I realize this is a pretty bold headline and a rather dramatic statement to make but I’ve been thinking recently about my home city of Indianapolis and how active this community is in networking. My blog post was prompted by a recent whiteboard session I attended with Tony Scelzo in which we covered all the great networking opportunities we have in this city.

For example, we have one of the most active, progressive BNI franchises in the country. Hazel Walker is truly a community leader and a progressive networker and has done great things for BNI in this city. We are also the birthplace of Rainmakers, founded by Tony Scelzo. Rainmakers is growing dramatically every day and offers over 40 networking events each month in Indianapolis. Indianapolis is also home to Smaller Indiana, which started off as an online social network and now offers live events throughout the year. Confluence is another networking startup focused on the enterprise.

Aside from these formal groups, I’ve noticed a very strong culture of active networking in the business community here in Indianapolis. The number of events and organizations available here is staggering.

Additionally, I also see an extremely strong focus on social media among business professionals here in Indy and opportunities to speak and hear speakers are plentiful and the content is high-quality.

My question is: do other cities offer the same level of networking opportunities? From what I can tell, Indianapolis is a networking powerhouse. How does this compare to the networking culture in other cities?