It’s been a bit of a long week.  I had Saturday off this week (but not really) but had to head to San Diego for work on Sunday…I’m looking forward to the weekend.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fan of conferences and navigating social relationships. However, besides connections that will hopefully help build the company (which I actually care about), I found an amazing point of contact with my fellow attendees.

Business people work pretty hard, but they also play kind of hard as well.  So, how do they play?  Well, I met several people who just love beer.  These weren’t the type of people that simply booze it up.  These are people who told me the highlight of their year was this or that beer festival or a homebrew competition.

It’s funny when you think about it.  Contacts that are affected are pretty transparent.  Forced interactions can be painful.  But conversations built on mutual loves are comfortable like a favorite recliner.  So, when the rooms cleared and the shuffle of business cards stopped, I was able to simply talk about life and beer.  These connections might be far more convincing than anything I could have said.

Perhaps networking isn’t so bad!