Sunday, March 1, 2009

Many times I have wondered how someone like myself ended up in public relations. Specifically, I'm not too fond of mixing, mingling and forcing conversations with complete strangers. For this reason, I was looking forward to attending a conference out of state -- because I would feel no great need to network since I have no plans to move to Texas and if I did, I know enough other people in the state who would be able to give me the career boost I would need.

Of course, my plan to keep a low profile was shot before I even attended the first session. While I was focused on trying to solve a long-distance issue for my husband and my good friend Penny was concentrating on business, a friendly guy stopped to make conversation. Needless to say, we were not very social.

A half hour later we walked into a packed meeting room. While I was trying to locate two seats, Penny uttered something along the lines of *oh, crap.* Silly me, I thought she was referring to the lack of seating...until I noticed who was at the front of the room preparing to give the main address -- the expert we had traveled nearly four hours to hear. This speaker, Peter Shankman, was the same guy we had dissed earlier.

To make matters worse, where do you think the only open seats were? If you said the front row, you were correct. He was an awesome speaker, and I regret not taking a little more time to chat earlier that morning. But in my defense, my husband had a very important meeting that could have a huge impact on his career, and he needed my assistance in securing some much-needed documents. So I did not have time to speak to a man who unfortunately reminded me of a previous supervisor. Also, he looked NOTHING like his picture in the conference materials.

He led a breakout session that afternoon and was just as interesting. Of course, we still ended up in the front row, so we probably looked like stalkers. Believe me -- the queen of the low profile -- the front row is not a place this backseat Baptist usually sits.

I would have loved to have spent the entire day focusing on social media and his experience. However, I'll take what I got. And if I'm not blogging more often, you can blame it on my growing interest in Facebook and Twitter...oh yeah, and having four kids.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Yeah, you guys looked kinda pissed off. No worries, I figured you probably had other things on your mind. Thanks for coming to hear me speak, regardless! :)

Unknown said...

Love. This. Story.
Very easily could've been me.

Dayna said...

You would not believe the similarities between Shankman and Ben. The main difference was Shankman knew what he was talking about and was actually funny.

Wish you could've joined us at the conference and sorry I didn't get back with you to see if we would have time to get together. Oh well, as this blog post shows, I'm pathetic at social attempts...

Dayna said...

You would not believe the similarities between Shankman and Ben. The main difference was Shankman knew what he was talking about and was actually funny.

Wish you could've joined us at the conference and sorry I didn't get back with you to see if we would have time to get together. Oh well, as this blog post shows, I'm pathetic at social attempts...