Bay City After 6

Somehow, and I don't quite understand why, the idea of networking has become dominated by business and chambers of commerce. There's nothing wrong with their version of networking, but sometimes it seems like people doing chamber-type networking are only concerned about collecting the most business cards and working on their elevator pitch. It seems to me that networking should be more about just meeting people and getting to know them. If I meet someone and there is a chance to work together, so much the better, but I think getting to know people is reward enough. They don't need to hear my elevator pitch.

I've been working with Jenna Schrumpf of Dobson Home Health Care the past few weeks and our pet project is creating an informal networking group for professional-types. We initially started talking about it because we were both surprised that the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce didn't offer a young professionals group similar to the groups in Midland and Saginaw*.

Jenna and I decided that we'd go ahead and start a group of our own and see if anybody was interested. As we started talking to a few people about it, we were surprised that a number of people were more interested in a non-Chamber group. It isn't anything against the Chamber, but people seem to want something a little bit different. So we created Bay City After 6.

My beef with many YP groups is that they all have an age requirement of something like 25–40. Maybe it's just me being overly sensitive since I will be 40 years old in a few days, but I think putting an age limit—even if it's just a guideline—is discriminatory. What happens when I turn 41? Do I have to go to Carnival? It's kind of like refusing to call your group the Old Boys Club, but requiring a Y-chromosome to belong.

Bay City After 6 is focused on the social aspects of networking. Maybe it will benefit your business, too, but that is only because growing your group of friends and acquaintances will benefit your whole life. Initially we are just planning on having a couple of happy hours and talking to everyone who shows up (assuming anyone shows up, that is) about what it is they would like to see happen both with the group and in the Tri-Cities (I still can't bring myself to use the other name).

We aren't planning any business functions, but if people seem interested in having meetings with actual speakers and such, we can do that (in fact, we've already had one professional speaker/motivator offer his services). It's our group, we can do anything we like.

Our first meeting will be held this Thursday, April 2nd, at Midland Street Jack's (formerly Lumberjack's) on Midland Street in Bay City. Anybody and everybody is welcome to join. Also, the link above takes you to our Facebook page. We are probably going to get a blog going in the next couple of weeks, so we'll keep you updated.

Hope to see you on Thursday night.