Likemind.orl January 16, 2009

From a recent New York Times article on Likemind:
a monthly kaffeeklatsch for creative professionals, held in 55 cities around the world, including Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai, and Malmo, Sweden.

Likemind gatherings have no formal structure, no fees and typically no agenda. But participants exchange ideas, job tips and useful contacts, while also batting around ideas about technology, art, business and culture.

Likemind might sound like a 2008 version of networking, but to participants, likemind events are distinctly different from the traditional networking parties of the ’80s and ’90s, where slick-suited would-be executives teetered around with a cocktail in one hand and a fistful of business cards in the other.

Likemind caters to young professionals in advertising, media and design who are products of the age of personal blogs, warts-and-all YouTube videos and viral marketing. For them, the best pitch is the disguised pitch. Nothing, participants said, is more uncool than the hard-sell of traditional networking (which may explain why likemind is not capitalized).

“We just show up over coffee and talk,” said Eric Cedo, a participant in Detroit