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Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Networking: The SMPS Washington Christmas Party

Tonight I drove from the hotel in Northern Virginia to downtown D.C. to attend the SMPS DC chapter's annual Christmas party. This is, for me, one of those surreal moments in life -- what is a Canadian doing in the U.S. capital city, and why am I at a networking social event, when these sort of things make me truly uncomfortable?

Of course, the answer is 'business', though if you think I would even think of trying to sell anything at this kind of event, you haven't been reading much of this blog. I took my camera with me, however, and lots of pictures, and got lots of names for captions for a photo feature in the upcoming first return issue of Washington Construction News. (Alas, the cable to connect the camera to the computer has disappeared somewhere, so I can't post any images right now with this blog entry.)

The ground rule for any networking function is to focus on giving rather than taking, connecting rather than marketing, and learning rather than pontificating. I'm not sure how well I really did, but probably lived reasonably close to the values.

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