So, what do you do?

April 10, 2009 —

I’m no good at networking.

I used to care about such things, but now you’d have to take me out back and beat me just to get me to tell you what I do. And even then, I probably won’t give you much of a story.

It’s not that we aren’t looking for new clients, or business partners, or whatevers. It’s that we do it differently. And I completely abhor the idea of talking with people in casual settings in the hope we can someday work together. Maybe this means I’m crotchety, but I’d rather just hear what people are up to, sans pitch.

So, while I hear others saying they need to get better at networking, I’m pretty content to let it go. There are more productive ways to land work (full disclosure: we have brilliant project managers,) and there are definitely more comfortable ways to hang out at events.

Oh, and this, of course, has nothing to do with my performance at last night’s event.

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Append to my last

January 6, 2009 —

It’s time to get off the previous topic, but one thing I left out was how easy it was to lose focus on anything outside of our own work. All the attention paid to getting clients in the door and keeping the business working resulted in a lot less attention paid to things like conferencing, peer networking, and even web standards (that’s a longer story.)

It’s with this in mind that I link you off to Greg’s memo mission statement. A clip:

In this new year, it is simply not going to be enough to just meet your bottom line, but to help others who may not be in a position to be so entrepreneurial or carefree.

I wish more people in the industry had this attitude and the character to follow through. I wish they could take it back in time about eight years and let it play forward. Go read (if you haven’t already.)

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