Tonight my partner and I decided to venture out into the gay life... Or at least what little of it there is here in Connecticut! We attended a get together at the Real Art Ways hoping to network, meet some people and, in short, have a good time.
It was a pretty good crowd - quite diverse. The thing is, though, most people seemed to know each other already... Which made it kind of hard to break into the group, and neither my partner nor I are especially good at making new friends in a group of strangers.
Ultimately, he was able to start a conversation with a guy who happened to be talking about a gay men's chorus in Hartford, making use of the fact that I adore singing and have been looking for a chance to join such a group for a while. This proved a good way to meet at least one person in the crowd... Still, I couldn't help but wonder, how do people network and meet people in this kind of group?
The best I could find doing a quick search on Google was this little article:
Which is all good and useful advice... Except it misses the key element. I consider myself pretty good at keeping a conversation going, I think I am able to identify what a person might be interested in talking about and all that... However, what I do NOT know is how to start the conversation. How do you break into a group that is already engaged in conversation? That's when I found this other little article (which is, by the way, a lot more useful):
I was particularly interested in the 'picturing a friend' part. In a way, I think it helps to think of the potential of a person... I mean, I did it with people I dated; in fact, I always think "would I introduce this person to my friends/family ever?". Now, with friends it's less clear, but I guess it would help if I can picture myself sharing things with that person. It's not such a clear cut, though... But it's a start, I think!
