Last year I think I connected with PPP more than a lot of the other people in the class, but I struggled to muster the courage to attend talks and magazine launches.
This year I must attend at least one conference focussed on user interface/experience design. This will set a good precedent for me to make good connections for potential work/internships next year or after I graduate. It'd also be very useful for me to make some more local connections who could give me a brief for the Responsive module.
I've been successful in creating a lot of contacts on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, but a lot of these connections are quite physically distant. Even though I can talk to and have conversations with some of the designers at NASA or SpaceX or Tesla it'd be very difficult to meet with them in person, and this limits how close I can get with them.
I have succeeded in one major way with a contact who used to be an industrial designer at BlackBerry - Joseph Hofer (http://www.josephhofer.com/), who did a video for The Guild series which I spoke about in a blog post last year. I connected with him on LinkedIn then sent him a message explaining how I heard about him and how he inspired me with the video he was involved with. To my surprise he came back to me and offered his personal email address. We've spoken a few times since, and continue to send occasional but very long emails to each other. The last message he sent asked if I was up for freelance work, so I replied in the affirmative. It'll be exciting to see exactly what he has in mind.
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