Comments on: Effective Networking (Your Fellow N00bz)

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:37:25 +0000

Great advice! And nice to see you ’round these parts, Squirrel :)

By: Squirrel Eiserloh

Squirrel Eiserloh — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:02:45 +0000

I couldn’t possibly agree more with this advice – in particular, the distinction of “excellent” over “important” people. For me personally, there are two additional extensions of that reasoning:

1. Do not bother networking with “important” people who are NOT “excellent”. They are (thankfully) somewhat rare, but they exist. Don’t be rude to them, but they’re not worth your extra effort. For me, that’s when you cross over the line from “networking” to “kissing ass”.

2. Remember that this also means networking “downhill” (or downstream, or whatever your metaphor). Those “little people” that are 5 or 10 or 15 years behind you in their industry career can still very much have excellence that’s worth knowing. And you’d be surprised how incestuous the industry is – on a long enough timeline, we are all veterans and everyone and we’ll all end up working for or with each other in some capacity. In fact, we are currently doing some freelance consulting for a company whose point of contact (and therefore my “boss” for the contract) is someone I hired into the industry many years ago.

By: Effective Networking (Fan From Hell)

Effective Networking (Fan From Hell) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:20:33 +0000

[...] particular woman who shows us exactly how not to network. In particular, she violates almost every Mr. Big Stuff rule [...]

By: Patrick Dugan

Patrick Dugan — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 20:50:00 +0000

I neglected to mention that the best way to network year round is via online activity such as blogging and forum posting. I may only be saying this because the GDC wouldn’t give me a student scholarship two years in a row. Still, I’m a big believer that, if success if incumbent on being at the right place at the right time, then the right place is the internet and the right time is now.

By: Patrick Dugan

Patrick Dugan — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 18:04:00 +0000

I used to the think the whole point of the GDC was to go up to the big shots after their talks and throw them your design doc. I've slowly wisened up to the reality of professional networking, but this article makes it all very clear.

Stay excellent.

By: Craig Perko

Craig Perko — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 17:07:00 +0000

As much as "excellent people" is the perfect description, I get this image of a blue, smoky room in the far future, with a serious-looking guy strumming his air-guitar and telling Bill & Ted to "be totally excellent to each other."

Which is probably not the image you were going for. :)

You know, making a game out of this networking thing might be fun and easy, if anyone had the time.