Iron Chef and PRSA

I love networking events. It’s a chance for me to learn something new and meet new colleagues, clients, and friends. I always go to events looking to meet people and am constantly surprised at how many attendees I see standing in the corner and generally being very unsociable. Especially being in sales, I notice this a lot since I’m always looking over the room to learn from and seek out who the people are that are having animated conversations and who look interesting.
Today I attended two very different, interesting events. One was Marriott’s Iron Chef competition at the Renaissance Waverly. Because I have never watched the show before and having arranged a lot of teambuilding events over the past few years, I was pretty skeptical. It’s hard to impress meeting planners and put on events since that is what we do for a living. I was very pleasantly surprised at how fun it was and the quality of people the event attracted.
After that I attended the PRSA luncheon to hear economists talk about the region and the economy. The panel included economists and speakers such as Sam Massell with the Buckhead Coalition and A.J. Robinson with Central Atlanta Progress. Sam and A.J. are both great speakers and I’ve heard them several times throughout the last few years.

As a first-time visitor, I enjoyed myself and the people I met. A few recommendations I have would be that there are handouts in our seats promoting the next few events or highlighting the speakers and topic, and also to integrate guests and members. Overall...great day!