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Coffee With Digital Trailblazers
Networking in the AI Era: A Guide for Digital Transformation Leaders
This Coffee with Digital Trailblazers advisory panel on networking in the AI era featured Michael Vollinger, Joe Puglisi, Heather, John, Martin, Elena Putlina, and Joanne Friedman as panelists. Michael emphasized the importance of being comfortable with oneself, starting conversations with curiosity, giving without keeping score, and showing gratitude. Joe shared his approach of being a “chaos-to-order guy” and the value of building relationships over time. Heather stressed the importance of being authentic, positive, and enthusiastic, along with active listening.
The panelists discussed various networking scenarios, including conferences and small events, with advice on breaking the ice, finding common interests, and making meaningful connections.
They also addressed how AI has changed the networking landscape, making it noisier and requiring more thoughtful preparation before reaching out to contacts. The conversation highlighted the ongoing value of in-person events, long-term relationship building, and the human elements that drive successful networking beyond just transactional interactions.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Welcome to this week’s Coffee with Digital Trailblazers, our 183rd episode. Almost four years that we have been meeting here every Friday or almost every Friday at 11:00am Eastern Time to speak about topics of interest to digital transformation leaders.
And I can’t think of a more universal topic, something that all of us have to do within.
Look who didn’t do.
Look at that. Second time in three or four weeks that I did not mute my site. Here we go again.
I can’t think of a better and more important topic for digital transformation leaders that is universal. And we all probably go about it a little bit in different ways.
It is very personality driven.
Some of us are introverts, some of us are extreme extroverts. We all must be networking in different ways.
We all must be developing relationships. And I personally think that networking has changed quite a bit just in the last couple of years. I know it changed significantly during the pandemic years, but now here we are at least a few years removed from that. We have AI, we have a lot of social channels and noise and all of us need to think about different ways to network. You can all start your networking by saying hello in the LinkedIn live comment stream. Hello, Heather, David, Cheryl, Mohamed and Terry, thank you for standing up and saying hello on the comment stream. If you’re here, this is the easiest thing that you can do today is come in and say hello, meet some people. You can always network to people directly on the LinkedIn channel. Click into their profile and connect up with them.
Share us your thoughts around networking. Something that’s worked for you.
Ask a question around what’s challenging you and help me stump some of our super networking experts. I want to welcome Michael Volinger. I’ll do a complete intro to him in a second. And we do have some super networkers on our panel including Joe and Heather.
I love to hear their secrets during this program.
Hello Jason, Elena, Martin, Rick, great to see you. Keith, Ron, thank you for saying hello on the Common Channel. Let’s just get started. My normal research slide that I start our panels with, first one from Orvo talks about how to get to 15 to 25 deep connections.
They generate 2.4 times more career opportunities. And for those of you that are introverts, there’s some information on that source around being prepared and that’s one way AI helps us do this. Every meeting that you do, every session that you can do, it automatically logs. It creates a summary for you. Don’t just leave it somewhere, put it somewhere where you can build your own database of connections so that when I speak to Michael again, I know what I spoke about last time.
Good word.
As when executives were asked to seek advice from contacts they hadn’t spoken to in three or four years, the guidance they received was often as good and sometimes better than than those that we have that we speak to every week. I sometimes actually think it’s better people looking at you from a fresh pair of eyes but with some context.
So even though you may have 1000, 2000, 10,000 or more contact on LinkedIn, there is value in continuing to nurturing those leads. And I left you a couple of different directions you can go with your networking. Some of you are job hunting or looking for jobs.
What this report from career enlightenment says 30 to 50% of hires at most companies come through referrals but only accounts for 7% of the applicants coming in.
So some opportunities there for using your network to get referred into a job. 69.4% of companies have admitted to posting ghost jobs at some point. One of the many issues you’re facing today in the AI era and number one reason why you need to be networking. For those of you who are in the sales area of networking, many of our digital transformation leaders have to sell to partners, customers or if you are a CTO and working in a SaaS company to clients.
71% say they meet clients and that our buyers are looking to learn more about products and services at conferences. That’s a face to face interaction and 77% of buyers are more likely to work with providers who are whose thought leadership then demonstrates genuine expertise and right hand side. Here I give you just some pictures of what you’re dealing with. The top one just breaking through the noise. Finding the right path to reach a decision maker. Somebody a hiring manager, a prospect and on the bottom side the picture you’re all working through hundreds if not thousands of people you’re connecting to. How do you build your inner circle and and continue nurturing that inner circle so that you can get value and provide value to your network?
This slide is available on my website. It’s drive.starcio.com Coffee.
You’ll be able to see this there you’ll get access to other episodes that you have missed and you’ll be able to just add to your calendar so that you don’t miss future episodes. Hello to all the people who have joined on the LinkedIn channel. IC VOB, John, Rachel, thank you for saying hello.
Sajit, Alu and Manoj, thank you for saying hello.
Great Turnout today for our discussion on how to network in the AI era and a guide for digital transformation leaders. Michael.
Michael, you and I have met because you are one of the super networkers that I know and to just give everybody some context. He reached out to me, I think it was around 2014, 13. I was the CIO at McGraw Hill at the time in their Business Week magazine. And he reached out and he said, come join our conference and speak to CIOs about why they should be involved in social networking.
And Michael now is the founder of Yates Ltd. He is a founder of the Spark Executive Forum and, and if you ever go to one of those events, the stellar list of people that he gets to join the event, people that are more than three arms reach for us mere mortals. It’s amazing. So, Michael, welcome to the floor.
Anything else about your background that you want to share, please do. And you know, I want to hear about what you’re doing. What are your tactics as a super networker that us mere mortals, that includes us introverts, can really learn from and use for building connections and developing relationships? Welcome to the floor, Michael.
[00:07:43] Speaker C: Now. Totally appreciate you having me and you have a much better memory than me. That was a long time ago that we met. So kudos to you on that.
You know, in, in general, I’ll keep this pretty simple. There are, there are three things, possibly four, that over the years, this took a long time to hone. But three, three or four things that really make a huge difference in my outreach and my networking and in my connecting in general. The very first one starts with me. So being comfortable with me, knowing who I am, knowing what I represent, knowing what I bring to the table and being comfortable and confident in that is, is absolutely huge. Because at the end of the day, people really don’t, on a human level, they don’t connect with your title. They may take a call or put it on the calendar because of it, but they don’t connect with your title. They connect with your energy, they connect with how curious you are, what you’re passionate about, your point of view, all of those things, very human elements. So knowing yourself and being confident in that is number one.
Number two, and this is a big pivot for a lot of people. You know, when I start a conversation, when I’m looking to develop a relationship, I always start with curiosity.
And what that means is I’m going to be interested in who I am meeting before I try to be interesting to them. So there’s a number of things that go into that but you know, really being curious about them and a lot of the traits that, that help drive them, they’re not going to remember your elevator pitch at the end of the day. They’re going to remember how interesting the conversation was to them. So leading with curiosity is huge. And then the third thing is giving is a huge part of networking. So giving without keeping score. You brought up the, you know, having thousands of LinkedIn connections. A lot of us have thousands of LinkedIn connections. And, you know, when you start to pressure test those, right. How many of those are actually what you would consider a real relationship with the person on the other side. So, you know that, that giving without keeping score element. So introducing people to business opportunities, seeing connections, other interesting people that they might want to connect with that would be good for them, a job lead, you know, helping someone’s child get an internship or something like that. Giving is a huge piece of making relationships very real and very valuable. And then the last thing, and I’ll be quiet for a second, is gratitude.
So just the simple mechanics of, hey, thanks for that time, thanks for that introduction, really appreciate it. Just a simple gratitude. It’s a huge lever in really getting people to put you on their radar and staying there.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: That’s amazing. Michael, I want you to go one step deeper for me. I’m going to challenge you because again, you know, I go to a lot of conferences, I’ve spoken on a lot of conferences.
You have been able to pull like incredible people. I mean, well, I’m going to butcher his name.
Werner Vogel. My saying his name, right? CTO of aws.
[00:11:00] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: That you got in a few years ago. I mean, you’ve gotten the CTO of Drupal many, many years ago, before he was. I mean, you pulled together at every one of the Spark executive forums, at least 6, 7, 8 people that you’re like, wow, I am so glad I met them.
And you know, what are you saying to them to even, like, respond to you?
[00:11:26] Speaker C: You know what, your timing is impeccable for this conversation. There was. I’m going to give you a live example.
And actually she will be at my November Spark event.
I’ll leave her name out of it for now, but she’s a PhD economist, TEDx speaker, leads all things digital, tech and AI for a huge clean energy company.
Just a remarkable executive.
Looked at her background and said, this is someone who’s going to do some amazing things if I can get her to Spark.
The note that I sent her, I actually went contrarian. Right. Because just looking at her profile and what she’s doing and the company she’s currently at.
I know she’s getting 10 invites a day to speak about clean energy, to speak about data centers, to speak about whatever. I sent her a very simple one paragraph note that just said, hey, I run this event, it’s been happening for 22 years.
You know, I would love, based on your background, I would love to have you get on a call with me and consider joining this event. There are a number of things in your background, opportunities for you to contribute. I don’t want to make any assumptions.
No selling at the event, completely private. It’s all good.
Let me know if you’re interested. So I think. And she responded, she’s like, oh my God, this sounds amazing. We got on the phone and the very first question I asked her was, you get hundreds of these, why’d you respond to mine? And she said, you did not presume what I would talk about.
You clearly did some homework on me and you understand I’m a, you know, I’ve got a diverse background, I’m more than just energy sustainability, data center stuff.
She said. And that was hugely appealing. Stood out like a sore thumb. So, couple of things there. The simplicity of the ask, not being assumptive in what I was looking to achieve out of it and not trying to close in the note. Right.
Those three things got her on the phone.
[00:13:33] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Wow. All right.
I don’t know if that’s going to work with everyone. I think the simplicity.
No, I mean, like, like, like there’s probably something that you, in your research, of your background, of her background said, let me try this approach.
Right. And I think that’s my takeaway from this, is that all of us are getting two dozen or more cold messages on LinkedIn and another hundred to 200 in email. And guess what, you’re probably ignoring 99% of them, if not more.
[00:14:11] Speaker E: That’s right.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: So if you’re trying to really do a cold outreach or even reconnect with somebody that you haven’t spoken to before and you’re doing AI, copy paste or anything, some combination of that, it’s probably not going to work. Know your person. I think that’s what I’m going to take away from this. I’ve got my two other super networkers from our expert panels raising their hands. First one up is Heather.
Heather, you’ve made a career out of doing this, so I’m, I’m really curious what you’re doing.
[00:14:45] Speaker F: Absolutely. And I want to take off on what Michael has said. In being comfortable with yourself. I would add to that. You have to have a positive attitude. If you’re depressed or sad. Nobody wants to talk to a sad Zach. So try to be, bring yourself up. If you’re not going to be positive that day, this is not the day to do any outreach.
Be authentic, sincere, genuine, humble.
Everyone is going through something and if you have something to share, that’s great, but you don’t know what the other person is experiencing.
So keep that in your mind. Show enthusiasm as well as that confidence.
I think his comment about gratitude, absolute. Absolutely. There’s follow up and just, you know, normal manners and etiquette. If someone gives you something, you say thank you. If they’re going to follow up with you, then you could say, gentle reminder. You don’t have to be like, you said you were going to do this, so you want to be very, very appropriate. One thing you didn’t mention, Michael, that I want is about listening. The 80, 20 rule, 80% of conversation is listening and 20% is speaking. And it’ll go to the being curious and demonstrating interest because the more you know about them in advance, the more you can reference. But if they say something while they’re speaking, like, oh, wow, that’s really interesting.
So then you can draw them out to speak more about that.
Just before this call, I was listening to one of those silly Instagram things and there was something curious that they posted about Barack Obama and it was about how you introduce yourself in a meeting. And they did a clip about him and he said, hi, I’m sure everybody knows who I am. And everyone laughs. He said, I’m Michelle’s husband, Barack. So be unexpected.
And it gets people’s attention. You don’t have to say, hi, my name is Heather. May I do this, I do that. It’s boring. It’s same old, same old. And I find that when I send a connect message which is only 300 characters, so you have to be really, you know, pithy in what you’re saying. If I’m trying to get the attention of a candidate, I try to do something that is, you know, not, this is the job. I want to talk to you.
I want to be something that’s going to get their attention. And I do the same thing that you did, Michael. I say to them, what made you respond to this? And then when you realize that this was something different, then you get the. You’re encouraged to keep doing it.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: You know, one thing you mentioned, Heather, is be in the right zone, right? Be positive.
All of us have weeks that go up and down and months that go up and down, some cases years that go up and down.
I look for periods in my time of my week when I’m ready to write. I look for periods of my week when I’m ready to think long term. And I look for periods in my week when I have that energy, when I can do reach out to people.
And when I have those periods, then I’m cranking, hitting the gas pedal down and absolutely right.
Those are the times when you’re going to get response to your point around active listening. I post pasted this quote from Dana Sanderson in here.
It’s just a smart way of looking at things. Hey Joe, you’re my other super networker and everybody I know in the Northeast knows Joe Puglisi. I mean that’s a very simple way of putting it.
Joe, what are your secrets?
[00:18:25] Speaker E: No secrets. First of all, I’m flattered that you would say that. That’s quite nice.
Michael and I go back further than you and Michael.
I’ve had the privilege and it truly is a privilege to have been at almost every spark event in the Global CIO Forum which was the predecessor to it over the last 22 years. And first and foremost I want to attest to the fact that it is the stellar gathering of great minds and great and a great conversation.
The west coast version is a day and a half or the traveling version I should say is a day and a half. The one in New York that happens once a year now is just a one day event with a lovely dinner afterwards usually and some socializing.
Events like that are in my view priceless. Absolutely priceless. Because as you said, Isaac, you, you get to meet and have access on a one on one basis to some of the greatest thinking minds and success stories on the planet.
You know, Michael said a couple of things.
First, people don’t connect with your title.
As you know, in the vein of giving back. For something like the last 15 years I’ve been chairing a Thursday morning phone call for people that are looking for the next great opportunity.
And that is a great way of saying what what I’ve been saying in a different way.
People don’t connect with your title. People need to understand your brand. And you as again, Michael said first and foremost you need to understand your brand, what makes you tick, what are you all about? What kind of person are you?
Heather made a great point. You know, are you a positive kind of person or a Debbie Downer? People don’t like to deal with Debbie Downers. But if you come into every conversation with kind of an up attitude and you know what your strengths are, that’s great. You can convey them.
Dana made that point. You have two ears and one mouth. And I think Heather reinforced it with the right proportion. Okay, have, have an interest in the other person and they should take an interest in you, but if they don’t, that’s okay.
Be able to leave them with an impression of who you are and what you’re capable of. Not your title, not your track record, not your resume. Who are you?
I tell people I’m a chaos to order guy. I just have a natural inclination to straighten things out, sort things out. And I can expand on that, but I won’t.
It’s really important that people know who you are. Right? It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you and what you can do.
That’s Michael Satal, who knows you and what you can do.
You need to spread that to everyone and anyone.
Another point.
The best jobs are not listed on LinkedIn.
There may not even be a job requisition out there.
The best opportunities are always known to someone at a company because there’s a need, there’s a void, there’s a hole, there’s a requirement.
People know about it, but it may not be broadcast.
So if you spread your brand far and wide, somebody that knows somebody at that company is going to know about that need and they’re going to think of you. And that’s the connection. And the last thing I’ll say is, in terms of relationships, if you’re on the sales side, it’s all about relationships.
At the CEM chapter, we look for partners, not sponsors, partners. And we talk to companies who are interested in forming and sustaining relationships with our members.
We ask them to help us educate our members and in return, we allow them multiple visits so they can form lasting relationships with our members.
And if and when the need comes up, our members think of that partner first to satisfy their needs.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Love that, Joe.
It’s just a lot to chew on. And going back to Michael’s first comment about being comfortable with me, you know, you tagged on then being able to describe who you are in a few succinct words. Easy to understand what you can do, not focused on your title or your achievements and testing that right, you know, and you know, using the form, the SIM forum for those of you in transition. The SIM forum for members in transition is a great example of being able to test the words you’re picking and how they Resonate with people. I’m going to go around the room. John’s raising his hand. Martin and Elena. John, before you jump in, I’m going to read off question two.
I’d love to hear about what your super networking power is. And then I also want to go through some scenarios, right? And you could pick one and only one, what you do at a conference, what you do at a dinner or small event. I think those are two different scenarios.
How you develop relationships on LinkedIn as an example, finding a decision maker steps for developing relationships with a loose connection. This is somebody you might have met, connected with, don’t know, or any other scenario. I want to be able to leave our listeners with a concrete recommendation on how to do something in the different scenarios that they face themselves. John, your super networking power recommendation and then pick a scenario.
[00:24:13] Speaker G: Isaac? Yeah, thank you for having me on. And the first thing I just wanted to say quickly is a lot of people really mix up sales and networking. And so I think if you’re really trying to network, you have to really understand the difference. And sales is trying to sell stuff and networking, we’ve just tried it a few times here and that’s trying to understand what other people are.
We’re trying to understand what other people are doing and making sure that people kind of understand what you’re doing and having, you know, communications flow both ways and understanding flows both ways. And so I think that the thing that I really, really focus on over the years is trying to really stay in contact with the people that I’ve worked over the 20 years. And so the people that I know that are doing really interesting things get to go meet those people. And if you’re meeting the people at your level that are always doing interesting things over 20 years, the people that are doing really interesting things go really interesting places. And if you stay in contact with these people, you now have a network of people that are all over at the neatest companies doing the neatest things. And that’s one thing I can say has been probably the most rewarding part of networking is just being staying in contact with all these people doing great things and seeing them go from somebody that was just out of college like me to where they are now and, and you know, being able to help each other out both ways along the way.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: Staying close to people who are doing interesting things means that you should be doing interesting things and being able to communicate them. I love that. Hi, Martin.
Martin’s on mute there. Hey, super networking superpower. And what scenario do you want to Give advice on.
[00:26:02] Speaker D: Okay. So I think the, the superpower I would say is kind of longevity and kind of staying with something over the longer term. Yeah. And if I look at things like yeah, yeah, you Isaac. Yeah, we met through CIO chat and the number of people over the years that I’ve connected through through CIO chat. Yeah. Is a great example.
And by doing that I, I think you, you, you know, very much as John said, you kind of build those relationships over time. Yeah. And I’ve known you and other people like Wayne sayed in other people like this for yeah. A dozen odd years because of that kind of continue interactions over the years. And I think that’s kind of that continuity of doing some of those things is an important superpower because.
And then that kind of brings me to the kind of scenario and the scenario I would say is at a conference or a dinner and I would say try not to do a hit and run on, on conferences and trying to actually be consistent. So where I live up in eastern Canada, there isn’t any conferences nearby. I ever have to go to Toronto or Boston and I chose to go to Boston over the years and therefore I built up a good network of people. I know a lot of people in the Boston area now, CIOs etc from that kind of continuing to go to conferences in that area in particular, you know, a couple of different providers but continuing to go to those.
So I think that build up that consistency, you build up relationships over time. People will then know you and know who you are.
And I think, you know, if you take the scenario of the dinner. Yeah, a small dinner event.
Well, you’re usually positioned at a table, you placing maybe already allocated or whatever else. But get to know the other people at the table actually take the time. You know, it’s that as Dana said. Yeah. Two ears, one mouth. Take the time to actually find out about the people around you and find find out what they’re interested in, find out what their superpowers are and just kind of build on that kind of knowledge, you know, over time.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: I love that Martin. I actually want to bring back Michael and maybe Joe if you want to chime in here. Both of you run events that make it very easy to be a first timer at.
You know, you’re doing introductions, you’re having people sit in, in, in seats so that they can meet people. That’s not always the case. And some, you know, you go to a conference that has over a thousand people at, you know, there’s not going to be a lot of pre built opportunity to say, you know, here’s meet people on a silver platter. So Mark Michael and give me a quick answer. You walk into a conference, you know, whether it’s 30 people or 3,000 people and you know, nobody there, okay one or two ideas of how to change that and feel comfortable and start meeting people.
[00:29:10] Speaker C: So I’ll, I’ll give you a funny one out of the gate. And I, I do this regularly because believe it or not, despite all my history, I walk into a room with 500 people, I don’t know, it’s nerve wracking.
But I have learned to find others who look like they don’t know anyone else either.
And I will hone in on those people and strike up a conversation and basically partner up with them to go conquer the room.
So in the commonality of neither one of us knows anyone here, A, I get to know that person and then B, you know, as a team, we then start working the room and walking around and meeting people and stuff like that. It’s actually a fun way to do it and it’s easy to spot for sure. Just going back to your point on the welcoming thing, you know, that is that a lot of that is by virtue. And I think John started to talk about this a little bit. Right. Understanding what networking is and what it isn’t. There’s a big difference between networking and being a connector.
[00:30:16] Speaker G: Right.
[00:30:17] Speaker C: So thinking about the possibilities of connecting people, not just yourself with a person, but others, you know, speakers you saw on stage during the conference and things like that, there’s, there’s a lot to ground on there, but it is a different mindset going in.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, correct me if I’m wrong, I mean, I think we all have to be aspired to be a networker. I think it takes special people to be true connectors. It gets into their DNA.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
[00:30:51] Speaker C: The connection piece is drastically different. Right. And connection, the way I like to frame that in my head. There’s a couple of people who at least were registered for the call today. I don’t know if they’re on or not, but one I worked with a long time ago, she used to help recruit and really led the recruiting for some of the, some of the legacy events.
But when she recruited, by the time the people she was recruiting for the event got to me, I would be on a call with her and the person and the conversation, they’re laughing, talking about kids talking about all this stuff. It’s a different framing.
[00:31:29] Speaker F: Right.
[00:31:29] Speaker C: It goes back to some of What I said at the beginning of this. But then the connection piece, there was always an element of that where she would already be plotting, hey, I’m going to connect you with this CIO over here or this CEO over here. Because there’s value in seeing that. It’s about seeing connections ahead of other people.
[00:31:50] Speaker G: Right.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: And imagining the value in those things. Being able to visualize that and connect those dots and then connect those people.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: That’s.
[00:31:59] Speaker C: That’s how I think about connecting. Creating value for other people where they don’t see it or don’t have access to it.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I know a few really good super connectors like that, beyond super networkers.
You being one of them, Joe being one of them. I see a comment here from Rick Diana on the common stream. He is one of them.
And one of the things you all do very well is make an introduction that’s not prompted.
Right. And that’s actually something everybody can do. Right. You’re talking to someone and you’re thinking of somebody else in your network that might benefit from making a connection there. And you don’t wait and ask permission for it. You just make a connection, say, hey, I think you guys should meet, figure this out. Some of the ones I get are just like that.
Nora Osman, who has been on this panel, we were introduced that way. No, no prompt on why we should connect. We had to figure it out for ourselves. We quickly figured out that we were both authors writing a certain style of a book. And she and I are good friends. She’s been on the program a couple times and that’s something that takes a few times getting on the bicycle to figure out how to ride it. But you’ll get comfortable doing it. Folks, you have joined this week’s coffee with digital trailblazers.
I have shared the upcoming coffee hours on the right hand side of the whiteboard. We’re talking about beyond legacy processes, engineering, the high velocity enterprise. Next week I have a world class CTO joining us from Camunda.
We just met this week. Really excellent guy. Can’t wait for that conversation. The 21st, we’ll be talking about shadow AI at work. I have a world class CIO joining us for that one. That’s Wayne Satan, who will be on us with us. And then 8:28, we’ll be talking about where technology leaders lose leverage around their contracts. And that will be the 28th. Thank you for that. Hey, Michael, I already shared a little bit about you. What else do you want to share with others about what you’re doing?
[00:34:09] Speaker C: Yeah. So Just real quickly, the day job is the chief marketing officer for Yates Ltd. We’re, I’m sure most of you have never heard of us. We’re a boutique advisory firm, do a ton of transformation work mostly with like Fortune 250, Fortune 300. So it ties into my Spark event which I run twice a year.
That’s the thought leadership element of my career, which I thoroughly enjoy.
Obviously the advisory business feeds into a lot of what happens at Spark in terms of topics and content and honestly being able to bring to bear experiences to help the group, you know, in terms of attendees. So have a, have a lot of fun doing that. And then the last plug, which we were having fun with before.
If you do look up my LinkedIn profile, you will see Angels and Demons music on there. So I’m a lifelong musician, about a year ago kickstarted that career again. I’m on Spotify, wherever you want to find me. It’s all out there. But that’s, that’s the free time stuff.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us, Michael, and thank you for being the super networker and super connector that you are. Let’s bring up Elena. I want to hear about how you super network and maybe go through a scenario and leave a piece of advice for our audience.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you, Isaac. So the way I see networking is very much a long term, that’s how we live now. It’s not transactional. It’s a long term relationship where we help our network, we elevate ourselves and our network with it. And if we take that view, it’s appreciated by all and it’s very enhancing. So for my one kind of tip on how I network, I actually try to find little groups at this big conferences that are having fun and I would just join them and just kind of do icebreakers. Oh my God, you’re having fun. And I start smiling and laughing and introducing kind of an element of positivity into that conversation. And it seems to do the trick for me.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Elena, go deeper than that. I see four or five people having fun and I’m like, am I just going to be the sixth wheel there? So where’s the courage?
[00:36:34] Speaker A: Oh, I am more of an extrovert, right. So I’m not afraid of being a six wheel and I just kind of start chiming in a little bit now. You have to know your boundaries, right? But if I kind of chime in lightly, it tends to work. The thing is that don’t be afraid,
[00:36:53] Speaker B: I think that’s the lesson there, is that you have to get off of your out of your fear bubble cloud and say, you know what, there’s 1,000 people here. If this one’s a miss, I’ll go to the next one. Thank you, Elena. Heather, where do you want to go? You have a network scenario for us?
[00:37:10] Speaker F: Yes, a couple of things. One thing I want to reference back to what Vabev said about giving back. I have a friend of mine who we were out of work at the same time and we ended up having a bi weekly accountability call.
And we kept talking and encouraging each other and making connections and introductions. But one of the things that he used to do when he was like, not in a good place, he said he just can’t stand looking at the screen anymore is he would go to the soup kitchen. So he found an outlet that really gave him joy. And then he realized, with all the job searching I’m doing, why don’t I look in the nonprofit sector? And ended up becoming an executive director of a food desert organization.
So you can find that when you’re making your connections or finding outlets for the things that matter to you.
And he ended up like talking to people and that’s how he ended up finding the job. But there’s ways of parlaying that into an actual job search.
I’m going to quote something and she’s on the live stream, so if I misquote you, please correct me. But one of the things that she says is my motto in networking is the same as my motto in shopping. Do it constantly before you need something, so by the time you need it, you already have it.
And I think Elena referenced this.
It’s a lifelong thing. It’s not one and done. You have to do it all the time. And the other thing that this person does is she creates her own networking.
I think it’s every other month. It’s a brunch. She brings people together that are in the healthcare field.
Five or six women, usually women that come to her apartment and they talk, they each bring an item to eat and people she doesn’t know that were referred to her and she brings them in for a networking opportunity. And that yes, you have to be trusting that you’re bringing someone into your home, but you’re putting yourself out there in a creative way. And I think that that is huge for me, my superpower, I try to be creative, but everything is. Is typically based on research. So me putting myself into go down that rabbit hole, find something that is going to be unique, whether, you know, whatever Michael did to get that clean energy person and I want to ask you about her later. Probably offline, but however you can get someone to get their attention, I think you really have to know who you’re looking at, what’s important to them. And when I do research, I find out those things.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Love it. I love this shopping analogy. And then, you know, the other thing that I’ll add, you know, on your topic and what Elena was saying is I don’t have a problem asking a question of someone who I don’t know and not fearing that I’m asking a dumb question.
It turns out that even the most humble questions of an expert in gets them thinking on how do they respond to that and how do they take something that’s built up in their knowledge base or built up with jargon in the industry and unpacked it in such a way that somebody’s asking them right here now how to define a term or how to do something.
I actually think it’s very disarming. There’s a lot of really good comments here.
Keith has left a bunch of questions, questions that are part of the five dysfunctions of teams.
I just think there’s a lot of really good advice here. And, you know, the, the key thing I think is just being able to be confident in stepping out and trying things. Joanne, I’d love to hear about your super networking powers, a network scenario that you want to go through people, but I’m not going to let you give up the mic without talking to us about how AI is changing networking. And again, I said earlier on, I think the pandemic changed networking significantly. I think over the last two years, AI and the combination with social networking has made networking, I’m going to say, a disaster. There’s just a lot of noise out there that are hitting our channels. And when you are reaching out to somebody who you already know on LinkedIn, I could tell you, if you reach out to me today on LinkedIn, I will get back to you. But I have to sift through about 25 notes on LinkedIn before I find your message. It’s ridiculous. Joanne, how do we break through in the AI world today?
[00:41:44] Speaker H: Well, I’ll tell you a funny story, and I kind of talked to a few people about this.
I was doing something not that long ago. I was using one of the AI tools and it actually referenced me.
And I was a little bit flabbergasted. It was like the first time I used Google and I coined the phrase Googleable because I came up in a reference. And what I’m finding is when I Said to this individual, you know, I have to really wonder about the quality of AI or AI slop when I’m referenced. And he laughed and he said to me, well, you know, you’ve got this street cred and all of the other credentials that are needed as an authority. Why would you be surprised? And I said, because what that’s telling me is that not only is my thought leadership going in places that I don’t necessarily want to have other people scooping it, but on the alternative, is that why people are reaching out to me for a networking opportunity because of that source?
And it was really interesting to start thinking about that. It is very noisy out there, Isaac. It’s very cluttered.
AI has done us a great disservice in, in the notion of as thought leaders and as leaders, generally speaking, our messages get lost in all of that noise, no matter how provocative they are.
I was at a conference recently when, you know, I listened to a conversation between two individuals, both of whom had just been connected with each other in a networking environment.
And one said to the other, not about how to break through the noise, but just that their message to most of their network relationships was just avoid it like. Avoid it like the plague. Don’t go down that road. Don’t look for connections that are probably a false, maybe deep fake, etc. Etc. You need to find sort of a way around it rather than just go through it.
I think we’re going to see search change a lot. AI has changed the way people look at thought leadership. We have to become far more provocative. It’s not about our written words anymore. It’s about the way the algorithms are taking our comments. And so my counter to this and my super networking power, I guess, is I get a lot. I get involved in a lot of industry groups, standards bodies, things of that ilk. And it’s not because I’m trying to be centric around a topic. It’s because those connections have common values, common thoughts to myself, the connection and the networking is easier, but for the majority of my career, I can go back 30 or 35 years and still connect with those people because they may have changed industries 10 times, changed companies, but they still remember when we were collectively working on setting an ISO standard or developing something. And so what that leads to is not a bunch of old geeky people, but rather people who are very much in the mode of mentorship.
So we become mentors by osmosis. We not just spread the word about what we’re doing for standards development or technical standards Development, because they are different things, but it leads to the connections that you actually want to get to, not only through those people, but around them in different industry sectors, in different industries, people who can, who will remember, oh yes, I met you through so and so and I haven’t spoken to them in a really long time, etc and so that’s part of the lifelong networking ability. But I find it’s very easy to do that because everybody wants your help. Everybody will stop and listen to what you have to say in a way that’s not threatening for people who are not extroverted and don’t come from the commercial side, but people who truly are either, you know, academically inclined or deep thought leaders.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: I left both of these statements here. I mean, the fact is the online is polluted with slop and spam and when you start doing, you know, offline real person connections and real events with real people and areas that you want to learn from and have the potentially to give back to, that’s where you’re going to not only network but form lasting connections. And Joe, I can’t think of a better example than that than the Sim Fairfield Westchester Chapter,
[00:46:47] Speaker E: without a doubt, in person is where it’s at. I want to go back to something earlier. You didn’t come back to me after you talked to Michael about what do you do when you walk into a crowded room and you don’t know anybody? Perfect.
My first comment is that’s usually a very unique experience for me because I always know somebody there. But that aside, I loved Elena’s approach and that’s what I do. I look for a group of people who are having a discussion and I will politely insert myself, listen for a while, understand what they’re talking about, and if I can contribute, I will. But more likely I’ll ask more questions. I’ll sort of foster more conversation among these people and when the opportunity arises, introduce myself and get to know some people. I like that because you’re killing a few birds at one stone, as it were. You’re meeting a few people at a time. It’s actually less threatening than the one on one scenario. The other thing that I do, and I highly recommend this, is get to know the speaker or speakers, panelists, and the people that organize the event.
They’re approachable, believe me. They want you to come back to more of their events. So go talk to them. I have a very large collection of books signed by the author and to Joanne’s point, if you want to learn about somebody, read a book they wrote I read two books by this guy.
So colic I think and got, you know, got to know a lot about his history by, by doing so.
I think those are, those, those are all good pieces of advice.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: I think we’re all getting very sharp at plugging each other’s strengths between but.
And that’s what you do when you’re networking. I mean it’s a skill but honestly I think the three of us are doing it out of love, out of respect for the areas that we all contribute to. And when you are doing networking and you’re developing relationships, you’re going to find those natural places to say hey, you should really speak to Keith, for example, if you want to understand working with a standards body. He works with the IEEE standards body. Sends me stuff all the time to look at. Hey John, your thoughts around AI networking, developing relationships. I think that’s where we’re at.
[00:49:11] Speaker G: Yeah.
And I was going to say with AI coming out, it’s such a new technology. One of the neatest things about networking is talking with my friends that are the other really neat companies and asking them how they’re using AI to solve the problems and what they’re seeing and what their challenges are and how they’re getting through their challenges and then you know, not taking any of their it but like taking those concepts back and, and you know, using them in my daily life and when I talk to other people that are running into problems, you know, like share what we’re doing. And, and so I’ve, there’s a whole lot of people that we’re just, we, you know this, the information kind of cross pollinates between one company to another company and it’s really, really helpful.
You know, kind of like a rising tide rises all boats and AI such new technology like we’re all still figuring out how to do it. And so that’s one neat thing. And then another thing I was going to say about the conferences is with COVID and so much more work being remote. It’s so nice to have conferences like having a conference that you can fly everyone in within your company.
You can meet people that you work with but you don’t see on a regular basis. And so you can network with people at your own company in person. And then there’s all these people used to work at, but now they’re at other companies. Right. And so when you have the big AWS conference or some other conference, we can all fly in. And it’s really helpful if you tell, tell people in advance that you’re going to that conference and you start lining up maybe lunches and dinners and things like before you even get there, so that when you land, a lot of that stuff’s even already worked out.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: John, what I like of what you’re saying here is something we know about. When you’re walking into an interview, come armed with questions.
You know, the worst thing you can do in an interview is like, do you have any questions and ask some superficial or not have anything to ask. It’s just like a big red flag. I think, you know, in any situation, have questions you’re comfortable asking. And I think AI is a good example. Heather called me up this week and said, hey, essentially was running into an AI problem. It’s like, tell me I’m not crazy.
My favorite one is tell me something that I shocked you, right? Because we’re all using it in different ways. You know, something happened that surprised you.
Maybe it’s a, you know, a story of shock and scare. Maybe it’s something that impressed you.
It’s not like nobody’s using AI, so I think those are good icebreakers. Hey, Martin.
[00:51:40] Speaker G: Hey.
[00:51:42] Speaker D: I was gonna just add to some of that that it’s almost like trying to use AI to filter through the AI.
It’s, it’s kind of. Yeah. How do you use the tools available to try and actually filter out the noise?
And so just to kind of a side thought, the other thing I was going to say about going back to conferences again, actually, funny enough, is I’m always delighted when I find someone with a common interest. Especially like somebody wants to talk cars. Yeah. Nothing to do with the conference or anything you’re there for, but finding a common interest with somebody I think is great. And yet you get that by asking about themselves and trying to parallel, okay, what am I interested versus what? And the more you can actually connect with somebody at that kind of level and, and find a common topic, I think it is.
It’s just a great way to connect ongoing. And then the last thing I was going to say was keep an eye on your network updates and things like that. And if you hear that someone in your network is, yeah. No longer employed with a company or whatever else, then reach out to them. Even if you don’t know them that well, reach out to them and say, how can I help? You know, offer to tell them, you know, take a look at my LinkedIn connections. If there’s anyone there I can connect you with.
Yeah, let me know. And I think that’s a great way to actually strengthen the relationships you have on LinkedIn and other places.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: I love that sharing something about yourself that either forms your connection or creates a memory for somebody to know how to remember you by. Thank you, Martin. Heather, welcome back.
[00:53:19] Speaker F: I was going to say the same thing about sharing something personal. If that person didn’t tell you about cars, Martin, you would never know and that certainly would pique your interest. So it’s good that they did.
Two Last comments the my shopping friend is on the list on the live stream and I just want to give her a shout out. It’s Rachel Turnheim and if you can reach out to her and network and connect, that would be great. And my last comment is whatever you do, develop a habit habit and have fun. Don’t let it be forced. If it doesn’t come natural to you, it won’t last and it won’t be genuine.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: Love the habit. For those of you on the comment stream, do say hello. We’ve got a good number of you saying hello. If you haven’t done that yet, just reach out, drop a comment here, give us a test on something memorable. Ask an AI question and then look across the common stream when the event is over and make connections with people and use the the LinkedIn tool to be able to say something hey, I met you on the coffee with our and you know and say something memorable there.
I am always surprised when I look at the connections I have and say oh, Joe knows this person and it turns out he knows this person through the coffee with digital trailblazers. It’s great. Hello Elena, welcome back.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: Yes, so on the use of AI, I actually try to limit my use of AI in networking because I am trying to maintain relationships with humans and therefore I just use AI very thoughtfully and in my communications with my network I try not to do it as much.
[00:55:10] Speaker B: Very interesting article this week in the New York Times about putting, I don’t know, guardrails is probably not the word right word. But the article speaks about don’t use AI for your writing and goes through a whole bunch of reasons why. And maybe Elena will write the story around don’t use AI for your networking. Hello Joanne.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Networking writing yes.
[00:55:33] Speaker B: Hi Joanne.
[00:55:35] Speaker H: Hi there.
I think the, the, you know, parting comment that I would make because of timing is I think there’s a lot of us who have good networks and try to re establish, you know, connections that we haven’t spoken to in a long time. I think the thing that I’m finding a lot of with LinkedIn especially is that algorithms change and this is the comment that I would make about AI.
There’s a lot of algorithms in flux.
If you’re looking to network with people on LinkedIn and you’re looking for a good way to do it, check LinkedIn for how it’s changed its own game with your algorithm. So if you’re using thought leadership as the way to do that, the rules have changed. And as somebody said to me the other day, they had encountered this, you’re playing by the 2020 rules in 2026 because that’s how you originally learned the system and it’s changed three times in the past year.
So if you’re looking to reach out to people, you may not look at LinkedIn quite the same way and start looking for other common denominators before you just search through people, find the better connection and the deeper connection on the more personal level.
[00:56:59] Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you, Joanne. Michael, giving you the last word today.
Something from your super networking powers to your thoughts around AI in this crazy networking through AI world.
[00:57:14] Speaker C: So I’m actually going to say something very simple.
There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of risk in using AI, we’ve heard. I agree with all the comments about using it in the outreach and just whatever, but I will. There is always huge value in doing five minutes of homework before you connect with someone and understanding. And AI has raised the bar substantially for abject laziness.
So you have no excuse anymore.
When I get on the phone with someone, it’s very clear if they’ve, you know, spent the five minutes looking at my background or not.
And it’s also, it’s, it signifies respect. Right. So AI has been an accelerator. Yes. You need to vet it, validate it, all those things. But it’s really raised the bar like you don’t have an excuse to come into a conversation cold anymore.
It’s what we should have been doing all along. Now we have a supercharged tool to do it with. So I would encourage everyone make, make sure you spend that five minutes before connecting.
[00:58:17] Speaker B: Michael, what’s your question in your back pocket that you would use in a first time meeting somebody.
[00:58:26] Speaker C: I take people by surprise sometimes I open with, what are you hoping to get out of this conversation?
[00:58:39] Speaker B: So there’s a lesson in that, that takes the mic, hands it to the other person and lets them talk about whatever they want.
[00:58:47] Speaker C: You got it?
[00:58:48] Speaker B: Right, right. And that I’m, I’m seeing that as a common theme here from what you shared, from what all the speakers have shared.
Rick, Deanna has some really good comments in here around that I want to thank everybody for joining this week. For those of you who left comments, thank you for that. This whiteboard will be available@drive.starcio.com Coffee probably later this weekend. The research slide I shared earlier this week, it has the links to everything that I referenced that’s already up on the website. And we’ll be back here next week on the 14th to talk about beyond legacy processes, engineering, the high velocity enterprise. I assure you this will not be a fully technology conference.
This is going to be a conversation about how to get organizations to work very differently with AI as a capability and that will be on the 14th. On the 21st, we’re going to be talking about how to turn the real risks of shadow AI into what are the practical guardrails and how do we find innovation in AI?
One of my great friends again from CIO chat that I met Martin on many many years ago, Cedric on many many years ago. Who’s on the Common Stream? We’ll have Wayne Satan here for that one and then this topic today. This came from one of you. One of you recommended this topic. I’m always looking for recommended topics. I’m looking for recommended speakers if you’d like to speak on it.
We are looking for a guest speaker on the 28th for where technology leaders lose leverage in managing contracts. So that will be that one. If you haven’t said hi on the Common Stream, do say hello.
Do use this Comment stream to meet other folks. If you have a question around networking, reach out to any of us here at the coffee with digital trailblazers and stay in contact with us folks. Everybody have a great weekend. I am in Montreal this weekend in case there’s anybody who’s in Montreal to meet up with me. I have events coming up in Tech. Where is it? Austin, Denver and New York City. So I always do that. If you are in any of those cities and want to meet up with me, do reach out over messaging to do that. Everybody have a great weekend. We’ll see you next week.
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