www.inkthinkerblog.com — Yesterday, I attended the half-day forum on connecting writers and resources in Virginia with my writer best friend at my side. We met there, went for breakfast beforehand, and sat together at the event. This was the first time I have ever attended a conference or forum that I wasn’t by myself. With the exception of maybe three people who were perhaps only 10-15 years older than us, we were by far the youngest people in the room by a good 20 years (and more like 40 or 50+ in some instances). “Is this normal?” Best Friend asked me. “Pretty much,” I said. I’m always the youngest person in the room at these things (although usually the gap isn’t quite as large for quite as many people as it was yesterday).
It was nice to have a built-in buddy for that awkward “Where do I sit?” moment, but it was, well, weird. I usually follow Cher’s sage advice from Clueless, in which she insists that one “do a lap before committing to a location” at an event, and then plop down beside someone who looks interesting. I talk to that person and the people around us, we all exchange business cards, and by the end of the day, it’s like we’ve known each other for eight hours. Yesterday, I had direct communication with only a fraction of the people in the room, and gave out only a handful of business cards (instead of the whole stack I’d brought with me). If there were like 300 people there and I spoke with 10% of them, no big deal. But there were more like 25 people there and I talked to five or 10 of them. Not bad percentage-wise, but numbers-wise, I was slacking.
I’m glad Best Friend and I went together because we had a great time, but I never dreamed what a different it would make in the way I interacted with other people in attendance. What am I going to take away from this? Chances are, I won’t be attending many of these things with a partner in place in the future. When I do, I’ll make sure that we touch base throughout the day, but do our own thing for the most part.
The whole point of attending conferences and events is to step out of the everyday and do something different, expand your horizons, extend your reach beyond your grasp, so why not do it all the way? It’s tempting to bring a friend along for moral support, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t do that, but don’t rely on that one person for all of your conversation, companionship, or input. You have an opportunity to interact with folks you’ve never met before, to learn from a vast store of knowledge by simply striking up a conversation. Take advantage of the opportunity.
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Talk is cheap. Good writing is priceless.
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Excellent point! Who’d have thought going with a friend would have limited your networking? Perhaps there’s a story in this: how to team up and network doubly well at an event.
Go for it!