About seven years ago ChannelWave hosted an e-lab team to do market research and generally help out the business for a semester. Since then every six months or so I get invited to the e-lab CEO reception at the Sloan school. This year they got nice and feisty with their RSVP standards and put out the following message along with their invitation.

The MIT Entrepreneurship Center is pleased to announce the deployment
of our new networking software algorithms, motivated by Emily Post's
landmark masterpiece, ETIQUETTE

1.If you RSVP = YES and don't show, you are dropped from all future
invitations.
2.If you plead for forgiveness after the first violation you can be
placed on probation for one year..
3.If you wait to sign up 'til the day of the event, you are marked in
our database as "high maintenance"

I was quite frightened by this threat regarding failed etiquette so I arrived at the event after having been called by someone to confirm that I would arrive. So when I arrived they had not made a name tag for me so I assume that I may be accidentally uninvited because they can’t match my RSVP to my attendance.

The event was better than usual because now that I have been with VMS (MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service) for over a year I recognize a number of people who are entrepreneurs that I have worked with as well as the mentors. The event gave me time to chat with the folks I already knew and to discuss how they were doing with their ventures. I even connected with some new people like some folks that have interns from Norway that work at Boston University. That could be helpful for my fledgling business(es) given that I haven’t been able to convince the e-lab folks to volunteer for my newer ventures after submitting a project three semesters in a row. I also managed to rekindle some old ideas and got some juice in me again about making things go with some ideas that just had stalled like my "pet project".

I highly recommend following the rules for the etiquette because the event is a great one for MIT based folks who have engaged with Sloan in the past. It has a “no bozos” feel to the group which keeps me from watching my back for roaming lawyers and weirdo consultants and the folks there are all very interesting to chat with and very interested in making MIT based entrepreneurs successful. Even at the end of the evening last night I had a conversation with a man who said that he could now recognize faces by using striking imagery associated with someone's name (Brian would look like they had a brain sticking out of their face).

To whoever hands out the invites. Thanks for inviting me year after year.