"Assign Yourself a Role for Each Event"

(This CFP Blog will be on vaycay from July 1-3, while the blogger is at Con-Vergence, the three days a year he doesn't think about rhetoric once, ever.  This is cross-posted from his other blog, The Peak Performing Rhetorician, which includes a ton of professional development advice and reflective writing.  Happy Holiday!)

A key to networking is knowing who you are, who you are supposed to be, in an event. Robison (in The Peak Performing Professor) raises this as a question in Chapter 12, "Engage Others," in a way which inspires autobiographical thinking on my part.

1996ish:  Eater of Food I remember the first time I attended a national communication conference.  Friday and Saturday nights at this conference, major programs host receptions that help recruit new graduate students, recruit faculty, and keep alumni invested in the success of the program.  There is often free food and drink.  My first year at this conference, in 1996 (I am guessing), my role was "to consume enough food and drink not to have to buy dinner." (I wasn't on the market for a new program, or a job, and I wasn't alum yet.)
At the reception of my own program, I had a slightly better sense of my role:  to meet alumni and prospective students and say good things about my program.  But even then, I waited for that to happen to me, instead of seeking that role out. 

1999ish Presenter of Papers For the next three years or so, at national and regional conferences, I thought that my role was to present:  to stand up in front of a room of anywhere from three to thirty strangers and present research.  That role is essential to getting institutional support (travel funding) to attend the conference, but in many ways, presenting is the least significant role, the least significant labor, you can do at the conference.  

2000ish Asker of Questions By about five years into conference attendance, I realized that asking questions at other people's presentations was at least as powerful as presenting, and would often get me an invitation to the lobby bar to talk about research, to share my project and to connect with colleagues. 

2002ish  Active Participant in the Community of Scholars By six years in, I was attending pre-conferences and valuing those as the most significant portion of the conference -- these were my people, sharing my interests, and interested in advancing our common project.  I became more and more aware of my role as someone looking for a community and advancing a community project.  I started attending smaller and smaller conferences, looking for points of intersection between my work and the work of my colleagues.  Smaller and smaller conferences were more likely to result in proceedings, which advance my career even more than presenting a paper, too.

I'm not suggesting that I should have been where-I-was in 2002 when I started in 1996.  But I probably should have reflected more on my role as time passed.  Hopefully, if you are just starting your career, you can see where you fit on this spectrum of roles, and maybe you can add another one to my list.