Karen Wickre
Founder, KVOX Media
I’m a veteran connector, editor, and communicator, and have worked in and around Silicon Valley long enough to have appeared in WIRED 1.4. (Even before that, I wrote one of the very first guides to what we used to call “the World Wide Web,” and now it’s an amusing relic of a more innocent time.)
As a corporate writer, I’ve developed stories, styles and cadence for Google, Twitter, and many startups. As an early Googler (I joined when there were 500 employees; I left nine years later, when there were 50,000), I’ve been in my share of war rooms and fire drills, and have crafted scores of posts covering products and pivots, shakeups, corporate apologies and company culture. More recently I’ve advised a range of companies that want a strategy (or a reality check) on their messages and the content they produce.
Sometimes friends introduce me as someone who “knows everybody.” Of course that’s not true — but usually I do know who everyone is. That may be my secret power, along with common sense: I can see around corners, ask questions that matter, all in order to help get to next steps and real solutions for teams, companies, and individuals. In 2018 I detailed my long-time interest in connecting people in a book called Taking the Work Out of Networking: An Introvert’s Guide to Making Connections That Count (Simon & Schuster). I hope you find it useful.
My areas of interest include all types of business communications (how best to reach visitors, customers, and critics, on which channels); corporate social media (being in the conversation in ways that are welcome), change management and company culture.
I’m also a strong supporter of journalists and journalism, and currently serve on the boards of The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford and the News Literacy Project. One of my joys is having co-founded, with Jenny 8. Lee and help from Google and the Knight Foundation, a yearly unconference called Newsgeist, where a small group of news producers mix it up with news gatherers and developers. In a nod to my long-time status as a San Franciscan, I’m also on the board of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Beyond all this, I love dogs, Spotify playlists, dark UK crime series, and pie. I’m an art collector with no wall space left. I have both slide carousels and 42GB of photos, 100GB of music and my first batch of 45s, all of which surely qualifies me as a modern elder.
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It’s wonderful to have a reset of the concept of “networking” from just a way to ‘use’ people to achieve a goal such as job hunting to a way to connect with people to learn and interact with them to share interests. The human benefits of meeting and learning about people extends far beyond those specific moments when you *need* something from others.
The morning warm up routine is a great tip! I actually have a sticky note on my desk reminding me to get in touch with a couple of people I’ve been thinking about, but it’s been there for over a week. I tend to wait until I have spare time to send those notes, and of course I rarely find myself with spare time. I vow to get that sticky note off my desk by adopting your morning warm up routine instead of putting networking at the bottom of my priority list. Thanks!
THANK YOU. Expanding one’s “net” without it feeling like “work.”
This is a great session! It’s something that I struggle with, so it was helpful to hear all of the great ideas around how to do it. Thanks!
Something that seems so simple and should be intuitive, we tend to overlook, especially in the world today; we need to lean on one another even more so reaching out to those in our network sporadically is not only rewarding in a networking sense, but also rewarding in a humanistic way of staying connected. Thanks for an excellent session and much-needed reminder to take a few moments each day for this worthwhile connection!
Thank you for being able to listen into your conversation. I love the parabel about the gardener because it gives me clear images in my head of what networking is all about.
By the way I find it a lot easier to do networking online as suppose to IRL. It is just less intimidating to write to someone and ask if they want to talk to me, this also applies to making a phone call.
Also I noticed than when you are in a zoomeeting and the system randomly put you in a group with other people, you already by pushing the join group button said yes to welcome and be interested in everyone that are in the group. This also enables you to met people that you would not normally approach. Sometimes you are even given a topic to talk about. How convenient. This as supposed to visiting a IRL networking event. You are walking around to se what group of people you could approach or someone standing all by them self. In a zoom groups you don’t have the problem on how to in a polite way leave the person you are talking to and to continue to mingle with other people.
All that said I can’t wait to be able and go out networking meting other people in flesh and blood.
Have a nice weekend!
I liked the quote Karen referred to (paraphrased): Networking is less like hunting, and more like farming (or gardening) – continuous but not constant as you tend to it on an ongoing basis; you have seasons, eg weeding, trimming, removals, replant; whereas hunting is very transactional (one and done). The example May added was so fitting: like having orchids (require daily care) vs cactus (leave alone for a long time and then pick up and things are the same).
I wonder how much people have replaced genuine one-on-one connection with social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn posting updates and replying to comments publicly. This makes me curious how much this has displaced the one-on-one deep connections those of us in GenX and older generations used to have through phone calls and even letter writing? Communication is much more condensed nowadays to texts, posts, tweets, and emails that underscore just how important it is to ensure we aren’t forgetting about meaningful connection. May’s conversation is an important reminder for us all to cultivate our relationships to strengthen our connections to one another.