So October's meeting of the Moncton User Group (@monctonug) was a bit different from the usual classroom-esque schtick. Granted, the presenter gave a prepared spiel, followed by a Q&A period. But, thanks to technical difficulties (i.e. the wrong laptop connectors), there was no PowerPoint. Which can be a good thing, and in this case drove the content more into the realm of "war stories."
But I had two epiphanies, one small, and another not-so-wee. Because I need to mop up some things before decamping for a meeting, I'm going to just focus on the wee one.
Anyone who's ever attended a conference (other than to collect tchotchkes and gawp at booth-babes...or just play hooky on the company tab) knows that the presentations are the hamburger patty, but everything else is the bun and toppings. In other words, you don't just eat the patty. (Not unless you have a lot of food allergies, I suppose.)
Naturally, the networking is a big deal. But so's the chance to pull the content of the presentation into your own context. Normally that's done through Q&A. But sometimes, as I discovered last evening, someone else's question is even more clarifying that your own. Which is exactly when someone (with a lot more business development experience than I currently have) followed up my question with, frankly, the one I should have asked in the first place. I don't like using the phrase "refined my thinking" because I think it's usually a fig leaf for "why didn't I think of that?" Mind you, that's actually what happened, but it triggered a whole new riff in my head.
That riff is the subject of the next post. But I thought that this insight might encourage folks to click that EventBrite link the next time they're sitting on the fence about a learning opportunity. Remember, the burger is more than the patty. You're there for the burger.
