I’m interested in what makes events worth sharing, both as a co-founder of The Hive and as somebody who likes going to interesting events – so when I heard that Interesting has a similar format to The Hive I thought I would take a closer look, and it turns out they share some key insights.
I think the key to The Hive’s success has been the simple proposition. We have a date (second Tuesday of each month) and a venue (some bar in central Melbourne) and a speaker (a friend of a friend) that we send to a list of people who are interested (just under 2000 members).
Our message is “The Hive is networking for entrepreneurs.”
Interesting shares a similar approach, and it must have been good because people took the idea and ran it in Sydney as well as New York and Amsterdam.
Their message is “Come and share what you find interesting” (see How to be interesting).
Russell says “These things go so much easier if all you do is the main thing you want to do. We book a hall, organise some speakers and tell people about it. There are no badges, schwag, things in bags, pens with logos printed on them, no sponsors. There is barely any refreshment. You don’t need that junk around the edges.”
Russell speaks more about how the event works in the last three minutes of his Do Lecture.
You’ve gotta be interesting first and convincing second.
If you try to be convincing first everyone will tune you out.
and
“If you want to build a better mousetrap you have got to leave room for the mouse.”
Once you set the ‘rules’ of your event it is important to step back and make sure you leave a few gaps for others to fill because those gaps are where it gets interesting.
By Ross Hill - January 12th, 2009 at 2:49pm with 1,205 views - interesting russell davies the hive
