Gratitude Monday: Working the rooms

I can’t tell whether this is a stretch for Gratitude Monday or not, but today I’m grateful that I went to four tech/career-related meetups last week, and I kept a straight face and open mind through every one of them.

If you have never been to a “networking” event, then you won’t know what an accomplishment this is, because 9.5 out of every 10 of these things are teeming with pishers—people hustling a product, a service or themselves. And they move around like sharks, with their eyes continually scanning the crowd for new prey even as they’re trying to convince you why you should buy, hire or invest.

And the ones who aren’t trying to shake you down on the spot are clutching their Vista Print business cards in a death grip, with that deer-in-headlights look on their faces, silently beseeching you to put them out of their misery as they try to cough up the elevator pitch they memorized (but failed to practice) out in the parking lot 20 minutes ago.

So, not really my kind of soirée.

However, I decided that, as long as I viewed them as an old-fashioned tea party (with bulk pizza or tortilla chips and warm soda or beer to balance in both hands instead of teacup and saucer) where my particular object is to observe and encourage, I could approach each event as an opportunity to learn a variety of things.

Viz. There are a shedload of people churning out a world of healthcare applications in the expectation that they’re going to make money hand-over-fist, become internationally famous and, you know, help humanity. I think I was the only person in a room of more than 200 who did not raise a hand when the speaker asked (in the manner of a revivalist counting sinners), “Who here is working on a great idea to bring to the marketplace?”

This meetup was held at an interesting venue, a tech incubator. That same night there was also a meetup for retail tech, and one of its organizers assured me that they were much cooler than whatever else was going on. I should have taken him up on it; I could have hit two events in the same night. They might have had better pizza and colder beer, too.

It turns out that there is a 21^st Century equivalent of the old carousel of slides of someone’s summer vacation. At another meetup a tech entrepreneur (which, of course, is a redundant term, because I’m apparently the only person in the entire Valley They Call Silicon who isn’t working on a great idea to bring to the marketplace) showed a group of developers 35 photos of robots he took at the Consumer Electronics Show. Most of them were accompanied by this description, “So I thought this was pretty cool.”

However, in fairness, there was also a discussion of tech trends, including pros and cons of the Internet of All Things, that was, in fact, pretty cool. And the beer was somewhat chilled; although the tortilla chips ran out before the panel fired up.

I’m sorry to say that the least focused presentations (even including the My Trip to CES interlude) were at the women-in-STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) group, although the post-preso discussion, where attendees spoke of opportunities to mentor young women in the field, livened up considerably. Also, sadly, the wine and sodas were all room temperature, although the food (supplied by Google, I presume, since it was held in one of their buildings) was good.

And the last meetup, for job seekers, was a throwback to the last century inasmuch as the presenter—not introduced in any way—held forth for three hours on a non-generic (his description) success-guaranteed (100%) system for getting the job you want. It was the strangest atmosphere (particularly for job seekers) because there was no energy at all in the 50 or so attendees, no conversation, no networking—it was like a church just before they wheel in the casket.

Frank (no last name) had a few points I found cogent, although he buried them pretty deep in his smirky-if-well-practiced verbiage. He also kept referring to steps in his guaranteed-success system as “binomial” instead of “binary”. Not a sterling recommendation for his alma mater, UC Davis, but apparently his clients at various investment banking firms were happy with him.

(No refreshments offered at all at this one, unless you want to count the little individually-wrapped mints in the ladies loo of the too-cool-for-school hotel in Cupertino where it was held.)

To tell you the truth, I left two hours into his three-hour spiel, but at least I kept a straight face during that time.

And I’m grateful that I had all this live, free (pretty much) entertainment all around me. Got another three lined up for this week, too.