster Kahale has a standing
dinner at his house every week for the past 16 years. Different people
each time, and he has a massive network this way.

I've been looking to organize dinners with people in the future, because
there's a lot of coffee appointments and it often takes longer to
schedule a coffee meeting than it does to actually spend the time
talking at coffee! The dinners bring together interesting people that
should be meeting each other anyway.

Chances are if we met up, I'd be trying to get you to meet half of them
anyway, resulting in another set of coffee scheduling! Mind if I add
your name to the list of invites to the next dinner events? They will be
in a small room with a curated set of awesome people who think and do
exciting things. Would love to have you there! Just let me know, and
I'll invite you to the next one!


        2. BCC Party!

Invite a bunch of people to a private event where none of themknow they
exist.

Where did the idea for a BCC party come from? The story I heard is that
it came from some folks at Google. The invite was pretty simple - the
three hosts sent out an email blast to all their friends, putting
everyone in the BCC line. They called their mixer a BCC Party.

I went to a great one in Portland recently that included about 50%
awesome people I knew but didn't have the time to catch up with on a
regular basis, and 50% people I had never met before but were vetted by
the group that put it together.


        3. Invite the individual to a public networking event.

Know of an event they'd like, or one you'll be going to in the future?
Invite them! It makes it easierto get the conversation set.


        4. See if you'll be in the sample place in the future

SXSW, XOXO and other places may have people you know already. Dopplr was
the best way to see when other people would be travelling to the same
place in the future.


        5. Organize an Industry Networking Event

If you don't have one, organize one! Use a public bar and having a
standing meeting every week. Portland's widly successful Beer and Blog
event started this way. It grew from four people on laptops to over 150
people a week at it's apex. I was introduced to my co-founder there, and
it's where I directed anyone to go when I got the coffee emails.


        6. Forward the person to someone else

This isn't always the best idea, as half the emails I get come from
people who don't have time for coffee so forward someone onto coffee for me.


        7. Give them your phone number and tell them to call you

Chances are they won't, but if they do you can always limit the call to
15 min and get right down to the point. Sometimes you'll end up
surprisded and talk for hours. Either way it doesn't involve scheduling,
driving or viking, picking a place to meet, waiting if someone is late, ect.


        8. Go on a hike or walk with them

Take walking meetings


        9. Schedule all of them in the same day and have people sign up
        on a Google Spreadsheet


        10. Don't reject the idea of coffee altogether

There are some times when coffee is good. Sometimes coffee is great. You
just want to make sure you save the coffee meetings for the really epic
people. People that are reffered to you from strong, close connections.
You can always have coffee as a followup if you find out through another
method that they're amazing! Often coffee people want advice or support,
or want a connection. Sometimes you're just in the way of that
connection. Why not find out quickly what they want and give it to them?
This doesn't count for epic disucssions about interesting things, or
meeting of the minds.


      Conclusions

If you send me an email and I don't respond, I greatly apologize.
Hopefuly this is enough of an explanation of my behavious and physical
limitations as a human being.

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