PA Progressive Summit: Meeting New People

Last weekend I attended the PA Progressive Summit. This is the biggest progressive conference in the state of Pennsylvania. I have discussed my experiences at the conference on my activism blog. Relevant to this blog, I set a goal of introducing myself to one new person per session I attended.

It turned out to be somewhat impractical to introduce myself to someone in each session because some sessions I already knew people or time ran out and I needed to move on to something else. However, I did meet quite a few new people. I met some other youth activists or college activists, as well as some who are active in Philadelphia or the suburban areas around it. I even introduced myself to one person for no reason other than I kept seeing her in the Summit's Twitter feeds and I recognized her from her avatar. Even though I did not quite introduce myself to one person per session, I made my goal of making new connections who may prove useful as I look to get into activism.

I will be attending the Women's Way Women and Influence conference next weekend, so hopefully I will make some new contacts there as well.

Networking Challenge, PA Progressive Summit

I am attending the PA Progressive Summit this weekend, and I am giving myself a networking challenge. I've never liked networking because it requires talking to strangers — I have previously discussed my discomfort with introducing myself/talking to strangers. However, I'm realizing that networking is extremely important in most industries, certainly for the career I plan to have in Activism. With that in mind, I'm going to take this Summit as an opportunity to jump in, introduce myself, and make connections. I am going to try to introduce myself to at least one person per session I attend. I shall report back next week.