Yours truly, Steve Gonzalez, John Warner, Phil Yanov, Trey Pennington
Yours truly, Steve Gonzalez, John Warner, Phil Yanov, Trey Pennington

So Steve Gonzalez, John Warner, Phil Yanov, Trey Pennington and I spent the latter part of the afternoon chatting with Clemson University students and faculty about the power of networking. The premise (eloquently framed by John Warner and Trey Pennington) was basically this: “Build Dig  your well before you get thirsty.” In other words, don’t wait until you graduate. Start building your future professional network now, while you still have a year or two of school ahead of you. Do this right, and you may never need to even draft a resume or go through a formal interview process.

The panel was pretty stacked with talent (between Steve, John, Phil and Trey, we had some of South Carolina’s most influential and well connected movers and shakers) so I was basically just lucky to be there.

We could have easily spent half a day talking about building relationships, building communities, effective networking, and effective social media usage, so maybe we’ll be lucky enough to be invited back. Until then, rather than give you a written play by play of the discussion, I will post a link to the video from the event (Courtesy of View Digital) as soon as it is available. (Though you can already check Twitter coverage here and here.)

Speaking of coverage, Doug Cone came out to Clemson to hang out with us and take photos, so I have to give him props for doing a great job behind the camera. All of the photos you see here are his work.

The camera crew
View Digital's camera crew
The audience trickling in
The audience trickling in
Phil Yanov showing off his dry cleaner's wicked starching skills
Phil Yanov showing off his dry cleaner's wicked starching skills
The microphone bank
The microphone bank
Bobby Rettew doing a great job as the panel's moderator
Bobby Rettew doing a great job as the panel's moderator
Fielding questions from Bobby
Fielding questions from Bobby
Steve Gonzalez and John Warner
Steve Gonzalez and John Warner
John Warner, Phil Yanov, Trey Pennington
John Warner, Phil Yanov, Trey Pennington
Moi and Steve Gonzalez
Learning lots from Steve Gonzalez
Defending my hyperactive Twitter usage. Again.
Defending my hyperactive Twitter usage. Again.
John Warner apparently not tweeting
John Warner apparently not tweeting (or so he says)...

Bringing this kind of discussion into an academic setting is invaluable, and the engagement from the audience was kind of infectious. I could get used to this. (Let’s hope this was one of many such events.) 🙂

Thanks again to my fellow panelists for quietly enduring my loquacious answers, to Bobby Rettew for putting this on and asking me to join such an A-list bunch of folks on the panel, to Clemson University for taking such good care of us today (minus the parking ticket), and especially to our audience for being a great crowd and asking us some pretty smart questions. Let’s do it again soon. 🙂