…so, we’re thinking about tweaking our Pink Slip Party events a bit, and we’d like to get some input from you about it before we go screwing anything up.
Because you know us…we will.
And so we’re throwing this out here in an attempt to get you to save us from ourselves…
Cards on table, we have a lot going on right now, and so it can be hard to focus. We’ve got people in other states coming to us to help them launch groups like ours for their area, and because of this damnable compulsion to be nice and help people…we’re probably going to do it. Which means we may launch a separate website, so that those activities don’t distract from things here. There are swirling, ethereal rumblings about a book. Oh, and of course we all have jobs, lives and families outside of this stuff.
Yes, we think you’re awesome and everything…but that doesn’t mean we’re ready to stop seeing other people.
All of which brings us back to our Pink Slip Party events.
You’ll notice that we don’t have any scheduled…yet…for this year. There are a number of reasons for that.
It seems like everybody on the planet has gotten into the act and is throwing “Pink Slip Party” events now. They’re all over the place. Troy. Flint. Grand Rapids. Lansing. Somebody’s even out there trying to build a web-based reality show around the concept. They’re nothing like ours…but they’re still happening. Seems like they’ve finally clued in that everybody knows that job fairs suck, and so they’re changing names. They’re not changing format or anything…just the name. Which…fine…we’ve always said that it’s not like we made up the phrase or own it or anything, but when so many other events that suck are taking place under the same name…it kinda cheapens what we’re doing. And we’ve always said we’re easy…but we’re not cheap. So that’s one factor.
Then you take into account the market changes that we’ve seen over the past two years, which we discussed over in the Evolution post a while back – http://www.ITinTheD.com/2628/evolution/. The needs of our member base have changed. Your needs have changed. Or at least it seems like they have. Which is…duh…why we’re having this little chat in the first place.
Next, tack on that we get bombarded every time we do one, from both recruiters and people looking for gigs, with emails and phone calls from people outside of the information technology industry that want to come.
Now you add into the equation…umm, let’s just go ahead and call it “the lazy factor”. We like the casual networking events. They’re low key. They’re what our events were always planned to be in the first place – good, solid networking opportunities with people that don’t suck. We don’t have to worry about nametags, badges, registration tables, or any of that other nonsense.
But…they’re effective. People do get hired from them.
But…they’re not quite what we want them to be. They’re getting to be…job fair-ish. We don’t want that.
Sure, they’re awesome from a “numbers” pespective…but that’s not what we’re about.
So we’ve kicked around everything from completely abandoning the concept to changing the format to blowing it up as big as it wants to get.
…and so we find ourselves at this crossroads, dear reader.
Abandoning the concept makes sense because it’s become to generic in nature now. We blew it up, we ran with it, and now it’s time to set it aside.
Changing the concept could work – letting the recruiters come find you, instead of you hunting them down. But that becomes a logistical nightmare, because does an analyst/developer label themselves as an analyst? Developer? Technical PM? We all wear many hats day to day, so it’s hard to “define” what one does in a single, simple, concrete term.
Blowing it up and letting it go nuts by letting other people come might be entertaining just from a “let’s see what happens” perspective…but then we’re getting away from our core group, and that doesn’t really seem proper. And, well, I honestly don’t want to have to put that much thought into name tag coordination and planning.
Now, I mentioned up above that we don’t have any planned…yet. Technically true. We’ve got tentative placeholders put out there for some to take place this year…but we’re still not sure if we’re going to do them or not. Or what we’re going to do with them.
So help us out a little bit. Take a minute and give us your thoughts.
We’re not going to bother with a “poll” or anything…because there are too many different directions one could take, and we don’t want this to wind up being something longer than the SAT’s. So, just drop us a note using our Contact Us form out at http://www.ITinTheD.com/contact/ if you’d be so kind, and let us know what you think.
Or give me a call and let’s chat about it. Or find us at our upcoming event and let’s talk there. We’re not making any decisions about this “today”…we want to be sure that we think this through as much as we need to before pulling the trigger one way or another.