~*Networking*~

Hi, everyone! So, I had an excellent day of networking today. Not exactly networking with students and people in the exact industry I hope to pursue, but relevant nonetheless. I arrived by myself, but I had friends at the event. I don't really want to reveal what company or industry this networking involved, but I guess it can be implied by reading forward in this post.

We started off with a crisis response talk, with someone speaking about how she and her team have worked, over the years, on using technology to respond to things like the earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami in Japan. I was impressed by their filtering of irrelevant search topics and how anonymous volunteers assembled missing peoples' names and information on the Internet to allow family, friends, and other loved ones to find each other and share information on people they have seen during times of disaster.

Then, they held a career panel to answer any questions we had as audience members. First, the panel coordinator asked pre-written questions, just to get things going. I was impressed by the eloquence and down-to-earth-ness of each speaker, who connected well with the audience. I also appreciated the flexibility and supportiveness that I sensed about their workplace. Then, they opened up for questions from us, setting a microphone in the middle of the large room for any volunteers. I had a question and appreciated the opportunity to address it.

Afterward, we ate a pizza and chocolate chip cookie dinner. The cookies were delicious. The pizza was kind of average...well, it was pizza, after all :) When we had almost finished, two speakers told us about recruiting, interviews, and career opportunities. I was grateful to have another one of my questions addressed during this period.

Finally, we went on a guided tour of the facility. The building was lovely and fun. There were places to work and hold meetings, but there were also just places to chill. I was impressed that these areas were so close to each other, yet all the employees seemed, still, to be productive. They also gave us some things to snack on and imbibe during this tour.

Very productive day in terms of networking, but not productive in terms of homework! Have to set to work on that now!

See you later~