I spent last Friday attending a local Utah tech event called Silicon Slopes Tech Summit 2020. It was a great event with well-known local and national tech "celebrities", classes, and opportunities for service. I heard there were more than 20,000 attendees - so it's a good sized local event. Event producers even got Mark Zuckerberg as a speaker to wrap up the conference at the end of day Friday. His interview was really interesting and ended up making national news.
Among all the great things I experienced and learned during the show, there is something that stands out. One of my great friends, Lyle Ball, and I were watching Friday's "morning session" when a large portion the digital backdrop began to flicker. We looked at each other with a look that clearly communicated, "that's bothersome." I don't know if the speaker at the time was aware of the dynamic that took some of the audience's focus away from her but I know Lyle and I were not the only ones distracted. In fact, one of my first thoughts was, "I hope no one has a seizure!"
After a few minutes, Lyle whispered in my ear, "I know the guy who owns the company responsible for stuff like that. I'm going to text him to let him know so that maybe it can be fixed." The following text between my friend and someone in his network explains the rest of the story…
I've been thinking about the power of people networks since then. How's your network? Do you get asked to help? Do you help when asked? Do you lean on your network for help? Do you get responses when you reach out? It's probably worth our time to regularly give and receive from our people network. Who knows, it may save your bacon someday.
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