Mixed Up
Nobody networks. That is the rule, and it is enforced.
What is deliberately missing
The format is almost entirely subtractive. No panel, because a panel decides in advance who is worth listening to. No badges, because a badge is an instruction to sort the room. No pitching, which people find harder to give up than the other two combined and which is the rule that makes the evening work.
What is left is a table, a reason to be at it, and a seating plan built by somebody who has thought about it for longer than anyone will notice. That last part is the whole craft. A good evening looks like it organised itself.
It is not a community and it is not a platform. It happens, it ends, and some fraction of what was said in it turns up somewhere else eighteen months later with no attribution. That is the correct outcome.
The best thing that ever came out of it was a conversation I was not part of.
