Meeting People... In Real Life

Gentle readers, in March of 2010, just before I found a position at my current company, your MatchGirl wrote a post entitled Connection. In that post, I wrote about how I was ready for more than what I was getting. I wrote about how the internet was great for making connections (you, dear readers, know your MatchGirl is a fan of the online connection) but that perhaps, especially in the world of job hunting, looking online for a job just seemed, especially in this economy something not that likely...

And I still feel that way. I love connecting with people online. I love my Twitter community - the people I talk to every day online, but only get to see occasionally, the people I met first IRL but I get to keep up with on the internet. But there is something about face-to-face interaction that seems to make people really connect.

It was to that end that Work It Brooklyn (and so many of the other networking communities) was created. To get creative people talking to each other face-to-face. (I hope I'll see some of you at Wednesday's event, by the way!) When you meet someone in real life, you get a sense of who they are. When you shake their hand and look in their eye, you get an chance to get a sense of the person behind the Tweets or the person behind the snarky remarks in a Facebook group or you just get to meet the person that you've seen sitting two tables over from you at Cafe Grumpy, plugging away on their laptop as often as you are. If you work from home or work for yourself, you get to meet people who do the same. Maybe that's your new lunch partner, or, hey, your new web developer.

Your MatchGirl will never stop networking online. She loves it too much.

But when you come together in real life, you never know who you might meet. You never know what ideas you may be exposed to. You never know what old friend you might see and what connections they might have.

My advice to you, gentle ones, is to meet new people. In real life and online.