How to Organize a Networking Dinner

What do you do when a successful author and blogger like Chris Brogan emails you, asking if you’d like to have dinner with someone he knows? Clearly you say yes, and that’s how I came to meet Canadian entrepreneur Scott Oldford recently. I’m not the only one. Since late spring, Oldford been on a networking binge, conducting an estimated 40 lunches and dinners with a mix of friends and strangers.

Says Oldford, “Whenever I’m going somewhere, I’ll reach out to random people and people I know in the area.” One way to juice the process is by soliciting warm introductions – a form of “social proof,” he says – such as the one I received from Brogan. The value of the introductions goes both ways, enabling Oldford to screen out people who would interrupt group dynamics or push an agenda. “I want to make sure they’re not trying to pitch people,” he says.

The networking value has been enormous. “I’ve had about 440-450 people I’ve come into contact with in these dinners,” he estimates. But his goal isn’t simply to roll up new contacts into his database. “Essentially my vision for this is just connecting with people, and helping people with challenges by having other brilliant people in the room.”

The gatherings typically involve 8 to 16 people, and he’s held them in Newfoundland, Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver, New York (where I met him), Nashville, and Miami. When we spoke, he also had upcoming dinners planned in Boston, California, and more. With a hat tip to networking expert Keith Ferrazzi, Oldford says, “I don’t know the last time I ate alone since I’ve been doing this. The week before, I was in Toronto and I did five lunches and five dinners. My lowest [number of networking meals in a week] was 4; my average is 10; the highest was 14.”

So how does Oldford pull together so many events? Though he uses an executive assistant to help with scheduling, a lot of it is advance planning and strategy. “I compile a list of all the people I want to meet, and then compile a list of influencers that would be able to introduce me,” he says. “I create a master list, start emailing…and say, ‘I’m in town; what date would work best for you?’” Then his EA follows up with the details of scheduling; an automatic reminder goes out a few days in advance. “It doesn’t take a whole lot,” says Oldford. “It probably took 10 hours of my time and 10 hours of my EA’s time to do 11 events.”

He also has a vision for how the dinners should run. “Typically I let people talk randomly until we order, and when we order, each person talks about what they’re working on now, a bit about the past and who they are, what’s challenging them and why. Each person gets 5-10 minutes to talk about that in the group and we try to get that challenge solved, or get a little clarity.” Sometimes he also asks a specific question to attendees to “make people think on the spot,” such as “What’s your proudest moment?” or “What do you daydream about?”

It’s possible the dinners may yield new business opportunities. But for Oldford, they’re part of a larger effort to get to know more people. “The people you get to have relationships with is amazing,” he says. His next quest? “I want to – in the next 365 days – at least talk to, or have in the room, all the people who are on my LinkedIn profile. I have 2800 connections, and I start going through them, and I think, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ I want to have 2800 of my closest friends on LinkedIn, and if they can’t be friends, I want to at least be able to call them people I know…Technology has the ability to do so much more, yet sometimes we get stuck.” For Oldford, that’s where his old-fashioned networking dinners come in.

Have you organized networking dinners? How has it worked for you?

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategist who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She is the author of Reinventing You and Stand Out, and you can receive her free Stand Out Self-Assessment Workbook.