I have a number of project ideas on the horizon for door64. Feedback from the previous door64 meet-up has helped begin to sort them out in terms of needs from the community.

One idea is to help companies who ARE hiring to find qualified candidates. These companies are generally inundated with resumes once an opportunity is posted. However, in general networking proves to uncover qualified candidates more quickly. Corporate recruiters typically have a good size network, but once it has been exhausted, eventually they're on to the job boards. And by the way, if the job description isn't precise and clear, the task of sorting through inbound resumes can be a bear.

Hi all,

I have a favor to ask you. I have been speaking with an economist from the Texas Workforce Commission who is writing an annual report about the state of technology employment in Texas. Through our discussions, this question was raised about door64: What kind of measurable impact has it made?

Here are the door64 Happy Hour photos! Thanks to Eugene Hsu, and Olga Garcia for snapping all these great shots!
Flickr Photo Stream
This event drew ~250 attendees for several hours of networking amongst colleagues from in and around Austin. Folks started arriving at 5:30pm, and we were there past 9pm. Thanks again to all our sponsors, and to Blu Cafe and the 360 Condominiums for welcoming us for this networking event!

Although door64 has recently turned 2 years old, it's by no means stagnant. You have probably noticed that I have been cleaning up the aesthetics and making better use of the browser real estate.

There's working going on under the hood too. I am currently having some development done that will make it much easier to start finding members who are like you. You will be tagging yourself in ways similar to how content is tagged (by industry, discipline, etc.), and you can use that information to find other people with similar tags.

That said, I have an idea I'm throwing around, and I'd love your input. A couple questions:

1. When meeting someone new, what do you prefer: Would you rather email the person directly to introduce yourself, or do you prefer to have a friend/colleague in common make an email introduction for you both? Why?
2. When you receive an email introduction from someone (either directly, or via a common friend), how likely is it that you will respond?
3. Imagine you are introduced to someone new (via email, or in person) who has a similar background and/or work experience as yourself. In the first email reply / 5 minutes of your conversation, what are you trying to discover about this person?