Networking for introverts

I went to a panel on "Women and Innovation" last night held by the SV Tech Forum Women's group. The panel was quite interesting, but I was sort of dreading the "networking hour" preceding it, because I was tired and not really feeling like making awkward conversation with strangers. But I went, and I chatted with some folks, and it was better than a trip to the dentist.

And then the teenage daughter of one of the women I'd been chatting to bounced up to me and said, "Hey, so my mom says you write?"

And I said, "Yes, I'm a technical writer."

"What's that?"

And so I told her about technical writing, and we swapped high-school newspaper stories (the last-minute rewriting of copy to fit the available space is still a highly sought-after skill in the high-school newsroom), and she's interested in having me come and talk to her journalism class about tech writing.

That was considerably better than a trip to the dentist.

And I had a chat with someone who taught me the ultimate Silicon Valley icebreaker ("So, are you starting a company?"), and who wants me to come to more SV Tech Forum meetings so I can help company founders pitch their ideas to end users better. (Considering how much time I spend trying to convince people that one of greatest assets tech writers bring to a team is our ability to understand and speak to users, it was weird to meet a complete stranger who already took that for granted. It felt a bit like charging at a brick wall only to discover it was a hologram.)