I’m flying out Sunday via Alaska Air, taking the direct flight from Orlando to Seattle, arriving at 11:40 am. If you’re there about the same time and want to share a ride in, email me. I’m staying at the Sheraton only because that’s where the Board stays, otherwise I’ve always preferred a hotel a few blocks away, I like the 3-4 block to/from “work” every day to unwind. Maybe I’ll just walk around the block to accomplish the same!
Don Gabor is coming in Sunday afternoon and we’re planning to have dinner and chat, and if you’re in Seattle and want to join us, drop me an email. Not sure where dinner will be, but someplace between the Sheraton and the water front. In between I’ll check in with PASS HQ and see how things are going, and probably just see who I run into.
On Monday I’ll be in the volunteer session in the afternoon and then in Don’s networking seminar from 4:30-6:30. Then it’s off to the opening reception, and then the SSC party, where Steve makes me pay $30 to get in!
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I’ll be present for the keynote (rarely the best part of the day in my view), and I’m going to go to a few sessions, with a focus on seeing speakers that I have not seen before. I’m going to try to be there for lunch on Tues & Wed to network and facilitate networking. The food is ok, but usually I’m ready for a walk and something besides convention center food – we’ll see. Thursday having lunch with a friend. I’ve left evenings open so far, I’ll probably hit the expo Tuesday night, and other than that will see what else comes up.
Tuesday at lunch I'll be hosting one of the Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions titled 'When and How to Participate in the SQL Server Community'. I hope you'll join me for lunch and discussion!
Friday I have a board meeting in the morning, and then fly out at a fairly horrible 10:30 pm on Delta to eventually make it back to Orlando at 9 am the next morning. Long flight, long week!
Want to talk blogs, SQL, woodworking, PASS, SQLSaturday, mentoring, careers, family, business? Or pretty much anything else other than politics? I won’t be too hard to find, very often it’ll be at the top of the escalator on the session floor or at the coffee shop on the third floor, or somewhere in between. Email me, or try me on Twitter @SQLAndy – though be warned I’m new to Twitter and could easily get it wrong. I’m going to set a goal of meeting 50 people that I don’t know. Is that a impossible, or too easy? Don’t know, but it’s a start.
Funny how tools can surprise you. I’ve had in mind to set up a sub-group and invite all the SQLSaturday #21 attendees, encourage post event networking. I’ve imported contacts before and it worked well, so went to do it today for a subgroup and as far as I can tell, you can’t. I wanted to both invite and pre-approve, that way they don’t queue waiting on me to get back to them. Couldn’t see a way to do it, ended up just inviting them to the oPASS list. Maybe not the worst idea anyway, but liked the idea of having a really targeted group.
Part of that is I had planned to do the same for the networking seminar at PASS, we may have to go with a separate group rather than a subgroup. Anyone have ideas?
If you’re attending the PASS Summit this year I hope you’ve decided to attend the two hour Networking to Build Business Contacts seminar on Monday afternoon. It’s $60, you get a signed copy of How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends by author and seminar presenter Don Gabor, and you get a chance to network with other people that want to learn how to network too. We’ve got about 25 seats left, if you want to attend sign up soon! I looked at the attendee list and there is some great diversity. We’ve got several members of the board, a couple book authors, some MVP’s, some speakers, chapter leaders. Some I know, more than I don’t – that’s good.
We’re setting up a private invitation only group on LinkedIn, and the week prior to the Summit we’ll invite all the seminar attendees to join the group. That gives attendees the chance to research the list and decide who they would like to try to meet, and of course to start making connections before and after the seminar.
Hope to see you there!
My friend Smitha sent me this link about fishbowl conversations as something that might make sense to add to the PASS Summit or other events. The concept is that you arrange chairs in a circle with a panel of participants and the moderator guides the discussion. The audience sits outside the circle to watch and listen. A variation is the “open” fishbowl where one chair is left vacant and someone from the audience can join in and then let someone else sit in.
So…it’s not quite a panel. I’d define panels as audience facing physically, and that changes the dynamic. This reminds me of Sunday morning talk shows that have a round table and they discuss issues while we the audience watch. It’s fun and educational (mostly) to watch a small group discuss an issue from various view points.
Not sure how well it works not having tried one. Building a circle of chairs is easy, but what about the audience? Do they stand, or do you move more chairs in outside the first circle? A good moderator is probably really important in some conversations, not in others. Getting the group together – is that planned, ad hoc, or both?
Anything that facilitates conversation at an event is a good thing, and I’d like to see this one going a few times. Anyone tried it or watched one?
I ran across this article about networking sins a while back and have had it on my list to share. I think it’s an ok list, but based on what I see with networking on LinkedIn (my current tool of choice) I don’t see much abuse. The biggest thing that bothers me (and I’ve mentioned before) is the recommend me/I’ll recommend you thing, and that’s not intrusive to the parties involved, I’m just not sure it’s a good idea. I think I get one request for an introduction every 3 months. Maybe I don’t know the right people! The challenge there is that you can see that I’m linked to someone, but no idea of the strength of the relationship, which can put you in the odd position of knowing the requestor will enough, but not knowing the target of the introduction as well. Still, to me that falls well short of a sin.
But it got me thinking, what are the mistakes that everyone makes? I think most of us are fairly forgiving about networking mistakes – especially in person – but it would be nice to build the list and work on ways to avoid it. And not all mistakes are active, I’ve learned the hard way that being passive and just not actively participating in a group conversation can send the wrong impression.
So, I’ll start with that one, and hoping you’ll share your own mistakes (because it’s not nice to point out flaws in others!)
#1 – Standing with a group that is talking and not participating in the conversation reasonably actively
My friend Don Gabor is providing us with some tips on networking as related to both PASS and the PASS Summit – you can see the list so far at http://summit2009.sqlpass.org/Agenda/ConnectatSummit/NetworkingTips.aspx. Got a question for Don about networking? Contact information is posted at the bottom of the tips page!
And don’t forget about the 2 hour pre-conference seminar he’ll be doing at the Summit called Networking to Build Business Contacts. Not only can you learn networking, you get to practice it while you’re there. We’ve filled about half the available seats so far and if the trend continues we’ll max out, sign up soon:-)
It’s been a couple months since we set up the OPASS group on LinkedIN and we’ve had some people join, decided to take the next step of uploading a list of all our members to send invitations. Of course it’s not quite that easy! Over time our list had degraded, today I had to delete 118 bad accounts and a few unsubscribe requests, but I finally got that done and that should give us a clearer picture of what we have.
I exported the three fields they request (firstname, lastname, email) to a CSV and gave it a try, it only recognized the email address on the test parse. Went back and added a header row with values of firstname, lastname, emailaddress, and it worked fine. I like that they give you a preview so that if something is wrong you can fix it. Once loaded you enter a message for the invitation that is sent to the list. One part I didn’t like is they don’t prompt you to pre-approve the list. You might or might not want to do that, but in my case I did so it meant I had to upload the list again to set the pre-approval – or end up saying “yes” to what will hopefully be a lot of people joining!
I’ve been thinking about the problem of connecting people at events for a while – what could we do to make it easier or more effective? Business cards are the traditional tool for exchanging information and they still work, though in our space maybe 50% of the people at an event will have them. Assuming you do exchange cards, then there is the dreaded follow up stage, deciding whether to follow up, how to do it if you do follow up, or just throwing the card away (or losing it).
Seems like we should be able to solve this with technology, but the one I consider most promising – bluetooth business cards – hasn’t made much headway. There are other services that try to do it, but they all feel clunky, forcing you to type in a phone number or email address to initiate the contact. Both are error prone, and many services assume that everyone you know will play their game (rarely).
Seems like one thing that might work is to just make sure everyone has cards. A simple way to do that is a reminder to bring some, but probably more realistic is to just print 10-20 on regular 20# paper and include in the stuff they get at the door. Everyone having a card doubles (in theory) the chances of connecting again once business cards are exchanged, either or both of the two parties might decide to do a follow up.
Jeremiah had an interesting post about business cards and making them really personal (personalized that is, sorry Jeremiah) about the same time I was thinking of making or buying some wooden ones. I may still do that! But rather than cramming a bunch of information on them, I’m leaning towards my name and my LinkedIn profile URL (substitute your social site of choice) because what would really benefit me is to maintain that connection afterward. This would attempt to drive them to something that is less work than typing it all into Outlook. The same applies to me as well, I’d like to follow up with the least effort and a good URL works….as long as I’m playing the same social game that you are. If not, then we need plan B.
So, maybe I still need it all on the card. Or a simple side and a complicated side. As much as I appreciate the effort Jeremiah put into the cards (and I may do the same), not sure it matters. I read this article that down plays the marketing value and that fits with my focus on re-connecting – I will already have met them once. Will the card design help me remember them and encourage me to follow up? Maybe. Also ran across Moo.com that makes smaller business cards.
At a higher level, I struggle to keep track of the people I talked to that I already knew. I’ve thought of taking a picture of everyone I chat with, maybe with the cell phone or maybe with a small camera on a neck strap, then I’d have face and the name badge. Still a hack though. Seems like what we need is a cultural shift, if you talk to someone, swap cards – even if you know them.
That led to various wild ideas on how to make that happen. Can we sell business card vests with tons of pockets/slots so you can show how many people you’ve met? A business card bandolier? Or put them on a big key ring like you do your loyalty cards? Maybe cash them in for prize points? If the event provided all the cards we could bar code them, when you stopped at a scanner kiosk to scan them we could log the points there.
Driving behavior is always weird, not everyone appreciate its, though with networking I think making it acceptable to network is important. I've experimented with this some at the user group in Orlando and at SQLSaturday. At #16 I did a presentation and you know how it, everyone sitting quietly, not chatting with each other unless they already knew each other. At the beginning I asked them to introduce themselves to the person on their left and right (it was a networking presentation after all) and they immediately jumped in, the room filled with this great talking noise. As I watched it really felt like I had given them permission to network, to interact.
Lots of thoughts there, not sure how many are good. Comments and ideas would be appreciated!
I’ve touched on it some in the past, but it’s a question that comes up a lot when we discuss networking at community events, and it’s worth some thought. I start by assuming that any potential employer/client/customer that deals with me directly is going to search for me on the web. I can’t control what they find absolutely, but in general any type of profile or blog will be in the top 10 hits once – and if – they narrow it down to the right person.
So we start at whatever you consider your “main” page. If you had to tell a prospective employer where to find information about you, where would you send them? Typically this is either a profile page (LinkedIn, etc) or a “personal” site. For me it’s my LinkedIn profile, or the blog here – both useful. You can probably discover a lot about me between the two; some work history, what kind of books I read, who my friends are, if I can write coherently, even a good idea of my technical ability. If you look just a little harder you can figure out my attorney and CPA.
I make conscious decisions about almost all of that. I don’t link to any politicians that I like (not that many!), no ‘causes’, no reviews of books about politics, very few rants, and not too many (but some) of my errors. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion on politics, that I don’t read books about it, that I don’t rant a bit more often than you see here, or that I don’t make mistakes. But from a marketing perspective, is that stuff you’d put on your ad in the yellow pages?
I know a few people that totally mix business and personal information online. You can read about a query one day, their dog the next. My friend Steve Jones does this remarkably well in his daily editorial and it works because you get to know him in a way you wouldn’t if it was just technical. But even Steve draws some lines, and I believe rightfully so. Others do not, and it’s not my place to criticize them – just to say that I prefer to take a different approach than they do. It comes down to this; for the space on the web that you control, you’re making a decision to show it to people that might want to hire you and living with the results.
You’ll probably never hear about opportunities missed because of something online, why would they bother to tell you if it bothered them that much? You can see that as a plus, thinking that you always want to work for people that either share or at least tolerate your views. But is that really the criteria you want to apply? I’ve worked on a couple jobs because I just needed work. It didn’t matter if we agreed on much of anything besides me being willing to to a given task in return for a given amount of cash. When jobs are plentiful it’s great to be picky, but when they aren’t – do you really want to filter some of them out?
The thing is, you can’t control how people interpret what you say in person or online. I think most people are reasonably tolerant, but we all have hot buttons that would just generate a “NO”. I certainly share some information about my personal life, and that’s because I don’t want to appear – or be – one dimensional. Even with limited information it’s possible someone won’t hire me because I’m am amateur woodworker and might cut my hand off,or because they don’t like that I’m a fan of the space program, or that I take a somewhat open position on networking. I think that would be rare, but it’s possible, and I’ve made the decision to try to take the chance…consciously.
If you’re new to putting information online, I’d say just go slow. Fill out a profile on LinkedIn or whatever, put some basic information, and then slowly grow from there. If you decide that blogging about family is something you want to link to that, go for it! But test the waters a bit, look at some other peoples work first, maybe even see what your current employer thinks about all of this just to get a view from the other side.
Ran across this recently, 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business and thought I’d post it since I’ve talked about LI so much over the past few months. I like most of them, and have added an item to my todo list to go back and fully review against what I do now.
One of the interesting features of LinkedIn is the ability to post a reference about a connection. If you think of LI as your online presence/pseudo resume, having some ‘reference letters’ to go with it makes some sense. In the real world few people have reference letters, and most hiring processes don’t seem to include them very well when they do exist. Getting a manager to write a letter is hard because; they aren’t good at writing fluff, they don’t have a lot of time to spare for someone that is moving on, and they may not consider someone to be worthy of a recommendation. Online it seems to be somewhat easier because it takes less writing (a paragraph suffices) and no headache of finding company letterhead, printing, signing, all of that.
I can’t say I have a ton of experience with the LI references. I’ve written one for a former co-worker and requested none so far from former managers or anyone else. Yet.
There are a couple things that bother me about doing this online. One is that I think that it becomes too easy. I’m not sure every employee deserves a reference and the truth is no bad ones get written, at best you try to decipher anything less than pure glowing as ‘he/she is ok and I had to write this to be polite’. The other is that recommendations from co-workers and friends tends to hold a lot less value for me as someone trying to decide. Not zero value, but less value.
Think about submitting a resume for a job. How many references would you submit? All of them? Fair to say you’d exclude the ones that aren’t great, nothing wrong with that. Would you really submit 17 references from former colleagues? Maybe that isn’t a dumb idea.
Actually I see another concern, and that is reference swapping. If you subscribe to the feed that shows changes to your network, a common theme is to see an entry for “Person A Recommends Person B” and immediately after that “Person B Recommends Person A”! That’s not necessarily evil, but – to me – it just looks like a swap, can I really consider either of those to be worth consideration? If I have to start checking for this when I look at LI does it become less useful? Useless?
I’m not sure what the protocol should be either. I have no problem with someone asking, nothing ventured as they say. But to maintain my own credibility, I’ll only write references for those that I can support with fairly deep experience working with them, and politely decline any that do not fit that criteria. Not fun to say no, but sometimes the right thing to do.
Equally, if I decide to request a few references (having some does seem to be a positive), who should I approach? Here I think I apply as best I can my own criteria, I’d want to pick someone that I worked for or with on a serious project or for a good duration of time, someone that if asked would have personal experience working with me and would be able to – without straining – be able to write something good about me.
Too hard a line? There’s definitely some gray, but think about it before you add references and come up with a starter plan at least.
I ran across this a while back and it’s been on my ‘to blog about’ list for too long. Open networkers (LION’s) are those that actively seek and accept networking connections on LinkedIn. It’s a controversial strategy, both to LinkedIn itself and to those of us building networks, but it’s definitely interesting.
This article from CIO Magazine talks about Steve Burda having more than 34,000 connections on LI. That’s direct connections, not six layers down. That’s a LOT of people, though no where near the kind of counts of followers that some of the celebs get on Twitter. Maybe that’s good!
I’d call myself a relaxed networker. If you use SQL or read my blog, I’m happy to connect with you. We don’t have to meet in person three times or become blood brothers, but I do want my network to be relevant. Everyone gets to decide for themselves and I think no wrong answers, just pick a strategy that fits you.
Imagine though, that you’re out of work tomorrow. Which would you rather have, a network of 360or so (me, right now)m, or Steven Burda with 34k? Worth thinking about how you plan to use your network, and equally, how you plan to help your network. If you had to start looking for an employee tomorrow, better to tell 360 people or 34,000?
I’m not convinced yet that I should change to the open network strategy, but it’s interesting, and worth thinking about.
If you haven’t seen the news yet we’ve got something new on the schedule this year – a 2 hour seminar titled Networking to Build Business Contacts by author and speaker Don Gabor. I thought I’d give you the back story on how this ended up on the schedule and why I think you should attend (and why I’ll be attending).
See how closely you identify with the following:
If you agree with all eight, we’re in the same boat!
How much effort have you invested in learning SQL Server? For me it’s more than 10 years in various ways. Now how much training have you had in networking? I went out and bought some books because I realized I had zero training in networking, and one of them was How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends by Don Gabor. That in turn lead to some coaching sessions from Don and while I still won’t claim to be great, I’m better at it now and more aware of the nuances of networking.
I had long been interested in improving networking at the Summit, and going through this process made me think that others might benefit as well. I brought it up for discussion at the May 2009 board meeting thinking that it would be a hard sell, but it was just the opposite. Everyone liked the idea, the challenge was to figure out when, where, how long, and how much. Lots of work from that point to get the details done, but ultimately we came up with what I think is an elegant plan:
It’s training for the Summit and you’ll be practicing on 99 other people that want to learn networking too. I’ll be there (I paid my $60 already), my friend Steve Jones will be there, and I bet a good portion of the Board of Directors and some of our staff from PASS HQ, and I’m betting quite a few authors, MVP’s, and bloggers will be too – so you’ll have the chance to meet a few ‘well known’ people as part of the deal. Then when the training is over it’s right into the opening night reception to practice those new skills. Think of how we might change the Summit by injecting a 100 people that want to meet others and have the skills to do it? Every time we meet someone new, we make the event better for them too!
Questions or comments? Post here, or email to me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.
I’ve written a few posts now about LinkedIn, and for now still find it be the best fit for me as far as a networking tool. If you prefer something else, that works too! But if you’ve decided to use LinkedIn, groups should be a part of your strategy, and I want to cover why and how.
Right now I’m a member of only a few groups; the Orlando SQL group, PASS, SSC, and a couple others. Orlando has about 50 members, SSC over a thousand. I don’t participate much in the few discussions that happen within the groups (so far anyway), but I like it as an easy way to keep up with news about and within the group because I get a weekly digest (which you can disable). Once you’re a group member:
Some groups are open, some require ‘approval’ to join. Decent management tools if you want to start a group, and they just announced sub groups which might be interesting for a larger group like PASS or SSC.
Bottom line is that joining groups is a way to reach a much larger network without diluting your personal network. I suppose you could join 100 groups or more along that line of thought, but I think it’s reasonable to join groups that interest you. For example, I’m also a member of the Space Coast Users Group group (group squared?) so I can keep up with their news, and the same for Tampa.
If you explore this, look beyond just the pure SQL groups. I see lots of groups here in Orlando that just facilitate networking, and I’m waiting to hear back from a couple people about how well that works out, but I think it’s worth trying – especially if you need to practice your networking skills.
As I've related previously (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) I've been working author and speaker Don Gabor on my networking skills. We recently did our final call of the six hours coaching planned, and thought I'd share some final thoughts.
Whether it's natural, because he often does training, or whether it's part of what makes him good at speaking, Don is a good listener. Not the listen and nod your head kind of listener, the listen for the hidden meaning and clues that enable him to offer feedback and insight. I imagine it helps some to have a lot of experience versus my limited experience, but still he asked me quite a few questions during our four calls that proved to be helpful in learning.
One minor learning moment came as we discussed meeting people the first time versus second and third times. If you've met someone once and had even a minute or so of conversation, the second time seems more comfortable, and by the third time you start to feel like you know them, even if your total conversation time is 15 minutes. Strange, but true, and I've seen that reflected in the networking I do at various events. But that's not quite the learning moment. The key - to me - is to realize that in many cases you're 'interviewing' and 'being interviewed' to see if you want at some later point to have a longer or deeper conversation.
That's not to say that every time you meet someone new it's all about you, or that you're testing them. I think there is value in just meeting new people. But realistically, we're hoping that some of those connections turn into something richer. For me for example, nothing quite so interesting as to meet someone knew that can bring a new and thoughtful perspective to something I am interested in, or maybe don't know I'm interested in yet!
Another point was that if someone approaches you because of who you are (author, speaker, etc) pay extra care in dealing with them. They are to a degree sold on "you" and from a business/networking perspective you want to handle that meeting well, and also do some good follow ups, even if just an email to say it was nice to talk for a while.
I asked Don about his strategy for touching people in his network, if he has an A list, B List, etc. Interestingly he doesn't, though he knows that many experienced networkers do that. He said it was a combination of having a system that worked for him that didn't require it, and lack of a system that might make it easier for him to try to manage his list that way. He does highly recommend dropping a note or a call to people you may have a chance to see at an upcoming event - a way to refresh things prior to the meeting. I think that's highly relevant for many of us that rarely meet in person. Making the assumption that everyone will put your forum nickname or twitter handle to a face isn't always a good one!
I had a friend ask if I would recommend this six hour phone coaching approach to others. That's a good ($400!) question. I was very pleased with what I learned, but I also felt like it was the right learning at the right time. I had a number of events coming up where I would have lots of chances to meet people during presentations, I'd be giving presentations, attending dinners, etc. Those opportunities were real world workshops for me, without those I would have learned stuff, but it would have much more theory. I'm not the networking master by any means, but the feedback I received from Don enabled me to remold some ideas I had about networking in positive way. But I still haven't answered the question, right?
Ok. If you're doing presentations, training, thinking of moving into management or consulting, I think spending some money on networking books is a must-do, and then - with some ground work in place - I would really recommend the coaching. What if you're a 'regular' person, a DBA or developer who wants to improve their skills? The books still make sense, but I think an in person class is a better fit so that they can provide some of that workshop time as part of the class. Probably the same amount of money, but I think it would be a better fit in that case.
I'll finish up by saying that I still struggle to remember names, that is going to take effort and practice. Follow ups and conversation I think do ok at. Analyzing networking styles I'm not great at, but just understanding some of what drives people to network (or not) in different ways definitely has helped some already. I'm also thinking that companies are missing out by not providing some of this training to employees, because even if you only network within your company it's an incredibly good skill to have, but most of us just work in a very small community.
With luck, one more good Don story to go!
