It all started with dinner...
Wednesday May 11, 2005
I'm still in the infancy of my "career" and I'm learning more and more how important it is to network. When I say network, I don't mean the fake-stay-in-touch networking that some people do with the only goal of climbing the corporate ladder. The type of networking I'm talking about is the stay-in-touch-with-folks you currently work with and have worked with in the past in order to continue to learn. Socialize. Learn. Have a drink and try to figure out who stole the Fabio cardboard cutout. (What did ever happen to that?) Oh, and continue to learn.
Networking is especially important with many people now working from home, flexible/drop-in, and satellite offices. As many have written and blogged about before, we just don't have the water cooler talk we used to. (Hmmm... the group I work in effectively uses instant messaging tools so we do have "water cooler talk" ... although it's a bit different from the old school kind.)
For a while I got a bit lazy at keeping in touch with folks I worked with in the past. Heck, some days I have an endless to do list and don't spend enough time keeping in touch with the people I currently work with! Enter SGNO. It stands for Sun Girls Night Out. It basically started with my former boss (my first GREAT manager at Sun) and a friend (also a coworker at Sun... did she steal Fabio?) making standing dinner plans. First Wed night of the month. Others caught on to their plans and asked to join. Since these two are super organized and efficient, they created an internal mail list and told interested folks they could sign up. Flash to last month when I went to a SGNO dinner. It was great to see folks I did some project work with over two years ago and learn what cool things they are working on now at Sun.
I forgot to mention that the group happens to be all women. I'm not sure if that was on purpose or if the group just happened to become that. (I bet men are invited... so if anyone working for Sun in the Northeast wants to join, let us know.) And no, we don't just talk about "women stuff." It's a group of people, people. (I actually don't really believe in "women's lib." I believe in people's lib... but that's another blog for another time.)
Checkout this article from the Wall Street Journal's Executive Career site that has more info on SGNO. I'm happy that I've come out of my bubble. I'm even attending a MassWIT event Thurs night at Sun's Burlington, MA campus. Amanda Watlington, a search and blog expert is speaking and I'm interested to LEARN what she has to say.
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