Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope that your week has gone well and that you have a lovely weekend planned. I can hardly believe that we are a week into December already. Time is definitely flying and I have so much holiday baking to do! But for right now, I want to share some networking tips with you today.

First, I don’t like the term networking, but am using it since we basically can hopefully agree what it means. Because I’m not a fan of “networking,” but instead prefer to think of it as actually making a connection with a person instead of trying to self-promote or get something, I’m totally a fan of ways to make “networking events” more useful and enjoyable. I really appreciated this article on Lifehacker, how I became the kind of person who can work a room. I think probably just about everyone has had at least a moment of dread of stepping into a room at a conference, business meeting, or event when you don’t know anyone, so tips about how to join in on conversations are extremely useful.

Also, of no shock to readers of this blog, I’m a big fan of Susan Cain (aka the author or Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. So I really enjoyed the entire video interview from this article, network as an introvert with a “socialization quota”. Although I don’t fully agree with her intro analogy of women in the 1950s and 1960s to today’s introverts, I do think she offers a lot of useful ideas and tips for introverts for networking and socialization. Definitely useful not just for work, but definitely with the holiday season coming up and all the events that go with that.

Finally, because it is holiday travel season, one last helpful article: create an air travel emergency kit to survive common airplane woes. Make flying (and delays) a bit easier to take.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend full of good reads, good food, and good friends. I’ll be back on Tuesday. Allons-y!