I show up; it’s part of my personal brand. Get married, have a baby, have a party – heck, just invite me over! – and I’m there. I’m at my best at a meeting, in a crowd, at a trade show, or even just out to dinner. I get a lot of great energy from being with other people, especially those that I like or have something in common with, and I always learn something.
My enthusiasm for the power of personal connection extends to my professional life and also to the counsel I provide to my clients. In this era of budget cutting and travel restrictions, I understand that “showing up” is more complicated and expensive than ever, but I still think that travel to conferences and trade shows is worth consideration – maybe now more than ever.
A couple of years ago when the Green Earth PR Network was meeting in Atlanta, we were talking about assets we could share with one another. I was offering what was, at the time, an enormous spreadsheet – a great big Excel document where my colleague Christine and I housed all of the details for all of the speaking and networking events we were facilitating with our clients. Judith Webb took one look at it and said, you should offer your database as a service! Practically overnight, the CONNECT database was born.
Now in its third year, CONNECT is more robust than ever, with nearly 150 key business to business events in the sustainability space. We offer details like the date, location, contacts, deadlines, and fees, with a link back to every event’s website if you require a deeper dive into a particular listing. The search function that allows you to build and maintain multiple lists is straight-forward and intuitive. In fact, I can build a full year’s speaking and networking calendar for a client in just under two hours!
We’re just putting the final touches on the most major update we’ll do for 2011, and we’ll continue to monitor for events that haven’t yet posted their plans for this year. Already you can see that new events have come online, some events have faded from the scene, and a number of conference have moved around on the calendar or chosen new geography this year.
We’re offering a special rate of $495 for an annual subscription for those who subscribe in 2010, and we’re always happy to walk you through a demonstration of the database during a 15-minute phone demo. Email lisa@greenearthp.net for more information. And while we’re on the subject of getting together, when are you having me over for dinner?
