Where do you go to network with others in your same field?

N2IT

Personally for me I go to several local cigar bars and that has really opened up doors and given me some inside. I am also a member of PMI and attend some of their local chapter meetings.

I'm just curious where people do their networking.

lsud00d

It's really great when you can network in an informal setting...I tried attending several young professional events (not industry specific) but those were not effective.

There's a DefCon chapter here I've been meaning to join but I met those guys from participating in a cybersecurity capture the flag event.Also just joined an infosec group thatr a friend passed on and I'm looking forward to attending that, apparently its monthly in the back room at a local bar.

Attending vendor sponsored events is always a good time to learn, network, and get free lunch! Lastly conferences have always been a huge blast. One year I presented and accepted an award on behalf of my uni at the awards banquet (had a little speech!) but I met a LOT of people due to high visibility. Also at conferences I would make an effort to join committees and participate in round table discussions because you get a lot of good interaction with people that way. I was always the youngest at these events and people seem to respect initiative and being vocal.

So far all of my jobs have been through networking and knowing people so I am a firm believer in putting in extra effort outside of work because you never know when someone will email or call with an opening and they thought of you first.

Node Man

i think you will find that directors of it, esp younger ones, tend to know each other. similar to other scenes. if you find them i think you will find where to socialize. in my town many of managers and directors from all the service providers know each other.

emerald_octane

(ISC)^2 (CISSP/SSCP) sponsors many meetings all over the world for various things that are often free or reduced cost for members. Since we have to earn CPE credits anyway and these count for a good bit they are very popular. It's good to have some security background since i kinda get what they are talking about but we often interface with industry experts, pen testers, academics etc so stuff goes over my head sometimes.

N2IT

Great stuff thanks for the participation

The cigar bar for me is more of a local non industry specific meeting place. Lots of high level business minds attend and sales so the "IT" guy is always being leveraged. One of the local car dealerships owners came in having network connectivity with his laptop. It took me 15 minutes total to fix and and I got a 36 dollar Pedron 64 out of it. Another time the sales system hosted off of a Windows 2000 server went down and I literally rebooted it and started some services and then relaunched the app and boom it was working. I drank several 18 year scotches that night and smoked 3 -4 Ashtons. Not to mention the small projects you get recruited for once your reputation increases. It's almost like a video game and the more rep points you get the more doors you unlock

One last thing I forgot to mention is my kids schools. I know of several HR and IT professionals and they are looking out for me for full time positions. Mostly business analyst or data analyst roles. But full time and very 8 - 5.

My point is these events have a lot of return on them. Especially the non IT related ones.

@LSU DOOD your last statement couldn't be more on point. I friend of mine recently was released after 4 months on a data center infrastructure project. Could of been performance, personality, budgetary, etc. Regardless he was out of a job and BOOM of LinkedIn his dream job is potentially in the works. He has had several talks with the CIO and they are almost ready to bring my friend on board.

The connection here was from a business professional group hosted monthly downtown St. Louis at the Washington University (Top 25 MBA Program)

It really worked out of him in the long run and this was due to what you just spoke off.

WafflesAndRootbeer

Here in NoVA, the tech networking events are all geared towards the wealthy tech execs. There's not much for anyone under management levels since outsourcing became the norm around here. There used to be tons of stuff back in the dot-com days.

CodeBlox

I'm in Va too and I know what you mean about outsourcing!

chaser7783

These are the groups that I try and attend events to:
ISSA
Infraguard
OWASP ( Just started back up in the south texas area)

Then there are the yearly conference like Defcon, and i'm going to try and go to Derbycon this year.

odysseyelite

I'm part of the local Vmare User Group and I'll attend the monthy Cisco user group meetings.

There is also a Dallas IT Professional group which meets once a month here.

paul78

Despite being somewhat succesfull in my career, I stuggle tremendously with social networking. I can't think of the last time I actually attended a networking event or even tried to go someplace similar. I did signup and paid a fee to attend an ISACA event about 3 months ago but I ended up not going.

After reading this thread, I thought that I would start simple and logged into my LinkedIn account which I have not done so in about 18 months. That was the best that I could do. And I was paralysed with what to do about all the invites that have accumlated. And there were about 6 endorsements as well.

At the current job, I was required to take a Myers-Briggs personality evaluation and I am clearly an introvert.

How do you guys even get the time, motivation, or even courage to even attend random events. I have a really hard time with it. I can barely use LinkedIn.