I hate networking. But I'm getting better at it. I guess. I've done two meat space networking events in the past week and a half. They went ok.

(Apologies if I've said some of this stuff already. I honestly can't remember if I shared the older event story yet.)

I didn't intentionally aim to do networking in real time, physical space, with real humans, but there was the one thing with Sandy Pentland that I really just wanted to see what he was up to, and turned out to be this crazy World Economic Forum event. I only really talked to one person (and his assistant or partner or friend or whatever she was), Justin Bingham, who's the work partner of Tim Berners Lee, the guy who invented the web, and is trying to reinvent it, but it went well enough. I gave him my watercolor version of the Architecture and tried to do a couple minute explanation of it and a bit about how his work with Solid might be able to use it to organize ideas and not miss anything crucial. I don't know how much thought he gave it afterwards, but he seemed at least to listen to what I had to say. And the woman with him loved the visual look of it, so I gave her one as well, and she said she would hang it on her office wall.

I also gave a copy to Sandy Pentland, but didn't spend much time talking to him, for some reason. I just gave it to him and explained the basic premise of it being a routing system for a decentralized internet, based on math, or something. He, at least, didn't immediately lose it, as he kept it with his other papers on his chair during the rest of the event. :-)

Then, yesterday morning, there was a blockchain breakfast that also turned out to be entirely a networking event, based on a speed dating concept, which was weird (and not really how it was billed). But I did ok. I probably spent more time talking than anyone else, which isn't super impressive, but folks were interested and asked a bunch of questions, and even offered some suggestions. There was one woman who I got interrupted talking to who was really interested in helping me understand current approaches and how they might interact with my work. She was talking a bit over my head but was very generous and thoughtful and really wanted me to understand. So it's too bad that we didn't get to talk longer.

And I independently talked to two different people from the same company, which was nice, as they were working on something similar enough to what I'm doing to have a lot to talk about and suggest. One of them, a very sweet young lady, ended up having quite a lot to discuss about each of our projects, and that conversation was the trigger for me doing the new podcast I did yesterday.

Two funny things I noticed there.

1. I talked more to women then men. Not intentionally, on my part, I don't think. But it was very nice. And a bit surprising at a blockchain event.

2. I actually "knew" several people there already. One woman I've known for a long time now, and see often, both at these kinds of events (she's more ubiquitous at events than Ron Newman, I think, for those in the Boston area bicycle and community advocates), and at certain other places I tend to hang around. She's my biggest devil's advocate type person in my life, challenging me on pretty much everything, but with a sense of curiosity. It's extremely draining, but I do appreciate her. There were other folks there who even recognized me, while I wasn't entirely sure where I knew them from. I think at least one of them was at the Bitcoin meetup I went to. But I... honestly don't remember. Another I thought was from the Bitcoin meet up, but now I think he was at the hackathon that I did for the city of Boston/MIT, at the future festival last fall. And that woman I already mentioned who was really helpful talking to me was at that same hackathon, but we only figured that out when I mentioned being part of that, and she said she was too. She did look a little familiar, but I thought it was because I'd seen her talk at some MIT event, which is probably also true, as she is at the Media Lab (or was, at least).

So, yeah, I'm using all my "natural teacher" abilities to help me get past my introversion and letting folks know about my work, and finding out a bit about theirs and where there might be overlapping interests. I don't have a lot of energy for this, but at least I know I can do it. But I still much prefer situations where folks specifically and consensually choose to listen to my offerings because they are actively interested, rather than being uncomfortably forced by the situation. (I really wanted to help the organizers actually organize future events more effectively by having folks join specific discussion tables with problems/questions posed by the participants, as a way to direct folks to the most useful discussions and interests.)