Kallokain

This post continues the networking story from A brief guide to mingling . I strongly recommend you read that post first, because in it, I describe why I network. Having that perspective is important. If you read   A brief guide to mingling , I think you will agree. I went to the Gothenburg Book Fair today. The book fair is a yearly event. I go to look for interesting books, and to meet interesting people. Let's dive right in and see what happened: Erik Lundh , a friend of mine, and I had agreed beforehand to meet at the fair. Anna Sigvardsson , the photographer I met at the mingle last week and I had also decided to meet and have a cup of coffee at the fair. When I arrived, I had plenty of time before meeting either Erik or Anna, so I did what everyone else at the fair does: I went looking for anything interesting that might catch my eye. Kersti Ingeborn works at the Mediapool's School Library Service Pretty soon I found myself talking to Kersti Ingeborn at the Medi

Anna Sigvardsson is a photographer. Martin Richards is an English language coach. Martin I know from before. He brought me to my first BNI business meeting a couple of years ago. Anna I met for the first time at the mingle, but we have both been BNI members, and have acquaintances in common. I was at a mingling event, Göteborgsminglet a couple of days ago. Such events have become an increasingly important way of meeting people and developing business relationships. I left the event with one solid lead and more than half a dozen meetings booked. This is a marked difference from the first mingling event I went to about two years ago. When I left that first mingle, I had an enormous stack of business cards, but didn't really know what to do with them. Last Thursday, I had a much smaller stack of cards, but I knew what to do. What is the difference between now and then? Mainly, me: My own expectations, my understanding of what an event like this is, and its purpose, have ch

The LESS 2011 conference in Stockholm, October 30th to November 2nd, looks set to be a lot of fun. A highly inspirational and useful kind of fun. If you go, you get to see and listen to keynote speakers like Steve Denning, former director of knowledge management at the World Bank, and Bjarte Bogsnaes who head's Statoils Beyond Budgeting project. You can hear systems thinker Peter Middleton, and Shingo Prize winner James Sutton. LESS has four tracks: Beyond Budgeting , Complexity and Systems Thinking , Lean and Agile Product Development , and Transforming Organizations . Check out the speaker lists and the topics, and you will understand why this is an event I do not want to miss. There is a long list of interesting speakers. I'll mention only a few, and I'll not even try to be unbiased about it. Instead, I'll pick those with whom I have had some contact, via social networks or otherwise, over the years: Jurgen Appelo has a talk titled Complexity Thinking? Or Sys