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Speed Networking Woes

By Cazey Williams In my life outside blogging, I happen to be events chair for my local alumni chapter. That job entails planning football viewings, happy hours and promoting friend making.

So my event idea was to coerce people who regularly attend our meetings to meet people different than the ones they already know and/or came with. I originally called it “speed dating,” but then decided we weren't trying to market to lusty singles, so let’s go with “speed networking” – because that’s what we’re doing. Except not in the professional sense; or at least that wasn't the primary goal. When I wrote up the event blurb, I put, “Emphasis on social.”

Okay, in hindsight, every name for the event was doomed. Social networking conjures notions of Facebooking and tweeting. Speed dating…well, this isn’t for hapless Valentines. And speed networking – please, keep your business cards in your pocket.

To keep the event lite (misspelled on purpose), I made a bingo sheet for an ice breaker. Each square had something related to our alma mater. I printed out a list of questions stolen from websites meant for both speed dating and networking.

The first person to arrive for the event was in a tan suit and had silver hair. Me internally: Crap. Like, I’m wearing moccasins. I almost wore shorts. We shake hands.

“This is my first event in several years,” Mr. Businessman says.

“What brought you out?”

“The speed networking. I love networking. I’ve been in sales for 16 years.”

“Well,” I think fast, “we’re expecting a mixed crowd, so it’s gonna be a little social, a little professional (not at all, I’m in moccasins). Hopefully you’ll get something out of it.”

“Can’t wait to find out.”

Oh, I can.

People trickle in. The assortment is mixed only by contrast: Me and my moccasins, 23 and in grad school, and everyone else years older and employed – or formerly employed. Gosh, I invited you here to make friends, not get you a job. One of my worst self-critiques is underperforming, and I would say a list of questions that includes “Star Wars or Star Trek?” is underperforming for this crowd.

Of course, the pizza comes out late (yes, we’re hosting this at a pizza parlor; why were you expecting business networking?!). Some people mingle. Others wait for me to prompt this networking. Me: I only have it to make it through an hour before I can drink away this humiliation.

I narrate how this will work, mention “we were expecting a mixed crowd, so I prepared for social and professional networking (so I won’t ask ‘If you were an animal in the wild, what would you be?’),” and try to explain the bingo ice breaker – but some of the older men just don’t get it. Forget it; it’s an ice breaker. I need a megaphone. I’m sweating. No one can hear me. No one knows which way to rotate. People are repeating the opposite of what I said.

The first person I network with is Mr. Businessman. He says he’s been to many networking events. In fact, he specifies: “I teach group networking.” Great. Judge this failed spectacle.

“Well, I’d love to hear what advice you have,” I say. Should I be biting into this pizza while listening? Is that professional? Well, darn it, I’m hungry. “Like, what prompts I should use.” (Because I was going to ask “Who was your favorite superhero when you were little – and how does that relate to your profession?”)

Once I collected comment cards at the end, I assessed that the event was not as disastrous as I painted it. In fact, my biggest criticism was not starting on time (sorry, we waited until 7:05 PM; I guess there are no stragglers in the business world). However, I would not have worn moccasins.

Calamity Jane Here...Again

So this past week I went to a conference up in DC. It was a whole day of digital breakout sessions, covering everything from content marketing to search engine optimization to UX design to analytics. Needless to say, I was stoked. The only part  I wasn't excited for was waking up at 5 AM to leave myself PLENTY of time to get there. I mean, I was leaving myself 3 full hours to make a 1 hour 45 minute trip. Should be good, right?

NOPE.

My logic was almost there. I was going to turn on Waze the moment I left the house, but what's the point? It's 5:30 in the morning and I know how to get myself pointed in the right direction to Washington without something barking at me so early in the morning. So, I'll just save it for later.

UGH. TYPING THIS STILL MAKES ME MAD.

I hit traffic within about twenty minutes of leaving my house. And not just traffic, but deadlock. I didn't move. And then I didn't move some more. And then I turned on my GPS, only to see that I wasn't going to be moving for awhile longer. A slow death.

I saw the sun rise in that gridlock. I listened to my mixtape cd one full time in that gridlock (side note: I wish making people mixed tapes were still a thing, because I need more music in my car). I almost cried in that gridlock. But I held myself together.

Finally trickled out of the gridlock. They actually had us get off the highway because all three lanes were shut. And then there were no directions on where to go from there. Naturally, my GPS wasn't working, so I wanted to cry cried again. And then wanted to cried again when I went the wrong way.

But thankfully, I went in the opposite direction that I was supposed to, so I added on 20 more minutes onto my adventure, and finally hit the open road. Success?

Once I made it there, I couldn't get over how upset I was from all the traffic. Horrendous start to the day. But at least the trip back home would be better right?

HA.

It would get dark as soon as I leave, right? Check.

And rain a bit? Nope.

Rain a whole lot? That's more like it.

Fog? The cake needs icing, doesn't it? Yup.

Glorious day for travel all around. Claps. -_-

The Antithesis of the Megaphone of Media: Social Media

I suspect that social media is popular because it gives everyone a form of expression, regardless of what platform(s) you decide to use. If you're a shutterbug, you've got Instie to play on, if you have half baked quips, you can tweet your heart out, and if you like collecting people, there's Facebook. But what's even better is that every now and then, people take a few moments from self-promotion to respond to other's people inane thoughts. The inspiration of this statement was my dining experience this week. As some of you may remember, I've been fine-dining in jeans and a t-shirt before, so it shouldn't be that shocking that I'd decide to go out to dinner immediately after working out. But then there's a wait, and my two roommates leave me by myself to go pick up one of their credit cards. So now I'm looking slumpy AND alone.

So I take out my phone to look busy, and decide to tweet, "Alone and sweaty @CapitalAleHouse. #LifeIsGood #rva."

Then I put my phone away and people watch a bit. My roommates make it back, and we eventually get a table. We dine on $2 burgers and ginger ale (okay, so the ginger ale was only me). And then we go home.

I hop back on Twitter, like I do most nights before bed. AND THEN I NOTICED THAT CAP ALE RETWEETED AND FAVORITED MY TWEET! Lawd, I was cracking up. I tag people constantly in tweets, and everyone ignores me. Except for the one time I tweet something minimally embarrassing and rather silly. Being listened to is fun.

And I would go as far to say I'm not the only one that thinks so. Part of my job is monitoring our social media accounts, so I run searches multiple times a day with various spellings of our names. And I respond to people that are talking to us or about us. And it usually catches people off guard, and I love it. Most of the time, people appreciate it, but every now and then people are just complaining and not actually looking to engage in conversation with me.

But let's focus on the good: people genuinely seem excited when I reply, favorite or retweet them. They thank me for listening, they throw us a follow, or shout us out. And I like it because it's content I don't have to produce. So let's do that more often: listen. There's a lot of good stuff happening on social media, if only we all actually listened to each other.

What happens in my head when I forget headphones

I typically have three sets of headphones in my work bag. Why? Great question, I don't know either. But somehow none of them were in my bag today, and I was left headphone-less for an entire day at work. Here's exactly what happened in my head throughout the day:

It won't be THAT bad, right? I've forgotten my glasses before and found ways around that (scrolled in so close an old man with glaucoma could read), so I can handle it...yes.

Yes, I can do this. Here we go on our unintentional day of silence.

Phew, it sure is quiet.

Is that me typing so loud? Crap, I sound angry. People probably think I'm mad. Lighter on the keys, girl. Get yourself together.

Oh my gosh, people can actually probably hear me sighing all the time! They're going to think I'm fatigued. Well, I am so that's not that bad...

Wow, it's really quiet. I can't get over how quiet it is. I wonder what people think about all day that don't have music on usually.

Jeez, someone's breathing really loud. No wait -- that's just me again. I clearly have no cubicle decorum.

OH MY GOSH! I MAY HAVE MY HEADPHONES IN MY CAR.

Let me go check. No wait, I'll wait to lunch. Get yourself together, you can do this.

Everyone else sits in silence all day, you can do this.

Phew silence is pretty silent. It's making me tired. I need more coffee. Is three cups of black coffee bad? No, I've read about it and it's not.

Okay, I will definitely get my headphones. This is making me stir crazy. Maybe I can play it really softly and no one will hear it.

Yup, definitely playing it out loud. And it's really loud. I need those headphones.

I don't know how people do this all the time. Screw it...going to get my headphones. I don't need to prove that I can do this to myself. Someone invented headphones for a reason.

Bye silence. Until next time. Oh wait, no-- I hope there isn't a next time.

Ignorance Spreads Illness

So typically I like to keep my work-blog life decidedly separate, but there's one topic that I find absolutely fascinating and want to talk about. It's scary. It's serious. And it's not talked about enough. It's Ebola. I am in no way an expert on Ebola, so there's my disclaimer, but I do know enough to write intelligently about it. And I brought a ton of linked sources into this post to back me up.

What I find most fascinating about Ebola is the ignorance that surrounds it. The ignorance causes it to spread, but it also hinders fundraising for it. By now you probably know that this is the worst Ebola outbreak ever, so what is making it so bad? See previous sentence for the answer (ignorance). And I'm not using the word lightly, and I'm not pointing fingers. It's a collective and problematic lack of effort, lack of awareness and lack of intelligence.

At the root of the problem is that the countries where Ebola is spreading, people believe it is caused by witchcraft, or that doctors are injecting people will Ebola. Try helping to stop the spread of a disease when people don't actually believe that the disease is actually a disease, or that going to the hospital will kill you. It makes treatment impossible. People are dying on the streets and not knowing why. Or blaming black magic.

Raising awareness is a key to stopping the spread of the disease. But so is treating the people that already have it. And protecting those that don't. Which leads to the problem that people stop the spread by blockading cities from each other. So then the blockade, which could potentially stop the spread of the disease, cuts off the entire economy of the segmented area. Which is deadly in the long run for the already fragile economies of these affected areas.

So there's the internal problems happening within the Ebola-affected countries. But there are bigger problems too. WHO admits we acted too slowly (because of budget cuts), which doesn't bode well for future similar outbreaks. We didn't take it seriously enough.

And the last bit of ignorance falls on the American perception of the disease. 40 percent of those polled say they believe we will have a major Ebola outbreak in the United States. Let's talk about this. We know it's a real disease. We have a solid health care system. We can easily contain it. Yet, when we think about ourselves and fear it here, that doesn't help those that are really affected by it.

And this last statement is purely what I think, so there won't be any links backing me up on this, but I believe we aren't talking about it enough. We're ignoring a pretty big deal. And that's a form of ignorance.

Here's the key to making it through work today

Cazey texted me a link to this album this morning, and it's been a stellar addition to my work day today. So stellar that I wanted to share it on here, which I usually don't do. I think I speak for both of us when I say it's highly recommended: http://www.mtv.com/artists/vance-joy/#vh1

My only real problem with this album is that I had a chance to see it performed live and I missed out! He was at Firefly it turns out, as was I, but I didn't know about him at that time. Such a moment of FOMO and a total bummer. Here's hoping Vance Joy comes to my town, or any town near me.

Let Cazey and me know what your thoughts are about Vance's new album in the comments. Any chance you'll be buying it? I know Cazey will be buying it and giving it to me as a gift. Well, maybe not that second part of the sentence.

My Unfortunate Handle on Pens

You know that moment when you're trying to be a real, functioning adult, and then the end of the pen shoots off, making doing real work seemingly impossible? Well, that's what happened to me this one week. Twice.

Here's a recap (no pen pun intended):

The first pen-spolosion happened when myself and a friend went to our alumni chapter meeting, where we represented our entire school's chapter. So I was sort of shambly to begin with, because my shoe had broken, I had forgotten any sort of paper and could only find a pen in the tray in my car. So the day wasn't starting off the best it could be, and then this happened.

I went to go click my pen to write down the set-up time, and the entire tip of the pen rocketed off, right at the head of an elder man sitting across from me. He took it well, made a joke and the meeting continued.

But without that damn pen tip, I had to write with that dinky little tube from the center of the pen for the rest of the night. My hand writing looked incredibly similar to a four-year-old's.

Then- I kid you not, two days later, I'm in this meeting with some pretty important people from work, and I rocket the end of another pen off right at the pregnant lady.

That time, no one even seemed phased by it. People are starting to expect this shit from me, I guess. I'm not sure if that's a win or a loss.