SEATTLE— To attend Recession Camp, you don’t need a permission slip from your parents, or your name sewn into your underwear.

The free and cheap daytime activities are designed to bring summer camp-style socializing to unemployed adults.

“The point is to get people away from their PCs and the stress of job searching for awhile and do some relaxed, low-key networking,” said organizer Maryse O’Neill.

O'Neill is a job-seeker, too. In May, the day after she was laid off from her job in IT management and process improvement, she asked her friend Andy Brenner, who started a Bay Area recession camp in 2001, if she could follow his lead.

“I wanted to do something that wasn’t those stressful networking sessions where you’re marching around, doing your elevator speech,” O’Neill said.

Instead of name tags and no-host bars, recession campers have met with their dogs for walks at Greenlake and Marymoor Park and gathered for a free architecture tour sponsored by the Seattle Architecture Foundation.

The Foundation offered the tour as a sort of “dress rehearsal.” Tour organizers got to work out the kinks, and participants got to go for free. Future events include a trip to hear a free lunchtime concert downtown, and whatever other campers want to organize.

Recession campers stop at the Olympic Hotel on a tour of Seattle architecture. Photo courtesy of Kevin Talbot.

O’Neill, who describes herself as a natural networker, said she has gotten two job interviews through Recession Camp connections, which she promotes through LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. She’s also collected contacts for other people and believes that cooperating, rather than competing with fellow job-seekers, builds “networking karma.”

Kevin Talbot, who was laid off in May from his technical project manager job, said Recession Camp activities add variety to his job search schedule. He tries to do a couple networking events each week, whether it's lunch with a former colleague or one of several job search meet-ups.

Such face-to-face interactions are "invaluable today," Talbot said. "I've been much more rigorous about it."

"Still grieving"

At one recent networking event sponsored by a different group, O’Neill showed up to find a line snaking out of the door and down the block.

“It’s depressing, because you think, oh my god; I’m in competition with all these people?”

Only one person showed up at a happy hour O'Neill organized. She learned, she said, that people don’t want to spend money on food and drinks.

Some have a hard time reaching out after a layoff. Many are "still grieving" the loss of their jobs, O'Neill said. Finding a new one is a lot like exercise and diet; “You know what the good things are to do, but it can be scary and intimidating to get out there.”

Get out of the house

Old habits—even when they’re outdated—die hard.

“I think that people are just stuck on doing what they think is useful, which is applying to jobs on sites,” she said, “when they really need to get out of the house.”

Are you unemployed? What do you do to network and get out of the house? Tell us about it in the comments section.