Everything I know about networking I learned at SXSW

A couple of full days after returning from the glorious madness that is the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) Festival, I'm starting to get a bit of perspective on the event, as well as the use of my voice again.

But because there is still so much to process--this really is the big-mama, conference-to-end-all-conferences for anyone involved with social media, web design & development, interactive content, or any other kind of general iNerdery--I'm going to do it in the form of a list, to help me further sort my thoughts. And, hopefully, to make it easier for you to comment on/add to them.

Besides, we all know I'm mad queer for lists!

1. Networking, like marketing, begins way before the event itself.

In addition to prepping your head for the onslaught of new & old faces (introverts, I'm talking to you!), it is unbelievably helpful to get up to speed on who's coming, what they do, what they write about--even what they look like. There's kinda no excuse for not doing this anymore, between Google, Twitter, RSS feeds/readers and email. SXSW makes it dead simple by providing an online registry of attendees; check to see if your event does something similar.

2. Do not put off until tomorrow the person you can meet tonight.

Time flies at a good event. (You're attending a good event, right?) Everyone says it because it's true: if there's someone you really want to meet, figure out how to meet them as soon as you can. Make contact before if it's someone you "know" online and want to hook up with in real life. In addition to making sure you'll actually meet them, it's a good way to ramp up to full conference speed. My first-day breakfast with my German programming friend whom I met at SXSWi two years ago gave me the strength I needed to deal with lots of new faces.

3. Don't buddy up too much.

It's great to hook up with friends, but beware the friend-as-crutch. Yes, it was harder hitting the festival without my boyfriend this year; it was mildly terrifying to put myself out there again and again. But really, everyone is doing the same thing, most people are really quite lovely, and the ones who aren't? News flash: you don't want to hang out with them anyway.

4. Keep cards handy, but...

Chris Brogan--social media dude extraordinaire, networking god and good friend--has great advice on handing out cards without being creepy:

Another tip, don't do the card-swap/handshake-at-the-same-time thing. The other person might not need your relationship, and you might not need theirs. Instead, when it's about time to break off the conversation, say, "I'm really excited we connected. I'd love to talk more with you. May we exchange cards?" See how that feels? Totally different.

Full interview with lots more networking goodness here.

5. Ask, and you shall receive.

Before heading out, I sent out my March newsletter with my own networking tips gleaned so far. I used the opportunity to say I was hitting SXSW and to ask for any tips other people might have. Got a slew of great ones, including the importance of follow-up (separates the men from the boys, as it were) and about reframing the way you look at a sea of new faces (think "welcoming & warm" not "scary monsters who want to feast on your entrails"--a point  Kathy Sierra illustrated brilliantly in her panel about wooing users.)

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If you're interested in knowing more about the SXSWi experience in terms of how it can crack your head open and fill it up with inspiration, you won't do much better than this round-up I found (on Twitter, via Hugh MacLeod, aka @gapingvoid) by Daniel Light.

I also wrote up my experience at this year's conference, and how it compared to the last (also first!) one. Truthfully, I doubt I'll ever be super-comfortable with meeting bunches of new people. But the more I do it, and the more I know about how to do it, the less mystifying it gets.

And so, of course, I have to ask:

Did you go? What was your experience? And if you didn't, what have you learned about networking that changed your attitude towards it?

Comments

[Kathy Sierra]

Hi Colleen,
I wish I'd met up with you at SXSW! I especially like your "don't buddy up too much" tip, although I am a huge chicken about networking myself. I have an easier time giving a talk to 2000 than walking down the hallway alone.

I learned a lot from watching my just-turned-21 daughter handle SXSW. She's so used to always being with her friends, but at SXSW the only people she knew going in were her parents -- i.e. completely useless people for hanging out with. She didn't set out to attend events specifically to meet people, but she didn't let being on her own stop her from going to whatever it was she wanted to attend (mostly film-related events). And sure enough, by the end of the first night there she'd made a pile of new friends just by striking up small conversations after panels or in lines.

And apparently what made sitting through her mom's talk (I forced her to go -- the price of getting her ticket to SXSW) tolerable is that some of the people she'd met the night before were also somewhere in the room, texting her throughout the hour with jokes about me ; )

I loved getting unique business cards from people -- one guy had a checklist on the back of his where you could check the things you talked about (they were really funny). And the moo cards with photos of the people helps a LOT -- I suck at remembering names, but the pictures were perfect.

And for a business, I have to say almost anyone handing out t-shirts got my attention. Young Andrew Hyde walked up and introduced himself and handed me a VC Wear t-shirt, which I later showed on stage. And when I brought WineLibrary's Gary Vaynerchuk on stage, HE was also wearing one of Andrew's shirts!

Whether Andrew is a good networker or not, he managed to get his shirts and name mentioned a lot. And he had women's shirts on hand : ) Andrew also hand screenprints tiny Moleskine notebooks and hands them out to people at events.

I'm an extremely shy person, and I'm thinking that having something physical to hand people and talk about would help get me over some of my fears. I guess I just feel like I need something that takes the focus off *me* and puts it on something external... a long time ago I made some cards that had unusual charts/graphs on the back; maybe I need to try that again for next year.

Overall I was very inspired by people at SXSW -- especially by their overall enthusiasm and willingness to come up and introduce themselves. Something I keep vowing to learn to do.

cheers and thanks for your posts : )

[Colleen Wainwright]

Dang, I wish I'd met you AND Andrew: I want a tiny, hand-screened Moleskine notebook!

Thanks for sharing that you're actually a shy person. You probably know this, but it's not at all evident from your speaking style: you're a delightful blast of confidence and enthusiasm from the stage.

Next year, we'll meet. And trade swag!

[Rick Castaneda]

I have to say, that just by being in Austin, SXSW conferences lead to easy networking. The town is so friendly and small that every day I seemed to be stuck somewhere, be it an elevator, a queue, or in one of the lounges, with a beaming, smiling face. Whereas Los Angeles could completely hold the tons of people a big conference brings, Austin cannot, and thus you're always in the mix with all the other attendees almost all of the time.

For a company like ours that creates games, films, and music videos, I found the SXSW Interactive, Film, and Music Festival to be extremely useful.

If you've got time, take a look at the pics I posted of the SXSW Interactive (Lego) Playpen.

[MrPositioning.com (Stanley Bronstein)]

I love how you say Ask and you shall receive.

I always say that we should always know what we want, JUST IN CASE someone who can give it to us asks.

Don't be afraid to ask, BUT you obviously have to do it in the right way at the right time.

Also, that was great advice about when (and when not) to hand out your business cards.

The biggest help I've found in mastering my to-do list is proper prioritizing.

We MUST learn how to prevent the minor things in our lives from taking over the major things in our lives. In other words, that which is truly important should never be at the mercy of that which is truly not so important.

That's not an easy thing to do.

When I recently toured the country and interviewed over 80 successful people for my soon to be released third book, one common trait I found was that almost all of them were able to properly prioritize matters in there lives. Somewhere along the way, they had learned how to make sure the truly important things were not at the mercy of the unimportant things.

Take care.