Networking For Introverts

Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon Iceland photo by Risa Dickens

Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon Iceland photo by Risa Dickens

If you know me in person you might raise your eyebrows at the idea of me as an introvert, but here are a couple of quick things I’ll point out: if we have ever had a conversation at social function or at an event I organized, chances are good I tucked myself into a corner with you or sat down at your table almost like I was hiding out, and when you asked about how I was doing I told you the truth almost to the point of an overshare. I am not great at staying on the social level. I prefer conversations about feelings to conversations about most other things. I love planning events where people come together, and then there’s a big part of me that would be happy just to stay home and let everyone else connect. I am more comfortable performing then chatting with a bunch of people afterwards. And I need to schedule alone time in between meetings, and sometimes solo breaks during meetings, to recover.

Figuring out that I get my energy from being alone (introvert) but that I am driven by a the big value I put on connection and community helped me understand how these sometimes contradictory drives play out on my body, and then to to start to figure out tactics to cope and succeed. And yes even to network.

I stifle a flinch when I use the word network, I don’t know about you. I don’t like the way it’s usually used; too often it feels like making fake friends so you can use them, like a spider climbing up a web. Or it rings of a desperation bought and sold to people who are financially unstable: What you’re doing wrong is not enough networking! So pay to come to this networking event or buy this audio book on networking!

That said, here are my tactics for networking as an introvert. If you made it through the disclaimers above, then this idea already makes sense to you. For some reason you have to do it, and I’ve been there, and I feel for you, and here are my personal survivor tips, jotted down with mad love.

  1. Forget “contacts”: make one friend. You can defeat that bad, looking over each others shoulders for the most important person in the room vibe, by not playing that game. I tend to get to things early or right on time, and I look for other people who are nerdily punctual like me. I also look for people who, like me, are chilling on the edges. Ideally someone who seems to be fine on their own, unsure of why they ended up there, and whose clothes suggest they are quirky, thoughtful, totally oblivious to fashion, or totally playful with it. These weirdos are my people, and I humbly suggest you make them yours. They are, in my experience, some of the smartest people in the room. They are bad at networking and they think it’s funny that you are too. They are happy to have someone approach them, gently, and chat and laugh about how awkward networking is. I have met some crazy powerful people with this move, because unsurprisingly, very successful people do not need to work the room looking for something to prove.
  2. After you meet your new friend, listen to them. Ask them questions about their weekend, their lives, what brought them there, what they’re working on these days. Just listen and ask follow up questions. Remember, you are trying to make an actual friend, try to find things about them that surprise and inspire you, that are unexpected and beautiful, that connect with things you care about or that upend assumptions you have (we all have them.) Even if you never meet again you will have gained a little life-changing kernel of goodness from this upending, so your night won’t be a total waste of time.
  3. On that note, once you’ve made a connection and then maybe that person needs to circulate (or go home and hide under the bed) here’s what I suggest: go to the bathroom. I go to the bathroom a lot in big group settings because being alone even for a couple minutes lets my brain reset. After you leave the bathroom, do a lap of the room. Call it a victory lap, you made a connection! Champion. If you see people you know that you feel like saying hi to, say hi. If you feel like grabbing another drink and chatting with someone else who looks lonely and interesting, do it. If you feel like just walking up to a group of people and saying “hi, do you mind if I network with you?” Go for it. But you know what, if you don’t feel like doing any of those things and you just feel like going home, then darling go home. You made a deal with yourself at the beginning about one friend. Go home and add that person on some social networks of your choice and drop them an authentic follow up line and you will have done something small that is wonderful and huge.

Strong communities are not built by shaking a thousand hands. They are built one real relationship at a time, and real relationships happen between people who try to be honest about who they are. Be real about what scares and challenges and inspires you and you’ll still be alone, because we all are, but you might also see yourself reflected in new ways in the eyes of lonely others and it might help us as we float along… lonely, but together.

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Yackathon 2016

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An incredibly diverse group of participants came together over Yelp Montreal’s Yackathon weekend to compete including: post-doctoral neurologists, meteorologists, masters of engineering, urban planners, health psychologists, illustrators, and self-described ‘corporate drones’ fleeing their cubicles for the weekend (fly free!). In total 15 teams delved into Yelp’s open API and Academic Dataset over the weekend, and met our challenge to mash up our data with any other open data set.

Read More Here.

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Notes On Investing In Your Network With Yahoo’s Jeff Mallett And Dr Jiro Kondo

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When I first met Dr Jiro Kondo he was a friendly beaming face in a bakery. We chatted about my role at Yelp and his position at the University of McGill where he’s teaching finance and helping create a course on investing in start-ups. Afterwards we added each other on various social networks, as you do. This was a ‘weak tie’ but a very friendly one.

Recently he invited me to attend a lunchtime lecture at the McGill Desautels Faculty of Management. Canadian investor and builder Jeff Mallett – the person who had pulled the strings at Yahoo as it grew from 7 to 4000+ employees – was going to give a talk on “Investing in your Network” and I was super pleased to be included. From my current work in a local community of writers and business owners; to previous incarnations trying to build links in arts communities; and further back to an MA about the history of open source communities: if there’s one thing I’m curious about it’s the health of networks.

Anyway, that’s an intro that brings us to today, sitting in the back of a packed class at McGill, listening to a frank talk about what worked and didn’t at Yahoo and at the reams of different start-ups Mallett has been involved with. Mallett and Dr Kondo tossed ideas back and forth and synthesized a series of things that made me go “Huzzah!” (quietly) and made me want to remember and share, so here goes.

(I’m going to rattle these off in the way they kind of glommed together for me, which is not the same structure they were delivered in, sorry. Had to be there I guess.)

Look For The Humble Helper, The Quiet Link… Look Across Levels.

Mallett talked to the students a bit about how they might be tempted to buddy the Boss, or impress the professor. To make their network valuable by going after Big Name Contacts. There are a lot of business books (and self-help books) out there that will tell you to find Mentors, and Mallett pointed out that this title is a lot to lay on someone. His advice: think of it as just finding help; just people who have strengths where you have weaknesses. Helpers. And look for people close to you, the business owner on your block, the weird but wise family member, the people who actually care about you can teach you stuff too. Read the rest on Linkedin.

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An empty moving walkway at Dulles Airport.

Airport Insanity And Points Of Nudge

An empty moving walkway at Dulles Airport.

Dulles Airport Photograph by Claus Pelz, Bethesda.

It’s 4:55 am in Dulles airport outside DC. After a 40 minute cab to the airport, then the train to the B gates, I try to find a quiet place to sit and wait. But quiet has been chased from the modern American airport as far as I can tell. There are two conflicting sources of music playing at gates 75 and 79, a TV on in between blaring the scrapings of the 24hr news cycle, and an open walkie somewhere broadcasting fuzzy chatter between airport staff out there in the dark moving the planes around.

We’re all choosing what to focus on, trying to tune out Trump on the TV, while the gospel and the country rock battle it out in the air around us. We are maybe 15 people at this end of an airport hallway that could be anywhere. 1 in 5 of us are struggling with our mental health. Some are hearing other voices beneath the useless cacophony of the empty airport. Some are repeating positive affirmations. Some are on the pale gripping edge of panic. Some are sleep deprived and twitching. All are curled in hard angled chairs, despite the flying chairs we’re about to be strapped into for hours, despite what we know about sitting being ‘the new smoking.’

The decades old sit-down-and-consume pattern still pulses through this cavernous empty room though we know better, and as we approach 5am the chain stores rattle open their doors. There is nowhere to stretch out our spines or ease our prodded nerves beneath the neon lights. These public places could be less hard. Endless aching bodies and tired psyches stream through here, and with small changes a little more health could be fostered here, and from here sent pouring out into the world. Airports are places where we could nudge our way towards new patterns, they are small points of entry into millions of lives. I dream of stretching stations, quiet areas, sleeping pods and friending stations, exercise bikes that send free electricity into the system, gardens that I could help tend while I wait… in a dream of green and calm I slip beneath the white noise and dose off waiting to board flight DL3794 back home.

*This daydream was inspired by conversations with friend, dancer, occupational therapist Ashlea Watkin.*

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On Organizing Yelp’s First Community-Based Hackathon

Over 48hrs in February local data scientists, developers, and designers came together with the Yelp Community and some pretty rad Montreal tech partners to imagine ways to use Yelp’s data to investigate our city.

Read the rest here.

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