Witty.ca - Graham's Professional Archives

So, true to form, the @FredCybersocial was a great time. (The pint of Keith's Red on tap was excellent as usual, though next time, Daniel recommended I try a Picaroons flavour.  Thanks, James Joyce Pub!)

What I learned at today's Cybersocial:

• those you expect/hope to meet won't be there;
  
• those you meet won't be who you expected (surprising, eh?)
• if you have a conversation, it will often be exactly what you needed!

Tonight, I went to the Cybersocial intending to have informal chats with I.T. CEO's and managers.  I had hoped to ask them where I should be "taking my talents".  (Thanks, LeBron, for forever ruining that and all similar lines.)

Instead, I met 2 people in startups (different ones), 3 university students, 1 professor, 1 political party hiring officer and 1 massage therapist.

Honestly, these ended up being the perfect people for me to meet!  How many times had I wondered, "What if I tried ...?"  Well, here I was, sharing a pint with people who were working in all these different fields.  All were happy doing what they were doing, but as each shared their stories, I realized that I am very different... and I'm happy where I am, thank you very much.  (I couldn't have planned this if I had tried!)

Plus, a few of them gave me some great tips that I'm going to begin using immediately.  (I'll blog about them later, if they work.  :-)

And, as a bonus, I learned that Knowledge Park is an independent business, and not a government subsidiary.  If all business go through the 3 stages of "crawling, walking and running", then the Knowledge Park is for businesses in the "walking" stage.  (However, I think maybe a few tenants are in the "running" stage, eh, Radian6?  :-)

And just to top it off, I learned that you can "screen scape" an entire government web site (that's already open to the public) and then redistribute the information on your own site.  And the big shocker: that some government employees will eventually recommend their clients to your site, rather than to the cumbersome and unintuitive government site.  Wow.  Win one for the little guys.  For proof, check out @SaintJohnShawn's NB property assessments site at propertize.ca.

And, I didn't want to rub it in if you weren't there, but ... there was free food leftover at the end ... and it was delicious!!!

Cheers,
Graham