We put forward a practice perspective on absorptive capacity. We illustrate this by network congregating, i.e. repeatedly exchanging face-to-face ideas at interorganizational venues such as conferences, which Intel Corporation attends as a leading member of the semiconductor industry network SEMATECH. Hereby, our findings contribute to the discourse by highlighting the role of practices, in particular against the organization-network nexus. Network congregating is carefully choreographed by Intel and helps the organization to acquire knowledge from network partners and utilize the information internally. Moreover, Intel disseminates information among the network partners by means of congregating in order to influence the knowledge evaluation processes of the network. We suggest tentatively that this reciprocal flow of information at the organization-network nexus is also worth considering, as not only Intel, but also other dominant network partners try to influence the value attribution of new knowledge (e.g. technological trends) among other network partners.