A reason, a season or a lifetime, friendships flow through our lives and come in all shapes and sizes and timeframes, and outside of our family are the true meaningful foundation of our lives. This picture is from my 40th birthday, where I invited a group of fabulous women. These everyday heroes have truly positively impacted my life and I was so happy to celebrate with and because of each of them. While I don't get to see any of them enough, I know that when I next see them, we will pick up exactly where we left off, and the conversations will always be natural.
In the event industry, we have a job that is more of a lifestyle due to the intense nature of the work, the shared passion for a successful project to take place, often multiple days spent working in close quarters, and it won't take long to determine if you are on the same playing field as the others, and to quickly determine who you would spend more time with outside of the work environment. Anyone reading this who works in our industry knows exactly of what I write - and many of you have become friends we travel to visit, who I have created games with and written articles with and dream-wrangled events with, and who we have invited to break bread with us in our home.
But now our friendships often begin less organically. Where we used to meet at school or work, at conferences or through friends or because you are neighbors we now are meeting on-line, through social media, or forum groups, attending hybrid / virtual conferences often long before we meet IRL (in real life). When we meet without facial expressions, without inflection, without pheromones or visual first impressions, how does this change the conversation? These conversations will generally begin based on mutual interest - in work or a hobby - and from there will grow as any conversation does, in small steps, and when we do meet f2f, it is always a joy.
For those of you who have become part of the fabric of my life over the years, in any of these scenarios, thank you for all the enrichment you have brought, and I can't wait to see you again!
Six weeks into my new job with QuickMobile not only do I remain extremely excited about the possibilities for mobile I am looking forward to some great upcoming events.
For the balance of the year QuickMobile has partnered with BizBash to support their Plan a Thons - and what I know is when people I admire such as Warner Brothers Hillary Harris tell me how much fun a Plan a Thon is - I know we are in for a great ride across five cities, beginning this week in Toronto!
At IMEX Frankfurt this year with the QuickMobile team we will be doing a really fun activation - so stop by there and say hi to Trevor Roald, get a great picture you can share and make sure to tag me back on the post @TahiraCreates so I can follow along on the fun! They will also be releasing the results of the meeting planner survey done in partnership and the results are pretty interesting. I feel many of us are still just starting to tap into the potential of our participants having their "world in their pocket" and I think the next few years will really see us use this to our collective advantage.
Add to this some great travel to shows including HSMAI, AIBTM and the IRF Invitational where you can also catch the Event Alley Show live, and it is going to be a rocking next few months. I look forward to catching up with MANY of my far-flung friends - it's going to be a blast!
