Monday, April 30, 2007

If so inclined, Northern Virginia businesspeople could spend just about every breakfast, lunch, happy hour and dinner schmoozing with colleagues and clients.

By 7:30 a.m. most days, the Tower Club, Tysons Corner's high-end networking hot spot, is swarming with sales pitches and socializing CEOs. At all hours of the day, hotel banquet halls draw local executives by the hundreds to hear speakers. A few regulars on the networking circuit say they sometimes run out of small talk because they see so much of their fellow hobnobbers.

"You could go to something every hour of every day," said Ellen Mundell, a business development manager at Deloitte & Touche and a self-described "networking fool." She spends nearly a third of her work time mingling with business people at area events, which sometimes leaves her wondering: "Did I accomplish anything, or did I just talk to the same people and try to dodge the same people?"

Her husband, Greg, a vice president at Pragmatics, a McLean government contractor, also spends a lot of time swapping leads at events sponsored by acronym-laced organizations: AFCEA, IAC, ITAA.

He used to frequent some of Ellen's favorites: NVTC, MAVA and Business Alliance. "It was like date night, with an open bar," he said.

With two young children, juggling morning and evening events can get tricky. They coordinate schedules, sometimes going to events late after trading kid-duty at their Bethesda home.

"The last thing this area needs is another networking group," Ellen said.

Yet they keep on forming. Michael Gordon, a vice president with Breakfast Club America, just moved to town from Philadelphia to add a Northern Virginia chapter to the 18 Breakfast Clubs in other cities. He'll be inviting about a hundred mid-size companies to attend events and help one another develop business strategies.

But it's a tough crowd. "This area really suffers from network fatigue," Gordon said. "People are really networked out in this city -- they have this negative image of cocktail parties and handing out cards and trying to sell you something."

Other groups have formed with friendship in mind. Cynthia de Lorenzi started her own circle, Success in the City, geared toward female senior managers, executives and entrepreneurs. About 600 "divas," as they call themselves, go on wine tasting tours, limo rides and jaunts to Manhattan.

"By focusing on social relationships, deals on heels will follow," she said. "Men do things shoulder to shoulder on the golf course. We do things face to face."

A cursory survey came up with more than 30 networking groups that meet regularly in Northern Virginia, and that's not counting area's 14 chambers of commerce.

Some groups are huge. The Northern Virginia Technology Council has more than 1,100 member companies and has brought in such speakers as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The Northern Virginia chapter of the Armed Forces Communication and Electronics Association is the country's largest and attracts crowds of 700 for its monthly luncheons. Others are small and exclusive. Mosby's Rangers, a group of professionals in Middleburg, claims about a dozen members. Potomac Officers Club brings together about 500 senior officers for private gatherings. Last week, local networking guru Mark Bisnow hosted 150 people at his second-annual "Schmoozarama."

Many people try to make the most of their time at events, frequent networker Mundell notes, so etiquette is sometimes lacking. The telltale sound of scrolling BlackBerrys often hums in the background, and hushed pow-wows are held in corners and hallways.

Her advice for getting the most out of networking groups: Join committees to work one-on-one with specific people. "You can plant the seeds of a relationship more easily in smaller forums," she said.

-- Kim Hart