With GHC coming up soon, maybe you're excited about all the new people you'll meet... and maybe you're a bit terrified by the idea of being in a sea of strangers. Even potentially awesome strangers can be pretty overwhelming en masse!
My friend Sacha is a self-confessed shy person who is also good at meeting new people, giving presentations... typical extrovert stuff. And she does it all without defeating her shyness, but rather finding ways to connect that don't require her to be outgoing.
Check out her tips on being a shy connector. My favourite tip involves wearing a funny hat (or something else notable) to get people to come up to you and talk, because when I met Sacha I absolutely had to go up to her and ask about her huge camera and tiny computer. It works!
I've embedded her slides below, but it's worth reading her blog post that goes with them, too!
The Shy Connector
View more documents from Sacha Chua.
I'm looking forwards to meeting people at GHC! You can come see my talk on web security in the PhD forum 4 (just before lunch on Wednesday). And I do love having other people talk to me, so I may just find something crazy to wear -- keep an eye out!
2 comments:
Terri, thanks for sharing this! I would consider myself an extrovert, but the tips from the presenation are applicable to anyone. It's so important to remember that networking is about the quality of connections and not the quantity of connections.
That slide show is awesome--it took me a long while to realize how to network and be an INTJ. This about sums it up--thanks!
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