This past weekend we were in Tampa for a convention, an entire hour from home. We got to see some of our old friends and we also made some new ones from Florida, Canada, Tennessee, North Carolina and even Moscow. It was fun to be around such an outgoing group of people that you could walk up to anyone and start a conversation. There are no shy wedding photographers, it goes with the job I guess.
At one of our seminars there were paper airplanes on all of the seats when we arrived. We were not really sure why they were there but someone spent a lot of time folding all of those airplanes and putting them out. Everyone just seemed to ignore the fact that they were there as we listened to Jesh de Rox talk about building relationships with clients and bringing out people’s real personalities. He was a very inspirational speaker and was also very entertaining to watch. He talked about how important it was to connect with people, to form relationships and to try to connect with new people as much as possible. Then at the end of the seminar he had everyone write their email address on their airplane and throw it. The one you ended up with is the email address of someone new that you should connect with and get to know. It was a brilliant ending to a presentation on connecting with people, and I thought it was a good enough idea to share.
So the next time you feel like you need to connect with someone new, make yourself an airplane, write your email address on it and throw it out into the world.