Northwest
After hours is a different room
in Rooms
The same organisation runs a seven thirty coffee and a five thirty after-hours, and the two rooms share about a fifth of their attendees. The programs are similar. The difference is almost entirely logistical.
Who the clock excludes
An evening event competes with dinner, with school pickup, with a second job, and with the last two hours a retail or service business is open. A morning event competes with sleep and with the school run, which is a smaller set of obligations and a set that can be planned around. Evening rooms end up skewed toward people whose work ends at five and whose household does not need them at six. Morning rooms skew toward owners with flexible mornings and hard afternoons.
Neither group is more serious about their business. They are available at different times.
What the venue does to the format
Most after-hours events are held at a bar, a brewery or a tasting room, because those venues have space in the early evening and are glad to have it filled. That choice does three things at once. It removes the structured introduction round, since a standing room cannot run one. It lengthens individual conversations, because nobody is watching a timer. And it quietly excludes a portion of the membership who do not drink, will not host clients in a bar, or are driving forty minutes home.
Groups that have thought about this alternate venues. A brewery in June, a bank community room in July, somebody's office in August. It costs the host more work and it keeps a wider slice of the membership in the rotation.
Evening rooms are better at one thing and worse at another. Better at depth, because a forty-minute conversation happens there and rarely happens in a structured morning meeting. Worse at coverage, because you will speak to four people instead of eighteen. A member who only attends after-hours events builds a small number of strong relationships slowly. A member who only attends mornings builds a wide, shallow index fast. Most of the people who get real work out of a network do both, and they know which one they are attending.
One practical note for anyone hosting. The first forty minutes decide the whole event, because the people who arrive at five thirty are standing in a nearly empty room and will leave at six if nothing has happened. Somebody has to be at the door making introductions for that stretch. Where the job is unassigned, the event fills at six fifteen with people who already know each other.