Conference Anxiety

I attended a conference today, one of these networking-type events that everyone is so keen on these days. When I arrived, I was met by a wave of social anxiety - it felt impossible for me to be able to talk to any of these strangers, or even handle being in a room with them all day, and I was desperate to walk right back out the door and go back to bed. I’d already made the effort to get there though, and felt obliged to stay to support my colleagues who were giving talks. So, I took some deep breaths, and thought about how I was going to make it through the next 8 hours of buzzwords, faux-enthusiasm and free pens.

In the end, I decided to try to frame things differently - instead of worrying so much about what all these people might think of me, that I ought to go and strike up conversations and impress them, to allegedly add them to my network, what did they have to offer me? What would they say that I would find interesting, or why would they want to have me as a contact?

It certainly didn’t work completely, but I think it helped a little.