Yesterday I told you all about one of our focuses this year, educating tomorrow’s leaders. And today, I’d like to share some tips and tricks I’ve learned from attending a lot of conferences and seeing the National Charter Schools Conference grow over the past few years. With registration rates going up after midnight, I thought it’d be good to tell you a bit about the opportunities we’ve got for you. So, here we go—Jenny’s six steps to networking.
1. Establish Your Networking Goal You would be amazed at how many people don’t have a goal when they network. You’ve come to a conference to learn something, right? Sometimes that thing can’t be found in the breakout sessions or from the keynotes. But you’re at an event with thousands of other people—surely some of them have been in your shoes! Possible networking goals might be:
Meeting someone who also runs the finance committee on their board
Learning how other schools schedule professional development days throughout the year
Finding a great example of a learning management system put to good use
Discovering what that state did to celebrate National Charter Schools Week
Keep your networking goal in mind the whole week, and make sure you’re trying to achieve it. Pro tip: Write one quick fact you learned from a person after getting their card. Especially if they helped you towards your goal! 2. Introduce Yourself Going up to strangers and introducing yourself brings me the jitters, and I’m sure I’m not the only one! Jumping into a conversation doesn’t need to be stressful—keep a few things in mind:
Join conversations of 3 or more people so you know you aren’t interrupting something private
Go say “hi” to someone standing by themselves—they might be just as scared as you are!
Use your goal to introduce yourself: “Hi, I’m Jenny. Have any of you successfully networked at a conference before? Have any tips?”
Pin yourself to the elbow of a strong networker, and use him or her to pull you through the room
You know who are often great and experienced networkers? Our exhibitors! They always know a bunch of people and are super outgoing. Use them to help you navigate a crowd, and you’ll always go home with a pocketful of some great business cards. And while a good drink in hand always helps, be wary of doing the food and drink juggle! Always keep a hand open for shaking hands, and use a table if you’re going to be eating and drinking at the same time. 3. Take advantage of Different Networking Environments At the National Charter Schools Conference, we provide a lot of different spaces and styles of networking so that you can achieve your goals. Here’s a quick run-down of what we have going this year:
Big, Formal Networking: This includes our welcome reception and happy hour with exhibitors. These opportunities are great for you to float around and meet people extremely different from you—learn about what’s going on in their worlds and be open and curious.
Mealtime Networking: Breakfast networking sessions, lunch breaks, dine-arounds in DC, people love to get together and share ideas over food. Sharing a table with someone instantly creates a sense of congeniality and relaxes the atmosphere. So don’t be a wallflower at lunch, find the busiest table, sit down, and say “hello!”
Breaks: I bet you didn’t know that we make the breaks between sessions a little longer so that you can meet people? Go out into the hallway and see who is loitering. Don’t beeline for the next room, take your time and introduce yourself to a couple of people instead.
Spaces: We’re excited to have the Steelcase Collaboration Lounge at this year’s conference, and the exhibit hall is always a place to go to meet up with people. Skip a session and go see who is around in these places. Sit down, strike up a conversation, and see what you learn.
4. The Pass-On Sometimes you meet someone who can’t help you with your goal, but don’t despair! Find out what his or her goal is and do apass-on. Find someone else who will benefit from meeting that person and make sure to provide an introduction. Even if you’re not interested in dropout recovery, maybe you know someone who is. And who knows? Maybe they’ll return the favor and connect you with exactly who you were looking for. 5. Follow-up Definitely the hardest and most rarely done part of networking is the follow-up. You’ve gone home to your pile of business cards and now need to sort through them. Don’t just file them in your rolodex, cement those relationships! Pick the top ten most important contacts you made and send them a quick message thanking them for talking with you and saying how you’d love to keep in touch. And then, when you have a question that they might be able to help you with, send them an email! Or maybe you’ve met someone who would get along with a contact—make use of it and send that person along. Your network gets stronger through use, so make sure to exercise that muscle! I hope to see you networking away at this year’s National Charter Schools Conference this summer. If you see me, make sure to introduce yourself and share your goal! Don’t forget that registration rates go up at midnight tonight, so head over to our site to sign up.
