If you've organised a B2B event, you've faced this decision: structured hosted-buyer meetings or open networking? Curated quality or attendee freedom?

Most event platforms force you to choose one. That's a problem, because the best events do both.

The hosted-buyer model

Hosted-buyer networking (sometimes called managed meetings or curated matchmaking) follows a structured flow:

Wishlists — buyers and sellers indicate who they want to meet
Matching — an algorithm (or manual process) pairs compatible participants
Review — organisers review and adjust the proposed matches
Scheduling — confirmed matches are placed into time slots
Release — participants receive their meeting schedules

This model is powerful for trade shows, investor summits, and procurement events. It guarantees that key meetings happen, ensures sponsors get face time with their target buyers, and creates a structured networking experience.

The downsides? It requires significant organiser effort. It doesn't scale well for large attendee lists. And it can feel rigid — attendees often want to meet people who aren't on their pre-assigned schedule.

The open networking model

Open networking is the opposite approach: attendees browse profiles, send meeting requests, and schedule their own meetings. Think LinkedIn at an event — self-service discovery and connection.

This works well for conferences where attendees have diverse interests and you can't predict who wants to meet whom. It scales naturally and puts control in the attendee's hands.

The downsides? Important meetings might not happen because neither party took the initiative. Sponsors may not get the ROI they need. And without structure, networking can feel chaotic or unproductive.

The false choice

Most event platforms lean one way or the other. Enterprise platforms like Cvent and Grip are strong on hosted-buyer. Simpler tools tend to offer basic attendee directories at best. Few support both models well, and fewer still let you run them simultaneously in the same event.

This is a genuine problem for organisers. A tech conference might want hosted-buyer meetings for sponsor-buyer interactions and open networking for general attendee connections. A trade show might run structured matchmaking for VIP buyers while offering self-service networking to everyone else.

Running both models together

At EventGen, we built networking as a single engine that supports both curated and open models — concurrently, for the same event, with shared scheduling.

Here's how it works in practice:

Curated (hosted-buyer) flow

Define networking groups (e.g., "Sponsors" and "Buyers") with relationship types
Set matching criteria using cross-field profile matching — not keyword guessing, but structured field linking (e.g., a buyer's "products interested in" maps to a sponsor's "products offered")
Run the matching algorithm to generate proposed meetings
Use the preliminary review to adjust matches before finalising
Schedule meetings into available time slots with conflict detection
Release schedules to participants

Open (self-service) flow

Attendees browse profiles filtered by networking group, interests, or custom fields
They request meetings with a proposed time and message
Recipients accept, decline, reschedule, or counter-propose
Direct booking is available where the organiser enables it
Attendees manage their own schedule through the portal

Where the two models intersect

The real power is in the integration:

Shared scheduling — hosted-buyer meetings and self-service meetings appear on the same schedule. The system prevents double-booking across both types.
Team networking — a company booth can have multiple team members. Requests go to the booth, where the team leader confirms them and assigns the right member; if exactly one member is free at that time, they're assigned automatically.
The What-If tool — when scheduling conflicts arise, EventGen's What-If tool explains why a conflict exists and suggests ranked alternative solutions. "You can't schedule this meeting because Sarah is in a hosted-buyer meeting at 2pm. Options: move to 3pm (both available), assign to James (same booth, same expertise), or reschedule the conflicting meeting."
Profile matching — the same profile data powers both the hosted-buyer matching algorithm and the open networking browse/filter interface.

The technical details that matter

Cross-field option linking

Most matchmaking uses keyword matching: "This attendee likes 'AI' and that sponsor offers 'AI', so they match." This produces noisy results because "AI" means different things in different contexts.

EventGen uses cross-field option linking. You define explicit relationships between field options: "When a buyer selects 'Cloud Infrastructure' in their interests, match them with sponsors who selected 'Cloud Infrastructure' or 'Hybrid Cloud' in their products." This produces dramatically more relevant matches.

Booth concurrency

For trade show networking, multiple meetings can happen at a single booth simultaneously, up to a configurable concurrency limit. A sponsor with a 4-person booth can have 4 meetings running at once. The scheduler respects both booth concurrency limits and individual team member availability.

Flexible durations and rules

Time slots can have different durations, and different relationships can carry their own rules — where meetings take place, and whether they can be rescheduled or cancelled. A 30-minute hosted-buyer meeting at a dedicated booth can run alongside a 15-minute open-networking chat, all in the same scheduling framework.

What this means for organisers

Running both networking models together means:

Sponsors get guaranteed meetings through the hosted-buyer programme, while also benefiting from inbound requests via open networking
Attendees have structured meetings for their key connections and the freedom to discover new ones on their own
Organisers have full visibility across all networking activity — hosted and open — in a single dashboard with unified reporting
Scheduling conflicts are resolved automatically across both systems

Getting started with dual-model networking

On EventGen, networking is included in the Free plan — both open and hosted-buyer models. There's no add-on required to test the full networking engine.

Set it up in minutes:

Create networking groups for your attendee types
Define the relationship types and matching criteria
Choose which groups have hosted-buyer access, open networking access, or both
Let AI configure the profile fields and matching rules based on your event description

The AI assistant handles the complex configuration — networking groups, relationship types, matching criteria, scheduling rules — so you can focus on the strategic decisions: who should meet whom, and why.

Want to see both networking models in action? Sign up free and test with the Free plan — all networking features included, no credit card required.

Event Networking Done Right: Hosted-Buyer vs Open Networking