Dinner with Strangers

There’s an old networking adage that everyone is worth meeting at least once. To find out if that’s true, try sending an open invite on Twitter the next time you’re alone in a strange city. “Just passing through Denver tonight. Who wants to have dinner?” It’s an introvert’s worst nightmare, but for a certain kind of hyper-networking traveler, it’s become the preferred way of turning downtime into business time (or, if things go really well, business time.) My “Cultural Studies” column in the Times, in which I ask these people why.