This guest post is written by Larry Chiang, a co-founder of Duck9 who also regularly blogs for for BusinessWeek. In this post, he discusses some of the pros of organizing events as a means to increase your own exposure and make connections.

My party mentor, Susan Roane, the author of ‘How to Work a Room‘, once told me, “Larry, there are two types of people in this world: hosts and guests”. She argues that hosting gets you more influence and adds value at a party. I believe her.

I took it a couple steps further because partying and social engineering intrigue me. I see how people in positions of power use parties to further grow their influence. In this post, I boil down my knowledge and reveal how hosting and producing events can boost your visibility, increase your deal flow and help you sway people.