Sharon Housley had a very
interesting session about networking, of which I unfortunately missed
the start.
For clarity: When we talk about networking in a shareware conference
context, we are talking about meeting people, not about connecting
computers to each other.
This is what these conferences are all about for me.
There were of course the many familiar faces of people who have
known each other for years and have been traveling around the world together for all this time. It is always so great to meet you guys again!
There are also always some people that you have known for a long
time by email, but meet for the first time. This is always very
interesting.
This year, for me, the above-mentioned Sharon Housley was one of
those.
But I also met my major competitors from Shell+ for the first time.
This was quite a surprise! I'm happy to have met them, and would have
loved to hang out with them more.
Then there are also the people you have heard about professionally,
but never been in touch with. Let's call them the
"celebrities".
And the last group consists of people you have never heard about,
but who are so great that you are lucky to meet them.
Ethics of networking
You might think that networking on shareware conferences is purely
business directed, and that people are just pretending to be friends
for business purposed.
Fortunately, in my experience, this is not the case.
You will usually see that competitors are hanging out together, and
that people are hanging out together without any business interests at
all.
I think I have many friends in the shareware world, and that they
are true friends.. And so do all of us.
This being said, it is of course obvious that it is important in
business to know many people.
And like Sharon pointed out in the session, nobody will ever be offended if you ask
them to do business.
You can usually also tell from the conferences who is doing business
with whom: I think it is only normal to be friendly with the people you
are working with.
I can say that there are several people whom I am working with
because I met them on shareware conferences. But I have never felt that
I was using them, or that they were using me. The friendships are too
important for that.
I had lots of fun times with Mike Burda from eSellerate on the ISDEF
conference.
Both he and I have been learning some Russian, but from a course that
takes a different point of view.
Mike has been studying Russian from a book, accompanied with audio
tapes, while my course consisted only of audio tapes, but much more of
them.
The result of my course is that I know only a very little bit of
Russian, but can pronounce what I know just like a real Russian, with
impressive fluency. Russians who hear me say the few things that I know
think that my Russian is very good, while it is not. They answer back
in Russian and I don't understand a word of it.
There was even a Russian woman who proposed that I would translate all
her correspondence for her.
The result of Mike's course is that he has a much more profound
knowledge of Russian, while giving the impression that his Russian is
very poor. He knows how to read and write Russian, which I don't know
at all. He knows more words than me, has a better understanding of
grammar, and so on. But he never practiced really speaking the
language, which is what I have done.
If we could just combine the 2 skills, the result would be almost
perfect Russian.
But I don't think I will have the patience to do what Mike has done.
Maybe Mike will have the patience to do what I have done, and in that
case by next year his Russian will be perfect.
On saturday evening, several Russian people, including Constantin from
Registry First
Aid, were giving Mike and me Russian lessons.
Mike was consistently saying "da" to everything.
This whole thing, vodka and champagne in hand, was both fun and interesting,
because we had the experts to ask any question.
But the Russians were most impressed when I knew how to say
"Let's Party!" in Russian.
Da!