Sticking to my guns

This week I had an invite from Google to join them in Thailand for one of their networking events. Thinking that it would be taking place during the day, perhaps with a lunch to chat with some of the local publishers before flying home at the end of the day, I said yes – why wouldn’t I? It sounded like a great chance to make some local contacts and to start expanding our reach in the region.

            Unfortunately (or fortunately, as it turned out), I spent a couple of days last week feeling a little bit less than 100%, and so I put off booking tickets until I was sure that I would be feeling healthy enough to deal with the flight and the networking.  A week before the event was due to take place I had a follow up call with my main contact at the company, and it quickly transpired that I would actually be expected to fly to Thailand for an evening event that started at 6pm, featured one five minute ice-breaker, a ten minute presentation and then a round of ‘speed dating’ meetings before drawing to a close at 8pm. I would spend five hours in the air and however many hours traveling to and from the airports / waiting in departures, for a grand total of two hours networking.

            Initially, I was being told that there would be four or five publishers for me to meet, which was almost enough for it to be worth it, but again, as the time drew nearer the number dwindled down two people, and I would have 15 minutes to speak to each of them.

            I backed out of the flight, claiming that I just couldn’t make the flight times (the last plane out of Bangkok to Singapore was flying at 8pm, so in order to actually attend the full event I would have been looking at a night in an airport hotel too). It was at this point that it was pointed out that if it was easier, I could go to the Google office in Singapore and dial in using their international phone conference lines. Of course that’s easier!

            And so it was that I found myself eating pizza along with my counterpart at another Singapore based company (he clearly didn't think the journey time was worth his time either), listening to an entirely pointless ice-breaker and presentation on programmatic buying where the sound failed, and so we saw the slides but heard none of the content, before a total of 30 minutes of chat to two publishers who are already sold out of inventory in the region and then a taxi home. Sadly, I had to be at the office for this from 7-9pm, so I missed the second round of dinner with The Godfather, but it was good to get it all done, and I was so massively grateful not to have had to fly to Bangkok to do it!