Going Real Places; Meeting Real People

If the story of my life is doing too much, today was the story of my life.

I attended a Vantage lunch meeting in Huntsville, then drove down to Birmingham to a “Tech Thursday” gathering in Vestavia Hills. Mexican food for lunch, BBQ for dinner. The food was good both places; time will tell whether the combination wreaks some kind of havoc on my constitution.

The evening event was mostly outdoors. The temperature was in the 90s. There were plenty of tents and liquids, so this wasn’t as bad as it might seem.

In both places I came away with some new contacts, and had some conversations with people that I’d like to get to know better. As I told my wife when I got back: if I hadn’t done a lot of these kind of events over the years I’d be working at a convenience store:

• I met my first ecomm client at a Montgomery chamber event.
• I found a developer for that site, who ended up giving me a job at his agency, from a referral (from another referral) – I’m struggling to remember how I met the person in Auburn who “knew someone local,” but in those days it almost had to be a chamber of commerce contact. Or perhaps LinkedIn. Remember when you could actually meet someone via a social network?
• That in turn led to my meeting the guy who’s hired me for the past two jobs and actually got me on a firm footing working for something other than the family business.

The speaker at the Vantage event talked about acknowledging God in all your ways (Proverbs 3:6). The tie-in here is that what we think of as luck, or chance – if you believe in God, you should believe more in providence and less in “luck.” I consider myself a believer, but I struggle here.

I also struggle sometimes to be energized to do this kind of face-to-face networking, perhaps more so the older I get. I also struggle to finish books, practice musical instruments, and blog. I’m tempted to chalk that up to laziness, but perhaps it’s really more about constantly seeing a kan-ban board in my head of things that need to get done on the day job. And trying to do too much, like doing two such events in one day.