Practice lab · 10 min
Networking Lab
Prepare for an event or an outreach, practise your introduction, and plan the follow-up. Practise on realistic situations, one step at a time.
Free — no account needed to read
Prepare for an event or an outreach, practise your introduction, and plan the follow-up.
Situations to practise on
- A local meetup in your field
- There is a meetup this week for people in the field you are in or want to move into.
- A conference
- You are going to a one-day conference with talks and breaks for networking.
- Reaching out online
- You want to contact someone whose work you admire, who has never heard of you.
- An alumni or community event
- An event for people from your school, university or community, some of them much further along than you.
The steps
- Who might I meet? Kinds of people, or specific names if you know them.
- What do I want to learn?
- What can I contribute? A question, an introduction, something you know, genuine interest — everyone has something.
- What questions can I ask?
- Your two- or three-sentence introduction
- Afterwards: who should I follow up with, and how? Come back after the event and fill this in.
Afterwards, ask yourself
After the event: what went better than you expected?
Lessons behind this lab
- Giving a good introduction — Who you are, what you care about, and a hook for the other person. (6 min · Beginner)
- Conferences and events — Before, during and after an event — and how not to exhaust yourself. (7 min · Practising)
- Following up — The follow-up is where most networking quietly dies — or starts. (6 min · Beginner)
- Giving before asking — Help, introductions and useful things first; requests come later and land better. (6 min · Beginner)