Last Thursday night I attended a Networx Marketing event on the topic of networking. Lisa Butler, Director of Paragon Associates and author of Networking Exposed was the guest speaker and lead us through the basics of how to network more effectively.

I personally believe I’m not great at networking - I tend to be a little shy, my interests are primarily technical and IT related, so it doesn’t give me much general stuff to chat about and I perpetually sound like I’m terrified. With saying this, even though I see people who carry themselves much better than I do, I still seem to have some reasonable success through networking. Sometimes I think my nervous nature helps me attract outgoing, extroverted people who can’t bear to see someone cowering in the corner by themselves.

Getting back to the topic, Lisa Butler gave a few good points and spoke well, but didn’t really present anything new - most of it was text-book networking stuff, but if you had never networked before, I’m sure you would have learnt a few things.

Even though I may seem terrified and I didn’t learn much from this evening, I ended-up speaking with more people than I usually do and, as always, I had a great time. The venue was also great (a personal favorite of mine) - The Press Club.

Here are a couple of pics with me - more photos from the night available here :