Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Voice-over Networking in Real Life

Today was one of my Chamber of Commerce’s quarterly “Meet and Eat” breakfast events, which took place at my very favorite venue: the Garden House at Look Park. It was a frigid morning, so there was no lingering in the garden today, but the crackling blaze in the great stone fireplace offered considerable consolation.


our crackling fire!




As I recently noted in my earlier post about networking, these events are not the place for sales pitches – in fact, the only time for a sales pitch is when somebody is actually talking about hiring you for a job but they maybe aren’t 100% sure about their choice. My goal in attending these events is to broaden my circle of acquaintances, find something of interest to discuss, and just plant seeds (and what better place for that than a Garden House? Heh). Of course, I always welcome the bonus of meeting somebody who could eventually be a client, such as a producer or an ad agency employee, but when I walk into these events to a sea of unfamiliar faces, I’m usually just relieved to find a vacant seat and get into it. This morning I was seated between the marketing director of a retirement community, and the marketing director for a lumber company. Neither of them knew what voice-over was, and I was happy to enlighten them and then to learn about their jobs before our guest of honor took the podium.


Our yummy breakfast



The guest of honor was none other than our city’s mayor. I had never heard her speak before and I tell you, she is quite the comedienne - a seriously funny lady. I just googled her name and found two listings in Wikipedia – one for an English Actress and one for an American Politician (that’s her) who surprisingly has no obvious improv background. I’m now up-to-date on many city issues and feel a little better about what had sounded like an ill-advised plan to expand our landfill - but The Honorable kinda talked me into it.

So, I was thinking, what a pleasant morning, pity that I couldn’t make myself do a bit more glad-handing and meet a few more people, particularly media-type people, but when you go to a sit-down meal you’re primarily limited to the people with whom you’re sitting. At that point, the old glass fishbowl full of business cards was brought up to the podium and our MC read off the winners of the door prizes. I’m starting to think my friend Slav Vaskevich of Vaskevich Studios put some kind of magnetic substance on my business cards, because I was once again a winner. This time: two tickets to a wine-tasting event at the end of this month at….

drumroll please…



WGBY Public Television.

Somebody is definitely watching out for me these days.

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