Technically, I am writing this post in response to the Golden Ticket competition being run by Carsonified. The theme of the competition is quite simple: create a blog post mentioning your desire to win the contest, link to it, and gather up 25 comments. The prize is a ticket to all Carsonified events in 2009 (these are the guys who run FOWD, FOWA, and such conferences), backstage passes, airline and hotel to 1 event, and an invite to a VIP speaker dinner, which is all very bad-ass.
Just recently have I come to understand the full benefit of professional networking. Although I frequently have desired to go to conferences, in actuality I have only been able to go to one - Refresh 06, and that was only because it was a local event. I nearly made it to FOWD last year, but got horribly sick the morning of and was never able to make it out.
Since then, and quite recently actually, I have started to get back into the professional networking vibe. Thanks to people like Charlie O’Donnell, who runs NextNY, I have started to see the real benefits of professional networking. Just tonight I went to a NextNY ShakeShack event, and it was a lot more productive and fun than I had imagined. I’m sitting here now with a bunch of awesome business cards, all from smart, talented people in the industry. We shot ideas, talked technical, and a grand time was had by all.
This blog belongs to Jade Rauenzahn, a 23-year-old web developer living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC.