 Do you want to open the back door? Open with something. Just so it doesn't interfere with the floor. I'm closing this so people don't really walk in the front. Thank you for coming. Thank you for the great turnout today. How many of you have been to the...actually the opposite question. How many is this first time on the Entrepreneur's Farm? Good. Thank you and hope you'll come again. So what we do this typically is every two weeks we have a session. Sometimes we have food, others time to enough. Thank you this time to the office of graduate and post-graduates, post-doc support that provided the pizza. I provided some extra things for those of you who use the sushi and so on. And then also after we do the networking, don't forget dessert. We'll put out some dessert out there. And so we do this bi-weekly. So the next one coming up on March 5th to March, especially for those of you who are innovators on campus, disclosing your invention and what happens next. So the transfer office will do a session on how to disclose your invention, how to do your record of invention and then what happens next in that process. And then we'll be dark the following in that mid-March timeframe because they'll be kind of during the break time. And then we'll start up again in April, April 2nd specifically. We'll have Greg Weiss one of our faculty. And when we do the faculty, we do it in an interview. We choose a faculty innovator, somebody that has been kind of doing innovation and entrepreneurship. And then we'll do it in a style of inside the actor studio kind of style. So look for that April 2nd. There will be some other programs. And also I want to make an announcement. I want to make sure that there's a number of activities that Octane does as well as other things that are on campus that I want to call your attention to. Specifically actually in the School of Engineering we have Henry Samielli coming up and speaking on March 4th. Bill Link who's the co-founder of Versenventures coming to speak on next Thursday, February 25th. And then we have an entrepreneur who created her own civil engineering consulting firm coming to speak next Tuesday. So information on that is outside. I do want to point out that today's session is being videotaped. So it will be available on OpenCourseWare. Our campus is part of the OpenCourseWare network which includes many other universities including MIT which actually started that process. And so there's a number of kind of high quality education materials that you can find on there as courses that you can avail yourself through that OpenCourseWare network. So I urge you to check it out. The OpenCourseWare consortium. You can just Google and I think there's information out there or it's ocwconsortium.org. So look for this course as well as a number of other courses that our UCI extension has put together there. With that we'll get right into today's presentation which will be about Relationship Building and Business Networking. Charlie Becker who's the director of the Don Deal Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is going to start describing some of the important factors and why you should be considering a more organized method of doing networking and business connections. And then I'll get into some of the practicalities and then following that we'll actually have an exercise for all of you to do a little bit of structure networking. So with that please Charlie. Great. Thanks Goren. So let me introduce myself. My name is Charlie Becker. I'm an administrative director for the Don Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship here on campus. And so kind of the first issue is well why should you be interested in what Charlie Becker has to say and Goren Matziacevich has to say. So I just want to qualify myself with respect to this subject area. I spent 25 years in private industry primarily in sales and marketing and attended many many networking events both at industry level and academic level and basically made my living doing exactly what we're talking about today. It goes without saying that when you're in sales and marketing you have to find plenty of customers to talk to and that's called your pipeline and so filling that pipeline is a matter of finding art for sales and marketing people. So after doing that for 25 years and then here working at the university with the Don Beall Center for five years we service about a thousand students here on campus who are interested in thinking about planner and actually executing a business and so keeping track of those thousand students and their interest is kind of a consuming passion for me and so we in order to service our students have a number of events including the matrix mixture event which is I think probably the premier mixture event here on campus that we encourage our students and faculty come to. So we have some experience doing this and then I have to brag for Goran here. Goran in my experience is a consummate networker. This guy when he's presenting you really want to listen to what he has to say because there's virtually nothing that occurs in my experience on this campus of significance that Goran does not know about and there's probably very few people on this campus that either don't know Goran or movers and shakers on this campus that Goran does not know of and so I want to assure you that today you will hear from the master of how to implement think about and implement social networking so now that I've put the bar height so high for your Goran I'm going to challenge you to jump over. So it's Goran basically said and we now have a color feature on this one. We'll talk a little bit about why you should care about business networking. The old kind of euphemism for this is called grip and grin. So you grip and you grin and so that's sort of a tired old cliche of those of us that do a lot of social networking but I want to share with you initially sort of a theoretical scientific justification for why we as humans organize ourselves in certain ways and sort of a commonality of some features for relationship building that you really need to know about in order to be effective. So since this is an academic crowd I thought you'd be interested in this and so we'll spend a little bit talking about interpersonal ties and information flow and then how to leverage that and then we'll move into innovation and role networking which Goran will handle and talk about so now that we know the theory how do we actually practice social networking and how do we build robust and powerful networks then we're going, as Goran mentioned we'll move into practical tips and some practice exercises so our goal is to enable you by the time that 1240 roles around you guys are going to be experts in social networking you're going to be empowered to go out and create powerful, compelling and useful networks by the end of this session. So intuitively all of us know that relationships are important poets and philosophers have talked about this for the ages so this is nothing new but relationships not only define us in terms of the groups that we're affiliated with but they're actually avenues towards very powerful enabling ideas that travel through society and it turns out that relationships bind us together in terms of how information flows and if information is power then your relationship network is your empowering and enabling network for you so your access to novel information that information that differentiates you from the rest of the pack that information that creates special value in what you bring to the party is determined by a unique mix of what is called a weak and strong interpersonal ties and so we'll go through this in the next slide but one of the tenets of social networking theory is that there's this unique kind of formulation of how the combination of weak and strong interpersonal ties empower you so there's a good history of this going back as early as the early 1800s Gerda talked about social and interpersonal ties as having sort of a rough affinity or similarity to chemical relationships and chemical bonds but in 1954 a Russian Anatole Rappaport actually investigated this and he spent a lot of time talking about what we sort of all know that acquainted individuals share a lot of information and new information is actually derived from relationships from people outside our immediate group so this observation became one of the cornerstones of networking theory and then in 1973 Mark Granaveter actually wrote a paper called The Strength of Weak Ties which mathematically and formally established this relationship that really what is important in social networking is not that half a dozen or a dozen people that we hold close to our everyday activities we call strong ties but it's actually those relationships that you establish with weak ties to groups that you may only talk to every couple weeks or every month or every quarter so what's important in social networking are what we call these structural holes so you may think of the people in your dorm the people in your research group the people in your department as having these strong ties and as Revaport established basically in these groups that we interact with every day all of our information is fairly well known among us and there's nothing really novel because we talk so much so important novel information that serves to differentiate you from other people is information that's in other groups and social networking theory says that important novel information doesn't really travel around in these groups it's established by these weak ties so that's kind of the theory and so the way it manifests itself is that when you go to an event where you can meet other people the strategy that you want to implement are these bridges to various other networks and so the way you do that is you don't simply just start creating a bunch of relationships so the hard way that you establish social networks is that you undertake to create some number of parallel relationships all sort of and then you if the hard way of doing it is trying to support different relationships simultaneously the easy way you do this is you establish these weak ties between other groups so in your social networking activities you should undertake to listen to the people that you meet and understand what their passion is and what their interrelatedness is and establish whether that person is a key member of a group that you're interested in and then you establish that weak link between those individuals and then you follow up on a periodic basis with them so they're not part of your strong relationship ties they're part of your weak relationship ties so within the Merage School this is closely held and cherished information so what we did is we networked graphically one of our management classes at Merage School were organized in groups so just graphically this was kind of an exercise that we took with some software and social networking theory but you can see that we have these strong ties between individual groups and then weak ties all over so business students by their very nature are consummate networkers so you can see there's a lot of weak links there so basically in a summary the way you create a potent individual network is that you have a mix of weak ties and strong ties and some of these are redundant and it could be rich in structural holes for instance you'll spend a lot of time with your immediate work groups and you'll spend a lot of time with your immediate social groups but what you need to do is have a diverse mix of both strong and weak ties so that you can act as an omnibudsman ambassador if you will to other departments other social groups on campus and what's important here is that you don't have to actually maintain these links each and every day you just have to re-establish that weak link on some periodic basis maybe it's two weeks, maybe it's a month maybe it's a quarter of the information flow between that group and your group and then over time you will see this network expand so we thought this was kind of great information for you because it's an academic community you understand that science is very powerful and that it's so what we're talking about is not just kind of an experiential thing but it's actually validated with respect to our approach so what I'd like to do is we'll switch from theory to practice and I'll hand it over to Goren thank you Charlie so Charlie gave you a great overview of the importance of this from you know so now you understand where you can play a key role I also want to before I get into the practical aspect talk a little bit about the use in terms of your scientific or research innovations and why you should be networking from that perspective so the way we used to do science and a little bit of introduction to myself I got my PhD here at UCI some years back I was a postdoc and then I got a job in industry and then several other jobs in industry and in those jobs in industry actually I was practicing for the most part this which was the old style of a closed innovation system we developed science and technology we then put it into a funnel we figure out what works and then that funnel gets narrower and ultimately something gets developed that then hopefully is a product that hits the market that was the old style of innovation what has happened in the meantime is actually more and more we have this model of open innovation system so this open innovation system is that you don't necessarily just have your own technology building on other people's technology and so the funnel now gets filled from those two areas but not only that that other technology may be developed by somebody else to a next level and then it comes in at various stages and in some cases maybe comes out as well because you determine that you are not the right person to commercialize this particular product and you hand it off to somebody else to some other people or maybe there is a spin off that creates a new market by the way much more about this the name was missing there at the bottom is you can find out Henry or Hank Chesborough professor at Berkeley that described this open innovation model in great detail so you want to kind of innovate by making sure that you are also connected so if you are at university you should make sure you are speaking to corporations that you are speaking to government of agencies that you are maybe getting funding to private nonprofits that are engaged in your industry as well as other individuals that may know specific things in your field so you want to connect with all of these people that's key and by the way so now my next role that I have taken off over in the last now coming up eight years at UCI first four years at the nano research facility and now at the school of engineering is one of the biggest about them where I work with the faculty as well as with industry on connecting and finding the opportunities and going out there and so you know thank you Charlie for all the kind words earlier I was not a networker until much more recently so in other words when I worked in companies I wish I was a networker I wish I did somebody to tell me about this networking thing before the last five or six years that I have been basically and the practicing as I'll show you later is going out there getting out there getting to know people getting to know people outside of your direct area of expertise and knowledge because that's where you can then bring additional expertise in addition to the ones that you have as your base obviously so the because as Charlie pointed out in innovation you actually end up being a knowledge broker there is another investor you see Davis and the Hargadon who published a book around this and I'll talk about the example of Edison in a moment here but basically the knowledge brokers are those individuals just the weak ties is from the social theory aspect that connect people from different networks and make sure that knowledge is passed back and forth so and the knowledge brokers because they have a network that they know here does and what this one does over here then they have unique insight into what are the opportunities for combining these two into new new activities so example for Edison everybody knows Edison you know for the light bulb well you know his patent was like number six or seven for the light bulb it wasn't the first he didn't invent the light bulb what he did is he created the industry called Edison Southern California Edison and so on that powers the light bulb and how did he do that is that he knew how the the invention portion he had contacts there obviously but he also had people in the finance community and then he went off and he connected with the people in the various communities towns and so on and he made sure that those people got the buy-in from the local mayor and so on to establish a power plant locally and to put down power poles down Main Street so he made sure that when they created the local Edison if you will that the all the buy-in from everyone was there so that the local authorities allowed the you know before it was poles that had to be put down Main Street allowed all those things and people were afraid of electricity you know would harm us and so on so his innovation was basically tying these different worlds together to make it a reality and similarly by the way Andy Hargeron analyzes Ford Ford his assembly line came as a result of him understanding how bicycle people put together bicycles in somewhat of a fashion of an assembly line but it wasn't an assembly line it was one person doing pieces one by one and there was an assembly line or a disassembly line that the meatpacking industry used and so he actually observed how they disassembled a cow and how these guys assemble the bicycle and I said if I put these things together I can create an automotive assembly line and so his innovation came by putting two different things together so I urge you to think of you not only as connector but also as a knowledge broker as an innovator by bringing two different worlds together so and then lastly before I get into the practical things we are in a technology cluster we're actually in a multiple technology cluster I just got word yesterday that we have an official designation by the state of California as an innovation hub we're one of six I'm actually anxious to find out who the other six are there are 22 that applied so octane orange counter technology action network is leading that but basically we are we are definitely in a cluster of both biomedical companies we are here in a cluster of technology companies of various types specifically you know we are probably one of the larger now concentrations of gaming computer gaming virtual worlds types of companies other kind of communications companies broadcom connects and sky works we are in a cluster here of automotive design companies almost every automotive company has a kind of a design center that is here in our county or specifically even in Irvine we are a cluster of a surf surf board extreme games kind of activities as well so there is a number of clusters that are here and so those clusters are good things for you to identify and by the way especially for you if you are in one of those areas to identify what are the firms that you want to connect with in that cluster what are maybe some of the opportunities to connect with those firms because those clusters usually not just have the firms but they also have the suppliers the other people that work there so there may be professional organizations and other ones that you want to connect up in that cluster so these are all opportunities for networking in that cluster so before we get now we are getting into the practicality so first of all networking is not it's not going to an event to ask specifically somebody immediately for help you can do that but that's not going to be the most effective what you want to start networking is you want to start building relationships so you don't want to also go to a networking event and start immediately selling people will be turned off so if you show up to the event and you are a sales person for a certain type of product and you are immediately telling people about this product and do you want to buy it people are going to be turned off and they are going to tune you out again there are some appropriate networking sessions for that and there is an opportunity for you to put a plug but if you are very forcefully doing that you will get pushed back and it's not a place for just immediately start asking for money or donations or things like that what is networking it's sharing of contacts and knowledge building relationships before you actually need them helping others there is a theory where if you help somebody they will feel kind of obligated to help you back in fact never turn down a favor that a friend wants to do you because they will feel like oh I offered help but they didn't want my help and so if you then you know they do you a favor then you will do them a favor and you will build a relationship with them so if somebody offers to help you with something take that offer you feel like you can do it yourself take that offer because it will build a relationship with that person and yes ultimately it is about getting what you need but it is first building these other ones seeing how you can help others and then that way building a relationship and then ultimately build okay so practical you're going to an event and so the first order is to consider dress for the occasion and I say dress for the occasion I'm not saying dress you know like me today because the event that you're going to if I am if everyone is in jeans and you show up like this that's not dress for the occasion so I'm going to stand out like a sore thumb so dress appropriately for what you feel that the event warrants if not sure find out from others ask you know what is normal if not sure still do like a business casual you know for guys you know lose the tie no jeans and things like that no t-shirts and things like that that usually is okay show up early if possible you will get to meet the organizers maybe you can help them out you know they're usually there's a flurry of activity just before the event starts offer to help maybe you can you know they'll just the offer even if they actually say okay you know we're okay that shows that you're you know willing to you know maybe they'll tell you about some other event that you didn't know about while you're there you will maybe have a chance to meet the speaker now I'm not saying that you know the speaker is getting ready for their presentation they're over here you know getting ready and now you're approaching them I wanted to talk to you about this that's not the right thing to do but you know often the speakers show up plenty of time they set up their presentation and they're twiddling their thumbs because you know they wanted to beat the traffic they wanted to make sure that they had everything loaded and now they're just by themselves because nobody else has showed up what a perfect opportunity for you to connect with the speaker before the mob hits them at the end of the presentation which usually happens you know by the way you should say hello to them at the end of their presentation kind of reinforce the contact if you've had a chance to speak to them before also you get the chance to see who else has who is planning to come to the event often at events that you know that have pre-registration there will be name tags they will be laid out on a table sometimes they'll purposely put them away so you don't see them but often they will actually lay them out especially at large events so that you basically pick up your own name tag so you can actually browse around and see okay well who's here maybe there's somebody I know maybe there's somebody that I met before I better remember their name and I forgot it at the moment so I can look at the name tag and say oh yeah I know this person I'll look for them to show up later but also you know you can see there's usually an affiliation a company and they can say company and you know that would be a good contact for me and the other one is also if there is a particular person maybe you see a tag or you see somebody that you want to meet then talk to the registration people I've done this and where I've said you know I'd really like to know this to get to meet this person is it possible for you to alert me when they show up because I don't know what they look like and so that has worked for me where they have then introduced me to that you know well pointed out that person and then I went off and introduced myself alright so the next very important one carry business cards so first of all make some business cards if you don't have some make sure you have some it's so cheap these days and you can make very nice business cards so make some business cards carry them carry lots of them be ready so I have my stack of cards here welcome to take a card but I also want to point out for guys this is something that I didn't even know until a couple years ago you know there's a little pocket back here it's like I actually had these jackets and I never realized that this pocket here is like a perfect thing where you can just you know while you're having the conversation pull out your card and give it to people now the other thing is to exchange them at the first opportunity moment you don't generally so the question is what is the opportunity moment you don't want to be too forceful hello here's my business card although there are situations where people do write that they started the conversation and they immediately give you a business card so that works as well also be aware of cultural things so if I'm meeting somebody that's from an Asian company the proper etiquette is to give enough time in the US you should not just take the card and shove it in your pocket but take a moment to look at the card and what it says about the person but especially in Asian culture there is a way of presenting the card with two hands kind of handing it out and then the other person does the same to you with their card and when you take their card you take it, you read it you kind of study it, you understand and then maybe you ask questions so you are a developer at CalIP2 what does that mean things like that do you work with many Asian companies so those are the kind of questions that you can then engage and also the other thing is that sometimes you're in a conversation with somebody and that first opportunity moment maybe that you're talking to them about what you do I work at UCI and here by the way here's my card you never need a contact about if you need a contact from engineering but I'll give a card to people that say I need somebody in biology or chemistry give me your card and I'll follow up with you the other thing is that if you give them your card sometimes they'll forget to give you their card because they'll just take it and that's what their motivation was to get your card and then I find that sometimes it's just forgetful and I would suggest and immediately just say I'm sorry do you have a card as well and so just ask them for their card at the moment and they'll say oh yeah yeah excuse me and they'll usually pull it out if they don't for some reason you really want their contact what I would generally suggest is immediately take one of yours cross out your name on this one so you don't accidentally give it the way I've had people where they've given me somebody else's contact information contact information that they on the back of a card that they had because what they did is they wrote it on the back of their card but they forgot to cross out the front so they didn't see it as they handed it to me but in any case cross out the front and just have them write it down then that's of course the other reason is always carry a pencil or two or three so that you can have that information written down and then that's the other reason to carry a pencil is that when you get their card as soon as the meeting is over I try to do as much as possible of this sometimes I do forget as well write down the date and the name of the meeting where you met this person maybe if there's particular reasons why you should follow up or if there's a follow up something that you need to know about this person so make some notes and by the way I've also been when somebody starts giving me a lot of information I've actually pulled out the card and started writing down and people say oh yeah I do the same thing write down on the back of the card right away because if you go on the next one I think another thing is to have kind of an outgoing pocket and an ingoing pocket so there's nothing more awkward than what Goren says when you pull out a card and somebody else's card and you're doing this but sometimes if you have your outgoing pocket all set up you just reach in there and you pull it out and there's the card no yeah I agree either choose the side or as I said I've now taken to beat this my outgoing pocket right here the inside pocket and then kind of use all the other pockets for the outgoing ones or the incoming ones so how to decide who do you approach an event you've come to an event you don't know anybody so when I first started attending these events okay you know I'm here I don't know a single person here how do I talk to them I think that's a lot of fear that a lot of people have well the reality is that probably 50% of the people in that room are in a similar situation so first of all there are two possibilities one is identify someone else who's also alone and start talking to them just say hi I'm Goren I'm from UC Irvine what do you do and then they tell you a little bit about themselves and then you listen and it's a back and forth and you've now engaged somebody and by the way I've also found that you know sometimes it's the person who's shy maybe they're not somebody big or important but I've also as often found somebody who is big and important who's off by themselves just not recognized or not you don't realize who they are all these people about all these other people and it turns out that the big boss the vice president of the whole division was standing by himself in the corner and so I walked up to him started talking to him and then I said to the other professors a couple of other UCI professors I said you need to go talk to him forget the people you were just talking to they're the middle there because the big guy was over there in the corner and he felt probably that he didn't need to network in Texas and it was like a mid-morning event and so he was like tired he wasn't in the mood of networking but he was open he talked about stuff so be aware that sometimes the key people may actually not be the ones that are in big groups of over the network people approach a group that's already talking some people that are together and that you maybe want to connect with so now be careful obviously you don't want to intrude on a conversation that's going on but everybody is at a networking event it's kind of expected that you are going to you know that you can break in so find the opportune moment maybe sometimes you stand on the side a little bit and then maybe you cut in and say I'm sorry can I join your group and or if you listen on the side and obviously people are huddled together really closely and they are discussing a particular topic which seems that the group is kind of closing on itself don't try to break that way it's usually semi open and by their stances and it looks like somebody else can come in that's perfect or by the way also you can you can find if you find a person that you know that's in a group that's talking that's perfect so if there's one person out of a larger group and you know that person that's perfect you go in you say hi Mark how are you doing and then Mark if he is the right networker he'll turn around and say Goran do you know Joe and Nancy and Alice here they're with so and so company and now you all of a sudden you've been introduced to a number of new people and it was a recommendation by somebody which is by the way better than introducing yourself even if that recommendation is just a brief introduction but one thing I don't want you to do is don't find your lab mates and there are three of them right there and you go all together and all of you are going to catch up on stuff well why did you come to the networking event if you're just going to catch up I understand we're all busy at UCI we're always running from events to events you don't get a chance to catch up sometime ago we hosted an event with the AEA or now they're called Tech America one of the local and national organizations of technology companies and individuals we wanted to bring tech companies to meet our researchers and we had an event at the university club for researchers to meet the companies and we hosted it at the university club and there were tables all around and guess what there was a table of professors here and a table of people from a company here and a table of professors so it wasn't just the professors who were guilty of it the companies were just as guilty of it and so frankly I went around and I said okay you are with this semiconductor company there's a professor over here you need to talk to them and essentially basically went and connected those people directly at the matrix mixer that we had the other day by the way this is for graduate students in business engineering computer science biosciences and now we've added the law school so if you fall into any of those categories please come the next one is March 3rd so it's on Wednesdays it's once a month there'll be another one in April another one in May and so it's down here in CalIT2 in the atrium so please come it's 5 30 to 7 and so you get to practice all these tips and the first step is don't stand around with the other people in your school so there were all these business students that sat together engineering students that sat together there were admirably a few that mingled around but basically for the others we had to actually literally break those linkages those groups and kind of have them connect with the other ones so alright so now you met somebody you want to have a nice good firm chant shake don't go too firm you don't want to break somebody's hand in process also but also don't go too limp because you know in western culture it is customary to have a firm hand shake so not too firm not too to repeat it look at the person in the eye when they're meeting them when you're meeting them try to repeat their name as they say it if you're not sure that you pronounced it correctly and given all the cultures that we have around here repeat and ask it am I pronouncing that correctly could you pronounce it for me it's a way to remember their name frankly I come to a lot of events and it's very easy to meet a lot of people and now how are you going to remember all the names especially if you're not it may be an event where business card exchange may not be appropriate so the question is how do you remember those names so by repeating them you're actually committing them to memory that way so start by listening charlie pointed this out listen listen listen to what they are saying so before you start telling all about yourself because you're the way you're going to get benefit from your relationship with them is if you start listening to what they do how they can you know how they can enhance your network and so on and you're not going to find that out and if you talk about all about yourself all the time now you do need to do that at some point but first listen ask them what they do do they come to this meeting often maybe there are regulars in the meeting they can tell you about this meeting it's your first time lots of events by the way love new people and they'll say hey you know any new people and then they'll kind of put a mentor in some cases of an old person that's regular at a meeting be personable if you find something in common maybe it's not technical maybe it's in the middle of a conversation you realize that you both like sailing or you both like some other sports like fishing in a particular region of the world or something so you know find some common ground that builds a relationship as well and then in listening what they do and so on see if there's a problem or something that they you know people will also maybe especially when they learn that you're from UCI they'll start oh I wonder does UCI have this resource is the library available to outsiders is there a center for material characterization at UCI you know how could I you know how does my is there a program for for kids during the summer and so you should say you know I know or no I don't know but you know let me let me see if I can find out from somebody else at UCI so and you know basically you're building that network by trying to see if you can solve the problem for them so someday they may have solved the problem for you and by the way you never know whether the person that you're talking to who is in one business completely unrelated to what your interest is but it turns out that their neighbor is the person that you really want to talk about so you can never know that just by starting to talk to them but if you tell them later on what you're doing then they'll say oh you know my neighbor does that I can put you in touch with my neighbor so don't dismiss any contacts based on just what they do it's the relationship with others that are going to be also beneficial to you so you need to start building those relationships okay so then when the moment is appropriate give me a 30 seconds pitch which we will be doing after as soon as we get done with this in a structure networking form all of you by the way have numbers on your tags so we'll be breaking out into into groups one through eight we'll divide them in the rooms and also outside there's as I said dessert so what you'll do is you go around will be in a circle you'll form yourself in a circle and you'll give a 30 second pitch as to who you are what your interests are and why you came to this event and actually if you have a chance say something memorable about yourself you know something that people will remember you by that will stand out and that they will say hey you know I wasn't that the guy who you know there's a guy locally here take this connection and he does the structure networking and during their sessions and so he ends it and says I'm the father of uninstall so all of you on the computers have uninstall well he created the little program for uninstall many years ago okay so that's a memorable thing about itself you never forget the Jack Biser after that he's the father of uninstall so anyway so we'll go around that and by the way the structure networking is practiced by some organizations because that's a quick way it's like speed dating it's like speed networking right so you have a whole bunch of people you go around and when you're done you just learn 10 different backgrounds in one fell swoop and now you were you know sometimes even you know before the thing ends everybody exchanges cards but definitely as the thing ends now you can exchange cards with those people that you really out of those 10 that you met right away maybe two of them are the real good connections but you've you you've accelerated the process and maybe the rest of them maybe casual connections as well so so all the good things so anyway so when you why you know where to network that's the other big question is ask yourself what kind of meetings do you currently attend and which ones would you which should you attend so first of all it's I know it's always tough you everyone is busy everybody has their own things so we go to our own seminars in our department groups and so on but you know there is a whole listing of them at UCI today at UCI that you can find I'll show you the website but every day there is at least six and I would say sometimes 20 or more seminars and happening on this campus and that's on a website that doesn't even carry out all them so if there's a particular topic you can also you know look up various centers and bound to have some seminar series that happens weekly monthly whatever so expand your horizons you know tell yourself hey you know I'm going to go to a seminar unrelated to what I do because I just want to learn something that's over in philosophy or over in engineering or over in chemistry just you know expand your horizons because by the way ultimately in terms of scientific breakthroughs often as I said not just business breakthroughs scientific breakthroughs come when two fields meet so if you can somehow by accident or by design connect those dots you can definitely make a difference so professional society so we all belong to them I belong to the IEEE I'm involved with the local IEEE chapter there's one chapter of IEEE Orange County Computer Society so why did I get involved with them Computer Society I'm actually computers not my background but because I wanted to make sure that our UCI professors get in front of this audience so I went to their meetings became there for one year I was actually the program director for the IEEE Orange County Computer Society and we got I think four or five UCI professors in front of that IEEE Orange County Computer Society chapter so go to the national conferences now all of you probably presented at national conferences and someone again you tend to gravitate towards people you know break out learn others go to trade shows that are that sometimes those those conferences have a show with it but also there may be a separate trade show go to those mixers meet other people there may be informal networking groups friends from your lab but also you know take up a sport take something up at ARCS and all of a sudden you'll start networking actually with you know I've heard that some big-name people on campus go exercising at ARCS on Saturday morning or Sunday morning so you know if you can get yourself early up there then all of a sudden next thing you know you're you're you're getting to network with the vice chancellor you know so that's a pretty good thing right professional networking groups I'll talk about for those in a moment here advanced networking so now that you've you know that's that's the next step expand and diversify networks you want to connect networks so now if you know if you then start to really be a regular over here to some degree again over time I have gotten to know quite a few networks I have now started actually to introduce networks to networks so in other words there is the president of orange county technology action network octane mathuginositis and so but he was maybe not aware of some other network that that was actually also happening here so you want to you want to become the referral hub in those connections and the saying now is it's not just who you know but rather who it's who the they know that you know so in other words now you're connecting people across different areas so the six degrees of separation everybody knows which brings us to the two social networking so I didn't want you know we Charlie and I discussed this social networking is good as a secondary kind of enhancement if you just spend time all the time on social networking then I'm not sure of the benefits it has it has it has its advantages in certain things and I did Twitter this morning that I'm going to be here at this event and I don't know anybody saw my Twitter I know guys Kawasaki follows me I don't know if he even means anything to him but anyway but Guy Kawasaki follows a whole lot of people and a whole lot of people follow Guy Kawasaki if you know Guy Kawasaki garage ventures formally with Apple I would also highly recommend LinkedIn I'll show you those websites in a moment here put up a profile there start connecting with people that's a professional network obviously there's Facebook and there are people who like Facebook Facebook is problematic in the sense that people do them for family and personal reasons and then people also do them for professional reasons I've also even heard of people who have created two profiles the personal and the professional and you know I don't know what to tell you about that but in any case what I'm suggesting is be aware that if you are mixing the two there is there is some danger in that LinkedIn is more of a kind of a this is my experience this is my professional thing career I have actually been able to reconnect with people that I've lost touch with by finding them on LinkedIn and seeing where they are today because they've left their jobs their email bounce back I didn't know where they went in the meantime so this was useful to start and then ultimately you do want to start once you have a large network you want to start maybe categorizing specific people you do that in your mind actually who are the people who can help you with this topic and who are the people who can help you with some other topic and Charlie also recently found this this was featured in an economist research as a kind of a LinkedIn for the research community so I encourage you to check that out finally we'll send this out to you but these are some of the Orange County networks Octane Orange County Technology Action Network has a meetings of their own, typically on Thursdays but also run a community calendar Tech Coast Network meets every Thursday on a month SoCal Biomedical Monthly Meetings between LA and Orange County so some of these are specific orientation to technology or life sciences some of them are Venture software, some of them are digital media there are also others that are more like the IEEE Computer Society I've put up the ones that I know and that I have gone to events to or I'm a member of I sit on a couple of boards here as well but also by the way don't forget the other networks so there's the British American Business Council which is open to non-Britz, I'm not a Brit but I have attended their meetings and they're welcoming to others they connect with UCI with other people again, you're an ambassador when you go to these networks so keep that in mind the Sino American, Chinese American Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Professionals Association I'm actually on the board we've been supporting from them again, it's a network of people that then can connect with other networks and can expand your network so don't limit yourself obviously if you come from a certain background that only enhances you feel personal affinity by the way, for those of you that hail from other countries the local consulates are also another way to connect with the local networks as well so keep that in mind, in Los Angeles we have consulates of all the major countries as well so that basically ends the presentation I just want to quickly show you the websites so researchgate.net will send you the links to these Octane, if you go to Octane they have a launchpad program but the thing that I want to point out is the event calendar here so you can check it out so the events in red are their events and then in black are all the other other folks' events so and then this is LinkedIn so there's my profile in completeness but they've added new categories there and by the way, I haven't actively sought out connections I've been mainly responding to other people asking me to connect with them and I have 360 here so it can quickly get very large and lastly, Twitter so there's my post from earlier this morning that's presenting today with Charlie at CaliQ2 on relationship building so there are other people and so on you shouldn't, by the way don't tweet about the breakfast that you just ate and the lunch you just ate because everybody's already doing that so tweet about things that you can add I only tweet about events I go through meetings I think are going to be meaningful and I haven't had people show up at meetings because they've seen my tweet and said something like a good event so I decided to follow that alright thank you very much groups so we've got everybody stand up group one is Randy is going to be leading group number one which group are you?