It's that time of year - relocation network meetings, how many can you attend or should you bother?

Can you believe how many meetings are happening the same week as ERC?  It's unreal, compensation conferences, tax conferences, benchmarking conferences, all in the same week when ERC is in Denver.  Which prompts a question I continuously struggle with, are these conferences and meetings worth our time and money and effort?  And I don't just mean the two annual ERC meetings, but also all of the regional and local meetings which, let's be real now, include 80% salespeople and 20% corporate clients (there are exceptions but very few).  So I asked my friend and co-worker David Cox, who currently is the Vice President of the Pacific Northwest Relocation Council, "why does he go to these meetings?"  And he told me the following: networking -- for business development, recruiting, forming business alliances, identifying emerging trends and how peers are dealing with them, rewarding high performers with a break from the office, public relations and name recognition, staying current on the "who's who" of relocation, understanding current focus of corporate clients and vendors.  David, thank you!  Those are excellent reasons and, admittedly, it's hard to make that come true for both sales, operations and corporate clients alike.  But, perhaps those of us, myself included, who are responsible for making these meetings happen, should think about the last few meetings and the next few meetings to see if they accomplish all of these things for everyone.  If we did, maybe more people would attend and make for a better connection.

Life is what I make of it

I can't be reminded often enough of that.  When I see people around me who really "drink" in life and bring joy and passion to everything they touch, I'm am enamored and impressed.  A couple weeks ago I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a professor at Carnegie Mellon named Randy Pausch.  At some universities, there are some lecture series called, "Your Final Lecture."   A catchy little idea where professors are asked to lecture as if it was the very last one they would be allowed/able to give.  Unfortunately, Randy's situation, it is his reality.  He has terminal cancer and he will die soon (3-6 months), leaving a wife, three young children and great legacy.  I don't know him, but I feel like I do after hearing his story and his lecture.   Here is the link, if you click on the WSJ article  it has a quick, good summary of the situation and the lecture.   But if you want to really hear his message, the full lecture link contains it all including some introductions (it runs about an hour).  It's very heartbreaking and heartwarming . http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/