#how to network

[csuitebitches]

How To Make Full Use of Networking Events

Networking events and conferences are great because you get to meet and learn from experts but also connect with peers. I recently attended one and I wanted to share things I wish I had done before and what I learned.

1. Define an Objective

You have to determine why exactly you want to go to the event. Are you looking for a career change? A job? Advice on how to be better at your current job? How to tackle some issues in your start up? Networking? Make a list of the reasons.

2. Research

You need to research the speakers extensively. Go over their Wikipedias, LinkedIns and other social medias. Read their company websites from top to bottom. If they’ve released a book, take a look at the summary and read the reviews. Read some of their published articles.

Take this time to prepare at least 3 questions per speaker. Try to make at unique and interesting as possible, don’t ask the usual generic ones.

3. Business Cards

Definitely carry business cards. Make sure that your email, LinkedIn is mentioned clearly. Even if you work at a different company, that doesn’t matter- show your job title on the business card. Better yet, ask your HR if they can give you business cards as you would be promoting their company through your event. If you’re a student, I’d recommend you make a portfolio website of your internships/ project/ past work/ volunteer work/ hobbies/ interests.

4. Actually Talking

During the event, don’t be shy to ask questions. It doesn’t matter whether the rest of the audience thinks they’re stupid. You have spent your money to come there for your gain. Make full use of it. Ask questions. Meet the speaker after the event. Thank them for the insight, introduce yourself, ask them questions related to your objective of coming to the conference. Exchange business cards.

5. Utilising Coffee Breaks

Coffee and lunch breaks are a great way to talk to people. You may feel shy or awkward to talk to new people, but there’s very high chances that they feel the same way. You can start off by asking someone how they heard about the event, what they thought of the speaker, or pass a remark on the question they asked the speaker. Keep in mind that if the event has multiple speakers, there could be a chance that you’re talking to a speaker, even if you don’t recognise them… so be on your best behaviour.

6. Questions

Ask questions that are beneficial to you. During my conference, we had a women-leaders panel. An audience member asked the speakers how they divided their work between family and work. The speakers looked visibly annoyed at the question - because how generic is that?

Ask questions that could help you grow. If you’re in marketing, ask about their tried and tested marketing strategies. If you’re an early stage founder, ask them how they sourced their VC. If you’re struggling with time management, ask the speakers how they manage. Ask the questions for YOUR own benefit.

You can ask difficult questions but make sure you do it respectfully and tactfully. Best to start with a compliment and then ease into the question.

7. Dressing

Business casual, unless mentioned otherwise. What this means: blazer/ jackets/ trousers/ pencil skirts/ shirt/ co-ord sets/ no sneakers.

It doesn’t matter what other people wear. The way you present yourself is your brand. It also shows the respect you have for the other person - you respect them enough to not come shabbily dressed.

[bitchesgetriches]

Dafuq is Networking? And How Do I Do It Remotely?

Networking is one of those terms from the corporate lexicon that sounds slightly too intimate and distasteful to actually be acceptable in polite society. It sounds to me like there’s an orifice involved. Even if that orifice is, like, a USB jack and you need R2D2’s little pokey robot phallus to access it.

You’ve probably heard someone tell you, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!” What they’re referring to there is the power of networking, in all its antidemocratic glory! It basically means that even when armed with talent, training, education, and qualifications, you should still try to make business connections with people who have the power to advance your career goals. Make those connections to get a leg up on all the chumps you’re competing with who don’t have those connections.

Keep reading.

If you liked this article, join our Patreon!

[unforth]

Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.

That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.

That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.

That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.

That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.

That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.

That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.

None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.

I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.

If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.

Celebrate fan work!

To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.

[nerdpoe]

Constantine has found an, as the colloquial term would be, easy mark.

He's just found out that the High Prince of the Infinite Realms is a freshly dead fourteen year old. And like, yeah, sucks that the kid died, he feels for him.

But also; the kid has a problem that's ridiculously easy to solve.

The American Government is trying to declare war on the realm that holds all universes together, and Constantine knows a few people who can bring that to light and get that shit shut down real fucking quick.

So he goes to Amity Park, to the little Prince's haunt so he can pin him down, help him out for "free", and work out a deal to call the American Government off.

Except the kid just wants him to do his stitches. Because the American Government wasn't bluffing, and has developed weapons that can and will harm the fabric of reality.

John does the kids stitches. They aren't very good, but they're the best he can do.

He sticks around.

He patches the little Prince up.

He...he gets attached.

He watches the GIW actually hurt the kid, seriously, to the extent that he actively steps in and gets himself labeled a terrorist by taking them out.

Now he's got an angry Big Three on the line, demanding to know what is going on, and he's realizing that he's a little past tricking a deal out of a kid that has too much power.

It's personal.

[heritageposts]

An Israeli influence campaign is using hundreds of online avatars and fake social media accounts to attack Democratic lawmakers critical of Israel and promote news articles disapproving of the United Nations Palestine refugee agency (Unrwa), according to a report by the Israeli online watchdog, Fake Reporter. According to the report, the targeted campaign has used more than 600 avatars, sending out 58,000 tweets and social media posts to circulate articles published by The Guardian, CNN and Wall Street Journal, among other major news outlets that amplify Israel’s position on the war. The campaign relies on three major social networks, UnFold Magazine, Non-Agenda and The Moral Alliance, which were created prior to the war in Gaza. But the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel sent the accounts into round-the-clock posting. The sites, according to Fake Reporter, are geared specifically to a “progressive audience”, publishing content on climate change, AI regulation, and human rights, in addition to the war in Gaza. They have more than 43,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The avatars promoting the content talk up their identity with lines like, “As a middle-aged African American woman” and use hashtags like #FaithJourney and #AfricanAmericanSpirituality.

Some examples from the report:

And continuing,

The avatars were all created on the same day and their profiles were written with the same formula, subbing out just a few words. The declared gender and ethnicity of the avatars don’t match the profile photos, which have been taken from websites selling headshots. The campaign works to amplify news stories published by major media outlets. First, the fake news sites share the reports. Then, the avatars share them across social media, including on the official accounts of Democratic lawmakers. Avatars also shared social media posts showing video clips of what appeared to be Pro-Palestinian protestors calling for "massacres to be normalised" and calling for the US to "go to hell", contrasting that with peaceful protests of pro-Israel protestors.   In other cases, Avatars simply reshared widely published video clips of US lawmakers questioning the heads of Ivy League schools about antisemitism on campus.  [...] According to the report, around 85 percent of all the US politicians targeted by the campaign were Democrats, and 90 percent of them were African Americans. Ritchie Torres, a black Democratic Congressman with generally pro-Israel views, garnered the most social media engagement from the avatars. Other lawmakers targeted included Cori Bush; Lucy McBath; House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries; and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Israeli news site Haaretz reported in January that the Israeli government had launched an online influence campaign to respond to pro-Palestinian content and reports about Hamas.  It’s unclear whether the campaign revealed by Fake Reporter is part of that initiative.

. . . continues at MME (20 Mar 2024)

[queenerdloser]

so funny to me that miles bron doesn’t burn the incriminating napkin until after lionel asks him why he didn’t. not only does he steal his murder idea from benoit, he steals his cover-up from lionel. they really doubled down on making him steal literally every idea he ever has, huh.

[emerulynn]

So like I have an automatic reflex that whenever I hear monster by marceline i start sobbing uncontrollably

[fashion4standusers]

Anyway, if I had a nickel for every time a series had six installments that gradually escalated in ridiculousness, only for the sixth installment to end with a universe reboot and the seventh installment to pick up in a new universe where alternate versions of the original characters now exist in the distant past, I'd have two nickels.

One of those series is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The other is Riverdale

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Autistic Shutdowns: a guide

I CAN Network Ltd

[miusato]

Yeah but what if they're some oddly high budget cartoon from the 00s???

[rassebers]

Pull yourself TOGETHER man

[bitchesgetriches]

Hi bitches! I have a question: how the hell do I get better at networking? I have a lot of work events where I can meet people in our organizational network across a broad range of sectors and want to make connections while I’m in this job. But I really struggle in networking situations. Like I’m good at beginning a conversation and getting to know someone but how do I take it to the next step of actually networking with them?

Good news, my pet! We wrote a whole ass article on networking, with a particular focus on networking remotely (a lot easier for folks who tend to be awkward with social situations):

Dafuq is Networking? And How Do I Do It Remotely? 

If you found this helpful, consider joining our Patreon.

[insanesonofabitch]

Liking destiel is basically having to go through feeling overjoyed by how much incredibly gay shit they managed to retain into the show and put on air but also mourn how much incredibly gay shit they deleted and/or cut off along the way.

- parallels Dean and Cas with Romeo and Juliet

- deletes the part where Dean holds Cas’s face

- whatever the hell Endverse destiel had going on

- not include the part where Endverse!Cas says the only thing they have left is each other

- had Dean break Cas away from a brainwashing spell by having him kneel and beg and say “I need you”

- but also replace the original script where he says he loves Cas, and that he forgives him for what he’s about to do (kill him)

- make Dean keep Cas’s dirty, moldy, bloody overcoat because he just missed him that much

- but cut off the part where Dean says “part of me always believed you’d come back”

- paralleled Dean and Cas to Cain and his wife Colette

- then deleted the scene where Dean dreams about how guilty he feels for beating up Cas, while in a bar with bi lighting and Cas gets referred to as his “admirer”

- and also the part where Cas and Crowley has a banter about which one of them is Dean’s boyfriend (yes this is real)

- had Dean go through a widower arc where he becomes hopeless and suicidal because Cas is dead back in s13

- made it seem like it didn’t affect him much when it happens in s15

[front-facing-pokemon]

[hedgehog-moss]

me sending yet another email to a French public service to ask them why they use so many gratuitous English words in a service that's supposed to be non-discriminatory and accessible to everyone in the country

[gambeque]

plus a marceline