Important Lesson in Networking
My lunch hour today wasn’t anything overly special. I met up with a peer from another firm, to chat and share some information. I had emailed her last week after my unexpected trip forced me to miss the most recent ILTA Litigation Technology Peer Group meeting, because the topic, Trial Technology, was one I had some interest in, and I wondered if she picked up anything useful.
Like I said, nothing really earth-shattering there, but it made me think about how many people approach groups like this one. Seems like there’s a small core group, myself included, that is generally there each month, tends to be involved in doing things like the RSS presentation I did a while back, and who just know each other pretty well. Then there’s a larger group, folks who show up occasionally, depending on the discussion topic. Folks who see the meeting invitation and make their decision to go based on what they might learn from the speaker alone.
There’s nothing really wrong with that per se, certainly we’re all busy and need to try to use our time wisely. On the other hand, if I was approaching the meetings like that, I wouldn’t have developed relationships that allowed me to learn about things that I missed, and I wouldn’t have the contacts that I do know. I would have to just accept that I missed an opportunity to learn something last week and done nothing about it, but because I had invested the time in this group, I had another option.
If you have the opportunity to be involved in a group like this, I highly encourage you invest the time. You never know when a contact will help you out the way CB (Not using her name, since she doesn’t even know I’m writing this!) helped me out today. Thanks!
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